Buying on marketplaces: what protects you, and what does not

Almost every consumer protection people believe they have applies only to purchases from a professional seller. The 14-day right of withdrawal, set out in Article L221-18 of the French Consumer Code, applies to distance contracts concluded with a trader. The statutory guarantee of conformity, Articles L217-3 and following, likewise.

Between private individuals, on Vinted or Leboncoin, neither applies. This is the single most common misunderstanding among buyers, and platforms have little incentive to correct it.

What remains is the Civil Code. Hidden defects, Articles 1641 and following, apply between private individuals. So does annulment for fraudulent misrepresentation, Articles 1130 and 1137, which is often the better fit when a seller passed off a fake as genuine: the misrepresentation vitiates consent and the sale can be annulled.

Platform buyer protection is a contractual promise, not a legal right. It is generally faster than going to court, and generally narrower: short reporting windows, conditions on how the item was paid for, and exclusions that repay the purchase price but not the loss.

Read the reporting deadline before you buy, not after a problem arises. These windows are counted in days from delivery, and they are the most common reason a claim fails.

Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, the Digital Services Act, has applied to all intermediary services since 17 February 2024. Two provisions matter directly to buyers.

Article 30 requires marketplaces to collect and verify identifying information about professional sellers before allowing them to trade: name, address, contact details, registration number. This is the traceability obligation that makes an anonymous professional seller a compliance failure rather than a fact of life.

Article 16 requires a notice and action mechanism, so a report about a counterfeit listing has to be handled through a defined process rather than disappearing.

Platforms are not automatically liable for what sellers list. Under Article 6, hosting providers are exempt while they play a neutral role. They lose that exemption when they take an active part: the Court of Justice held as much in L'Oréal v eBay, and in Louboutin v Amazon in December 2022 it held that a platform mixing its own sales with third-party listings may be liable where a reasonably well-informed user perceives a link between the platform and the offending product.

French customs seized 20.22 million counterfeit articles in 2025, after 21.47 million in 2024 worth €645 million. The figure that matters for online buyers is the breakdown: express freight and postal traffic accounted for 3.13 million articles in 2024, up 26% year on year, and more than 2.83 million in 2025.

That growth is the e-commerce channel becoming visible in the seizure statistics. Small parcels, ordered individually, arriving directly to consumers.

Before: check whether the seller is a business or a private individual, because it determines your rights. For a business, the platform must display its registration details under Article 30 of the Digital Services Act; their absence is itself a warning.

After, if something is wrong: report within the platform's window first, since it is the shortest deadline you face. Keep the listing, the messages, the payment record and the packaging. Photograph the item as received before altering it.

If you paid by card, chargeback windows are limited, commonly around 120 days depending on the scheme and issuer. Acting early preserves options that expire quietly.