Buying Second Hand in Spain: 48 Hours to Raise a Claim

Buying second hand in Spain comes with a 48-hour clock. Once your parcel is delivered, that is how long Wallapop gives you to report a problem. After that the money is the seller’s. Milanuncios Express allows 24 hours, Vinted 2 days.

Buying second hand in Spain: the platforms and their fees

You land with two suitcases and an empty flat. Four names cover the market. Wallapop for anything, Vinted for clothing and textiles, Milanuncios for bulky local items, Coches.net for cars: between private individuals here, little else changes hands. Four columns decide the outcome: Buyer fee, Buyer protection, Claim window and Strength.

Platforms compared: fee, protection and deadline

Wallapop: the app everyone here already has

Wallapop claims 19 million active users. Anything posted goes through Wallapop Envíos with Protección Wallapop: your money is held until the item arrives. If the description does not match, you get a refund for a faulty item, free return included. The buyer pays shipping plus Protección Wallapop, and the product value must sit between 1 € and 2,500 € for the cover to apply.

The number that matters sits on the same help page. You get 48 hours from confirmed delivery to inspect the item and open a claim. Stay silent and the money moves on. Items sold with a Garantía and reacondicionados, meaning refurbished devices, fall outside the cover.

Milanuncios, Vinted and Coches.net in detail

On Milanuncios the listing is free for private sellers. Ship it and you are on Milanuncios Express: postage from 1.79 €, plus a guarantee fee of 7 % of the product price, minimum 1.65 €, maximum 30 €. The money reaches the seller only after you receive the parcel, and you get 24 hours. That is the tightest window here.

Vinted owns clothing and textiles. Its Buyer Protection fee costs 5 % + 0.70 € and covers three cases: the item never arrives, arrives damaged or differs from the description. You have 2 days to file. Tap the button confirming all is well and the protection ends.

Cars run through Coches.net. The listing is free, and you may post up to 2 cars a year as a private seller. We found no escrow service there, so the table says not verifiable. Same for Facebook Marketplace: the Meta help pages would not load for us, so we quote no figure.

Paying in person: why Bizum has no return ticket

The moment you meet a seller in a car park, every platform guarantee disappears. Payment then happens by phone, and in Spain that means Bizum. It takes seconds, it costs nothing, and that speed is the problem for anyone buying from a stranger for the first time. Your bank sits this one out.

Bizum states it plainly: once an operation is confirmed, it executes with no way back. No cancel button, no chargeback, no dispute desk. If you still need to switch it on in your banking app, the steps are in our guide to Bizum in Spain. Pay when you hold the item.

The Banco de España describes two Bizum scams. In the Bizum inverso the supposed buyer sends a money request instead of a payment, and on a small screen it looks like the credit. In the second, a message claims money was sent by mistake and asks you to return it. The central bank’s advice: call your bank.

The scams and how to spot them

Fraud on these platforms is not improvised. It follows four fixed scripts that Spanish authorities have documented for years and keep republishing. Read them once and you will recognise the pattern by the second chat message. In practice that saves more money than any price comparison.

• The fake payment page: the supposed buyer pushes you into WhatsApp, claims to have paid already, and sends a link that mimics the platform. Bank details get harvested there. That is how Spain’s cybersecurity institute INCIBE described it in its warning of 6 September 2022.
• The Bizum inverso: a money request arrives instead of money. Tell-tale sign: your banking screen asks you to authorise something when you were expecting to be paid.
• The invented mistaken transfer: a text reports an accidental payment and asks for a refund. Tell-tale sign: the amount never actually appears on your statement.
• The deposit that vanishes: an item is held for you if you send a deposit outside the platform. Tell-tale sign: Wallapop lists a profile younger than 3 days with no ratings, an unrealistically low price, and a refusal to use Wallapop Envíos.

