Click, clic … boom! How secondhand clothes shopping turned very sour
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Apps like Depop and Vinted are hugely popular, but an online culture of scams, rage and suspicion is now the default between buyers and sellers, with communications quickly descending into hurling abuse at a stranger. Here is a real-life conversation on a secondhand shopping app: a buyer of two items asks if a seller could combine postage costs. The petulant seller refuses. After a grating plea from the buyer, the seller retorts, “Fine, I’ll refund you, but I’m doing it my way.” Eventually, the buyer receives a large piece of card with a load of grubby coppers stuck to it with Sellotape. On the back it says, “Enjoy the refund!”.
![[Hannah Ewens]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2023/01/20/Hannah_Ewens.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
And there’s nothing odd about this – these sorts of exchanges between Brits on marketplace apps are so commonplace they have become part of the texture of the shopping experience. Maybe even part of the fun. But why do we communicate like this? What is happening that we can’t be remotely polite and normal? Where have our famous manners gone?.
![[defdef spot2]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/89b82bb9e6c8ca407ea1d61d60977cca66b7f77b/0_0_1340_2976/master/1340.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The more colourful examples warrant a popular British Instagram account called DM Drama. It was previously known as “Depop Drama,” because of the mass popularity of secondhand shopping site Depop. It has 4.2m active buyers, the majority of who are in the UK, but expanded to cover other rapidly rising apps, such as Vinted, which made a 61% growth in revenue between 2022 and 2023. Followers send in their most ridiculous conversations with scammers and abusive characters on the apps. A typical exchange starts with someone offering £2 for a Shein crop top and rapidly descends into a mocking admission that the seller’s boyfriend never loved them anyway and PS they’re a pathetic cow. One day it’s an outraged buyer receiving a busted pair of jeans held together with nothing but gaffer tape and an insult to their intelligence. The next it’s a seller pretending she’s dead and answering as her grieving husband to avoid giving a refund. It’s pandemonium, it’s insanity and it’s a whole lot of drama over a pair of denim shorts needed for a party on Saturday.
