u/TheLittlestJellyfish

This is an odd one, and very niche, but I only really ever use vinted for buying and selling vinyl records. I've noticed over the past few days a lot of Japanese 7 inch singles being listed, all at £2 each, and mostly by different sellers with nonsense bot names (just random strings of letters), and I can't get my head around what's going on or why.

Each seller only has a handful of listings, they don't have any feedback, they're often exactly the same records, they all have random names like 'werhyrewha' and 'afdsafds' and 'rtgjdtkyhgfk', the listing titles are just '7 inch record' with no description.

I just did a search-by-image of one of them, a 7 inch of Jerry Wallace's Mandem / Lovers of the World. There are currently 10 sellers selling it, all new sellers, all £2 each, all different photos (!), all with bot names. 9 of them have no feedback, one of them has a single 1-star review ('seller cancelled order').

If this is a scam, it's not going to be a very effective one. The items are cheap, not very popular, and surely vinted's refund policy and protections mean that there can't be any stealing of bank details or addresses. I'm so desperately curious - clearly something strange is happening, but what could it possibly be and why? I refuse to believe that they're genuine listings.

Edited to add: obviously these are real photos, but - that exact pink fabric in the background of the first listing in the attached photo appears in other listings from a number of different sellers. So I think these are being scraped from somewhere, rather than being taken by individual sellers. What are the chances of a number of new sellers, located throughout the UK, having exactly the same pink fabric, suddenly decide to sell their collection of Japanese easy listening singles at the same time, for the same price?

https://preview.redd.it/uhkhxdotn55h1.png?width=1147&format=png&auto=webp&s=90dcce4052e3fc839ea21109b9899527df8cb81a