Online Vintage Clothing Scams Are On the Rise

There was once a time when finding the perfect article of vintage clothing was as much a matter of luck as anything else. That was before online shopping was widespread, where going into the right vintage shop or antique establishment at the right time could pay off in a big way. Now things are more widespread, making it easier to find in-demand items from all over the country — and the world.

That’s the good news. The bad news? It’s also gotten easier for scammers to take advantage of buyers online. As The Observer‘s Hannah Ewens reports, a growing number of online shoppers are sourcing on the experience because of deceptive listings. Ewens cites data showing an alarming figure: that 32% of buyers on secondhand clothing marketplaces were scammed in the last two years.

It isn’t only buyers who have experienced this, either: the same survey also found that 1,400 sellers believed themselves to be the victims of a scam at some point in the same period.

The presence of scamming on both sides of the equation is bad in and of itself, but it’s also led to distrust among both sellers and buyers. As The Observer‘s reporting points out, there are now entire online spaces dedicated to fraught interactions between the two, including one Instagram account with over half a million followers. Or, as Ewens phrases it, it’s led to a situation where “both sides are flip-flopping between being customer service and Karen.”

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Regulatory bodies have taken some measures to halt online retail scams. Last year, the INFORM Consumers Act went into effect in the U.S. Writing at CNBC, Gabrielle Fonrouge described the law as a way to increase the transparency around third-party online sellers dealing in large quantities of clothing. (Previously, it had been easier for scammers to use an alias.) It’s unlikely to bring scamming to an end completely, but it could make the online marketplace a little safer.