Fashion · Channel report
What people complain about in Thrifting
WaveSeek read 3,914 public posts about Thrifting over 30 days and found 985 genuine complaints in them. Below are the ones that came up most, each linking to the post it was read from.
Measured 17 September 2026 · 4 distinct sources in the last 7 days · this page is rebuilt on every deploy
Daily mentions, 2026-09-03 → 2026-09-17. Peak 190 in a day.
Week over week, mentions moved -12%. A growth figure only appears here when it survives a baseline floor, a source-change check and a credibility ceiling — most channels most weeks show nothing, and that is the honest answer.
The evidence chain
Every complaint below came out of this. Nothing is estimated; each step is a count.
- 3,914posts ingested about Thrifting30-day window
- 2,039read by the classifier52% of them
- 985were genuine complaints48% of what was read
Mentions here exclude news wires and video titles: somebody reporting on Thrifting is not somebody having a problem with it. The Trends screen inside the app counts those too, because it measures attention rather than frustration — which is why the two numbers differ and why this page says which one it is using.
What people actually complain about
The 8 most frequent complaint clusters of 30 found, phrased by the classifier from the posts themselves. The links go to the original post — not to a summary of it.
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1
High marketplace selling fees
outrageous fees — selling fees are crazy. sold a used item for 530$. they took 80$ for selling fees. im…
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2
Unresponsive support for scammed customers
They have THE WORST support I have ever experienced. Very unresponsive and not at all supportive of customers that have been…
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3
Broken search functionality on mobile app
Search returns zero results for EVERYTHING — Your search function has been broken for iPhone users in th…
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4
Unreliable search results
“No Exact Matches Found” — Search is completely broken. Fix it.
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5
Excessive ads in marketplace apps
Too much adds — That’s why Facebook wins
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6
Update-induced bugs and broken search filters
Update completely broke app — New update made it harder to list items without encountering glitches/anno…
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7
Unexplained account bans
Banned my device just for logging in. What kind of scam is this!
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8
High seller fees eating into earnings
They steal money — If you are a seller, they take majority of your earnings. Don’t sell here
The count is over every post in the cluster. The links are a sample of them, capped at three, and never imply the list is complete.
Who is already there
6 apps measured in this channel from their own recent store reviews. Ratings are computed from the reviews WaveSeek ingested in the window, not read off a store listing.
| App | Rating | Reviews read | 4★ and up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vinted: Pre-loved marketplace | 4.3★ | 250 | 82% |
| Depop - Buy & Sell Clothes | 3.1★ | 113 | 50% |
| eBay online shopping & selling | 1.4★ | 83 | 7% |
| Mercari: Buying & Selling App | 3.1★ | 68 | 51% |
| Poshmark: Shop & Sell Fashion | 3.1★ | 66 | 50% |
| ThredUp: Online Thrift Store | 4.3★ | 38 | 84% |
Search demand
35,942 Google searches a month on average, from Google Ads keyword volume — the one number on this page you can check against a source that is not us.
Twelve months of monthly volume, ending 2026-08 for the keywords thrifting, secondhand clothes.
No clear seasonal pattern, the best and worst months differ by only 33% of a typical month.
What this page does not tell you
Four competitors in this category print a market size on a page like this one. We do not, because we cannot measure one: mention counts, complaint counts and search volume are not a market size, and a dollar figure built from them would be a guess wearing a decimal point. The same goes for revenue projections, customer demographics and funding comparables.
Everything above is a count of public posts and reviews over a stated window. It is evidence of what people said, not a prediction of what will sell.
See Thrifting change
This page is a snapshot. Inside WaveSeek the same channel is live: the complaint list is re-clustered every six hours, competitor ratings are tracked week over week, and saved ideas report what moved since you saved them.
Open WaveSeekFree covers the measured numbers you just read. The paid tiers cover the interpretation.