Let's talk about Gumtree weirdos

Online etiquette for buying & selling second hand

At this point in my life, I can confidently say I've been buying and selling second hand online for over 2 decades. I've learned HTML to sell handmade projects and unwanted tees on LiveJournal, sold and given away furniture on Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace, and bought craft supplies on eBay. Before Craft & Thrift came to be, I had a shop on Etsy selling vintage clothing and trinkets. My current beau is Vinted, an excellent way to buy second hand clothing I don't want to (or can't) make for myself, and make the occasional bit of pocket money selling unwanted items. I dabbled in Depop before deciding it was a bit trendy for my tastes.

Thrifted Birkinstocks (via Vinted) I refreshed & cleaned.

All that is to say, I come to this article with some lived experience of the wild world of online thrifting. When I say ‘online’, I mean both wholly online, where you buy or sell an item with someone who lives geographically distant to you and use some kind of courier service to send them the item, and in the more local sense - listing an item online for someone to collect in person.

I have personally experienced a wide gamut of behaviour from people with whom I'm engaging in this exchange, from friendly and polite, right through to abusive and aggressive. All over a £40 pair of second hand shoes, or a broken bathroom shelving unit. I want to share these experiences here with you, partly in an attempt to understand them, and partly as a warning to anyone thinking of wading into the murky waters of Facebook marketplace. And partly because it's comical, not gonna lie.

My £30 Facebook marketplace plant haul

Here’s my online buying & selling bingo card of observed weird behaviour. Have you encountered any of these types?

1. Being extremely adamant and persistent, often with multiple messages in caps, you MUST HAVE THIS ITEM OR YOU WILL DIE…only to then ghost me when I offer it to you. Why was it so incredibly important to you 20 minutes ago? What changed in the last half hour? Did your other half get home after work with a slightly broken but still functioning printer so you didn’t need mine any more?

2. Defensive and passive/aggressive behaviour when called out after you don’t show up at an assigned time, despite me having organised my day around staying in for you, and/or rejecting others to prioritise you. Often in conjunction with some patently fictitious excuse that is both a) clearly invented and b) wouldn’t have stopped you popping along the road to collect my free lawnmower, along the lines of “my best friend’s dad was taken to hospital”. A quick “sorry, I can't make it any more” message doesn't seem too much to ask, no?

3. Selling something broken or very obviously misdescribed, only to then become aggressive and rude, or just disappearing off the face of the earth when called out

4. Similarly to point 2, but applied to a seller - sending defensive and passive/aggressive messages when called out for a parcel not being posted in an appropriate time frame. Often also associated with a bizarre concocted story about your dog ripping a claw and so you had to go to the vet…apparently then meaning after 9 days you can’t drop my parcel at the local InPost locker. Weirdly, these messages often end with “xoxo” like we’re high school besties

5. Turning up to collect an objectively large item e.g. a sofa, a bookshelf (for which the measurements have been provided in the listing) in a Fiat 500. I've taken to stating “YOU WILL NEED A VAN TO COLLECT” and have still had numpties turning up in a Vauxhall Corsa

6. Similarly to point 5 - asking “measurements?” (no preamble or polite sign off) when the listing clearly states the measurements. See also: colour, material, size etc. I always reply with a passive aggressive “as stated in the listing, the measurements are…” but I suspect the irritation is lost on these people

7. Scammers. Gumtree seems to be rife with them at the moment, way more so than in the past. They seem very legit, until you get to the point of organising for them coming to view your item, and then suddenly they're actually in Blackpool but they'll send a courier to collect but you have to pay them up front via this link…

The sad thing about all the above bullet points, is I’m not making them up or exaggerating. I’ve experienced all these behaviours, often multiple times. People don’t appear to understand and respect the common unwritten rules of decency when selling or buying second hand online. It’s not hard - post and pay in a timely manner, describe items as they are (not how you would like them to be), don’t try to sell things that are broken or damaged. If you can’t follow these for whatever reason, either don’t buy or sell online, or be honest and reasonable. I recently accidentally sold a pair of cords on Vinted I thought were black, so described them as black. When they sold and I was packaging them for the buyer, I realised on the label it stated they were navy. Held in certain lights, I could see they were actually a really deep navy, not black. I messaged the person offering a refund and to cancel the transaction, they said no thank you and took the trousers anyway. We all went our merry way, no feelings hurt. It’s really that simple when you make a mistake. Similarly, I bought a second hand sweater described as 100% cashmere. The £12 price tag should have rung alarm bells, because when it arrived it was only 8% cashmere and had a stain. I messaged the seller, she apologised for the error and instantly gave me a refund. That’s how it should be done.

One of Angela’s plants in my garden, doing the work of the gods

There are certainly some folks who regularly nail this transaction. Namely - Angela in my local community. She’s a person who clearly loves her garden, and makes a bit of pocket money selling plants from her driveway on Facebook marketplace. She has hundreds of plants, some grown from seed and some propagated herself, all for sale for generally less than a fiver. When we first moved into our new house and I was excited about having a garden for the first time, I bought £30 of plants from Angela. She was very kind and indulgent of all my amateur questions, and £30 got me two crates of plants. Most of them are still going strong, the benefit of having been grown about 5 minutes from my house. A second haul was procured last month. I’ll be back for more from Angela over the coming years, I can already tell. A five star thrifting exchange. I'll probably take her a jar of jam next time I see her.

