Beware of Wallapop!

This post is written by my husband, to warn people about the dangers of using Wallapop and Wallapay:

Wallapop is a haven for criminal activity, and they seem to get away with it very easily. The security is not good on Wallapop! I do not share this story so that you may feel sorry for me or to bad mouth Wallapop, it is a tip-off to be very careful. 

I would suggest avoiding the use of Wallapop to sell your personal items.

I live in Spain and on the 05th March 2019 I found myself needing some extra cash fairly quickly. I was told that Wallapop is a good way to sell and buy items. Therefore I went to the App store and downloaded the Wallapop App, registered and read the instructions. I found it difficult to understand as most of the content does not translate to English, especially the legal parts that cover Wallapop from any responsibility for incidents such as this. I uploaded some pics of my camera and the extras that I intended to sell as one package. Finally I loaded all this asking for 500 Euros.

Criminal Intent

Within hours I had 5 people interested, and this was the start of the criminal intent. All of them requested I contact them on WhatsApp, which I assumed was normal. I chose a person from a Spanish number thinking it better to deal with someone in this country knowing or rather thinking, that the Spanish people take honesty seriously.

The person had listed their name as Claudiu Manole (please see attached pics of the transaction and process information for more details).

They informed me that I would receive an email from Wallapop with instructions, and to send my bank account details for payment. I did so, and received an email from Wallapay, supposedly the payment processing part of Wallapop. It had the correct logos etc. and to me seemed legit. They told me they had received payment from the person I mentioned above and that I must go to a local courier service called MRW and send the parcel. I was instructed to send a copy of the courier remittance and once received they would release the money to my account in 24 hours. So far so good; to me it seemed fine. I did so and got the email confirming acceptance of the proof of delivery. The next day I received a message saying the parcel had been delivered and signed for. 

Forty-eight hours later I had not received the money. 

I sent an email to the Wallapay email address querying the payment, but got a failed delivery address. At this point I became concerned. I contacted the person on WhatsApp, and they assured me it was paid, but maybe wait till the morning to follow up, and that they would do likewise. The next day they informed me that Wallapop had accidently taken 800 Euros from their account and they would release the money, but that I must refund the balance back to Wallapay of 270 Euros. The catch, I must first pay the balance and then they would release the full 530 to me. They gave a Western Union account number for me to make payment. My heart sunk as I saw the destination was Nigeria. I know well enough that this was most likely a criminal group.

I immediately tried to contact Wallapop helpline. What a difficult process! On the App I could find nothing easily and the website was useless and unhelpful. I managed to find the support email address and contacted them with details. Their response took more than 24 hours, and they simply informed me that:

Wallapay is no longer used by them and referred me to the T’s & C’s. 

I emailed evidence and asked for help. They thanked me for the information but offered no help other than to tell me to take the matter up with the police. They never replied to me in English, my mother tongue, even though I made the effort to include a translation of my emails in Spanish, they did not do the same. I have heard nothing from them since! I find it extremely unprofessional and a little uncaring to say the least. It is also astounding how easily criminal elements can frequent the Wallapop platform. 

Clearly Wallapop lets the wolves in, so to speak, and you fend for yourself. 

So, I have learned a very costly lesson, lost my camera and all my extra equipment. Because of this I could not deal with an emergency situation that occurred… So, everyone out there, beware of using Wallapop. 

Do not trust the platform! 

Even though they will protest and say it is the criminal element that is to blame, they are I believe very unhelpful and do not care with regards to customer care. The favor is for the criminals! 

It is also interesting that the criminal elements use Western Union to launder their stolen money. (March 2019)

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Comments from Jolene (My Tip Offs):

From the Wallapop website –

Behind Wallapop is a team of people who want to help make the world a more harmonious and responsible place. So we decided to create a virtual marketplace. And now that Wallapop has more than 30 million users that have given second homes to more than 100.000.000 items, our team is pretty pleased.

The above is definitely not true about the situation that Clive wrote about, right!? They may be pleased but we certainly are not!

From the Barcelona School of Management website:

Wallapop is a Spanish app that allows its users to buy and sell second-hand products. Though the second-hand market is not new, Wallapop’s format as a mobile service for smartphones is. It is available for both iOS and Android and allows for geolocalized sales, i.e. among people in our vicinity. Today Wallapop has millions of users throughout Spain, France, England and Portugal and figures among the top 10 in the Mobile App Rankings.

On doing some internet research I see that besides the above areas, Wallapop is also in the USA, as well as Brazil and Mexico, which means that people from North America, South America, the UK and Europe need to read this review on Wallapop. 

If you know of anyone in those areas, please forward this post to them to warn them to be careful of the Wallapop system which has many flaws in it. We would not recommend using Wallapop until they sort out this terrible security risk.

We will update you if anything is ever resolved about this situation…

Update 14 May 2020:

We tried many times to contact Wallapop about the above, hoping that someone would do something, but nobody ever did. I have placed comments on their Facebook page as well and they have never responded. 

Let’s get the message out there to Beware of Wallapop!

If you have any comments, your own story about Wallapop or advice about this company, please let us all know by completing the comments box below this.