Private sales: no statutory guarantee, six months of liability

This is where a shop purchase and a private purchase part company, and it is the gap that costs new arrivals the most. Spanish consumer law only bites when the other side is a trader, whatever the listing promised. Private to private, it does not apply.

The consumer statute (Spanish: Real Decreto Legislativo 1/2007) says so itself. Article 3 defines a consumer as a natural person acting outside their commercial or professional activity, and Article 4 defines a trader as someone acting inside it. No trader, no statutory guarantee. The neighbour selling you a washing machine owes you no two-year or three-year warranty.

You are not left with nothing. The civil code (Spanish: Código Civil) recognises liability for hidden defects (Spanish: vicios ocultos). Under Article 1484 the seller answers for defects that make the item unfit for its purpose, or reduce its use so much that you would not have bought it or would have paid less. Obvious defects are not covered, and the text sits in the Código Civil at the BOE.

The window is short. Article 1490 sets six months from handover, and that is a cut-off period, not a limitation period. The consumer body OCU confirms the same six months for private sales and advises asking for a receipt with the date and the amount. In its survey 38 % of buyers reported worse condition than described, 18 % faulty parts, 13 % missing accessories. And 43 % never complained.

Reporting it: where the denuncia goes

Once the money is gone, the police report (Spanish: denuncia) is what counts. It starts the criminal side and it is the document your bank and the platform ask for before they look at anything. Without it the case is a claim in a chat log. The routes are short.

• In person at any police station, Policía Nacional or Guardia Civil.
• Online: the Guardia Civil runs its own form for cybercrime.
• Advice first on the free 017 helpline run by INCIBE, also on WhatsApp at 900 116 117.
• If you paid by Bizum, call your bank the same day, as the Banco de España recommends.

Save everything first: chat log, profile name, bank statement, screenshot of the listing. Anyone who has worked through a Spanish traffic fine knows the drill. Officers work with what you bring.

Furniture and household kit: the rastros in Andalusia

For new arrivals, the market is arithmetic. Shipping a sofa across Europe usually costs more than the same sofa costs here used. The transport figures sit in our piece on the cost of moving to Spain. Run both numbers before you book a container, and add what the rastro would charge for the same piece.

Offline, this happens at the rastros, the weekly flea markets. In Málaga the Mercadillo Cortijo de Torres has a second-hand section: Sundays from 9:00 to 15:00, 136 stalls, on Calle José Blánquez el Maño. In Seville it is El Jueves on Calle Feria, Thursdays from 8:00, antiques and used goods, free entry. Two mornings, one furnished flat.

We furnished three quarters of our first flat that way. A bed from the rastro, a fridge off Wallapop, the rest new. What counts as a normal price here is covered in real prices in Spain. It added up.

Daily life between rastros, neighbours and paperwork sits in the Lifestyle section. That is the next stop.

Buying a car privately: the DGT transfer

A used car adds one authority. The traffic agency (Spanish: Dirección General de Tráfico) charges Tasa 1.5 at 55.70 € for the change of ownership, and Tasa 1.2 at 27.85 € for mopeds. The buyer has to file within 30 days of signing. Both figures are published on the DGT Sede Electrónica. Bringing a vehicle in from abroad is a different route, covered under importing a car to Spain.

That leaves the point where almost every scam ends: a page that looks like the real one. Same logo, same colours, a different address in the line above. On a phone nobody reads that line. Filters exist for this, blocking known fraud pages before they load.

Frequently Asked Questions

A sofa, a fridge and a private car add up to four figures fast. Knowing which costs land in your first year makes each purchase calmer. That is what our roadmap is for.

Verdict

You have 48 hours. That is how long your money stays reachable on Wallapop before the seller keeps it. Vinted gives you 2 days, Milanuncios Express 24 hours. Unpack while the clock is still running.

A receipt at the moment of handover is the whole case. Without it, the six months of liability for hidden defects under Article 1490 Código Civil are unprovable, and a private seller carries none of a shop’s obligations anyway. The listing looks the same. The protection behind it does not.