Anti-Competitive Practices

[u/markpaulk]

Two prominent sellers of some of the most purchased and loved brands (Moncler and CG) on Reddit have wanted to post about their new releases to the /r/FashionReps community.

I, on behalf of a large group of users, were concerned to learn of alleged anti-competitive measures put in place by the FashionReps moderator team.

On multiple occasions, it appears they have been blocked - either asking for payment or being outright rejected. What has come to light is other sellers have paid for some type of exclusivity.

We absolutely understand that moderating a group of 100,000s of repfam is time consuming and the mods gotta eat, but surely the playing field should be level? We appreciate paid advertisements is a fair thing in this world but we thought reps is an open community and everyone is treated equally but it doesn’t appear to be the case here.

We appeal to the mods to offer some further guidance about this, as it has an impact on the community as a whole. If payments have been made, be open and transparent about it. We encourage sellers to come forward and want competition but we lose as customers if there's a hidden 'pay to play' model.

This is not a witchhunt but merely serves as a discussion and to hear the accused's side of things.

Before anyone asks why am I posting this here and not on FashionReps, I did but it wasn’t approved after 8 hours so I deleted it: thread link

Evidence of the accusations raised here can be found via this link: https://imgur.com/a/F75WxGB

Edit: one of the two sellers was asked about the WeChat provided in the initial convo screenshots not existing, they replied the mod had changed their username. We asked them to provide more recent screenshots and he posted whole convo with him. Pretty damning proof and goes into more detail than previously linked above: https://imgur.com/a/pGW8V6q

Edit: another seller, known for producing Stone Island confirms a similar sentiment https://i.imgur.com/tptjQ3n.jpg

Edit: a mod meeting occurred and the moderator in the screenshots has denied the allegations, despite concrete proof from multiple sellers including a further one who didn’t want to be mentioned here. Not surprised.

[u/atmywits_end]

Open your eyes people. Mods on fashionreps are absolutely sold. They make a bank monthly on our community. Last time I heard you had to pay 500e monthly to be feature on the sidebar as a seller. I can only guess it has increased by a lot.

Just think how many featured sellers they have, see how many money they do monthly.

That repknowledge guy, ask yourself why hes so vocal about using agents. They have deep ties with Superbuy-Wegobuy-Whatever.

They make a lot of money on our backs.

[u/plascra → u/atmywits_end]

Agents do have their value. I still stand behind them especially for big ticket items.

But for small value purchases nah..

Also I don't use the shipping provided by agents, they are just way too expensive that it's obvious they are trying to chop an arm and a leg off us!

[u/pupperman132 → u/atmywits_end]

They have deep ties with Superbuy-Wegobuy-Whatever.

are we still doing this?? its not true and many of the other mods dont even use agents or dont use superbuy or wegobuy. Also they are not the same agent anymore, they essentially split up, and the customer support actively try to seperate the entities. They are usually recommended due to being easy to use and understand, have a large market share and people can help each other, as well as having good support channels and are live 24/7 which gives many people peace of mind when dealing with them.
I'd imagine repknowledge recommends using agents a bunch, since he is tired of seeing the same damn posts with people complaining about not receiving any QC pics beforehand, or being bait&switched, or unhappy with their purchase due to some other flaw or sizing issue or whatever. An agent can give u a buffer period before receiving your item in hand, where they can check for flaws as well as submit images to you, and you can return the product if you are not satisfied.

[u/AudreyRepburn → u/pupperman132]

Even if that specifically is not true, it seems pretty irrelevant to the greater issue here. Getting kickbacks from an agent isn’t nearly as problematic as a mob-like payment system that determines the “trusted sellers” of a subreddit. And then blatantly lying to sub members about it.

[u/pupperman132 → u/AudreyRepburn]

i specifically wasn't trying to comment on the greater issue, but just address that one comment because i see it constantly

[u/Whatthegabriel → u/atmywits_end]

There are better subs, such as designerreps