The initial shoe crack - it had about 7 in total by the time I’d walked the length of my living room

The opposite end of the scale was an absolute tit mouse, who sold me a pair of Ralph Lauren leather loafers on Vinted. They were a pricey purchase by my standards, £40 for a pair of second hand designer shoes is objectively a great price, but with the large caveat of them potentially not fitting, and then being burdened with the hassle of reselling, it felt like a risk. I waited for the parcel with bated breath, which came with multiple messages ending with kisses and promises to post tomorrow. This is a feature I’ve noticed from a fair amount of online sellers (often ones that I judge to be Gen Z, from their profile pics or inclusions of a date from the 00s in their handle). Instead of just, y’know, posting the item (arguably not that hard, given they chose to list it on a resale site, one would expect they would be ready and waiting for a sale), instead you receive multiple messages along the lines of “soz babe, I’ll definitely be posting tomorrow xoxo”, often after you’ve already been waiting 5 days with no communication. I’m not yer feckin’ pal, I just want my loafers. When said loafers eventually arrived, they were very lightly packaged in a plastic jiffy bag, no box, very minimal padding. They looked beautiful, but the moment I took the first step, there was a loud crack from both shoes and I looked to see the sole had split. A massive gaping split, right across the widest part of the sole on both feet. As I walked the 3 paces back to my slippers, they cracked again. In total I had taken maybe 7 paces, ending with both soles cracking in multiple pieces. I messaged the seller, explaining in polite but firm language what had happened and that I wanted a refund. She exploded. Expletives, aggression, claims I had purposefully broken them to get a refund. She claimed that because I’d worn them, she wouldn’t give a refund. I stated (very calmly I’m proudly say) that one would expect to be able to walk more than half the length of your lounge before a pair of shoes falls to pieces, even when buying second hand, but the barrage of anger kept coming. For every one message I sent, I received 3-5 back, full of accusations and rage. After trying to be reasonable, I reported her to Vinted and ultimately got my money back. I don’t know if Vinted ever refunded her, given my claim of lack of packaging causing the issue (Vinted makes you pick from a drop down menu of issues and then upload pictures of the damage and the packaging). I honestly hope she didn’t get a refund, given her abusive behaviour. I took screenshots and reported her to Vinted, then blocked and deleted her. All in all, it was several days of unnecessary stress, over a £40 pair of second hand shoes.

After reading this Guardian article, it would seem I’m not the only one who has experienced this behaviour, often from (at the risk of sounding like my mum) youngsters online. I don't know where along the way these folks lost their ability to be reasonable human beings on the internet, but some basic etiquette does seem to be occasionally lacking. Maybe it’s about the screen time, or growing up as an internet native, that makes these exchanges seem normal and commonplace. As the author of the Guardian article, Hannah Ewans, writes of Depop;

“Depop’s age limit is 12 and from the conversations you have on there, you can tell. The exchanges typically begin with an effusive “Hi hun x” in which the initiator, often the potential buyer, tries to charm the other. Quickly, this descends into insults and aggression.”

Having said all that, I have had some very successful online second hand sales and purchases. Sally in our local area, who has a side business buying second hand sofas (Sally's Second hand Sofas we call her), refurbishing them and selling them on (local delivery included) offers an amazing service. Our sofa cost just over £300 for something that was nearly £1000 new, had been deep cleaned, was delivered the same day AND they carried it into our lounge and assembled it for us.

I don’t have a better photo of the sofa, so enjoy the Labradors asleep in a sunbeam on said sofa

I recently bought all the Court of Thorns & Roses series on Vinted for £8, and had a really lovely messaging exchange with the seller, who informed me they were weeks away from getting married and only selling the books because their fiancé had bought them the collectors editions. I left them a 5 star review wishing them well on their wedding day and we all left the exchange with a warm, fuzzy feeling. It is possible to be a nice person on the internet occasionally.

RIP lawnmower we found in our garage when we moved in. May you be happy in your new home

I have given away countless functioning but dated, or slightly broken but still useful objects over the years, keeping things from landfill in the process. A bathroom cabinet, an old lawnmower, a sofabed, a plastic compost bin - giving things away on Marketplace or Gumtree is a great way to free up space, recycle and avoid having to drive the item yourself to its final destination. The compost bin folks left a box of chocolates on our doorstep, so that was a particularly pleasant interaction. The bathroom cabinet I could have given away 27 times over (no exaggeration) but the person who had first place didn’t turn up to collect it when they said they would, then got defensive and arsey when I pointed out that it was inconvenient to hang around waiting for someone who is unreliable so I was giving it to the next person. Who arrived within 20 minutes and was very polite and thankful.

In conclusion - people can be weird on the internet about things that could be considered literal rubbish. But overall, my experience of buying and selling second hand is mostly a positive one. You just have to develop a thick skin, and be on your guard for scammers and time wasters. When it works, it’s an amazing way to recycle, reduce your spending, and minimise demand for virgin resources. Plus, potentially meet someone nice in your local area. Just be on the lookout for the weirdos in amongst the gems…