📌 Leboncoin: A Platform Increasingly Out of Reach for Sellers?

 

By SAISI

Some platforms offer real help — and others forget there’s a human being behind every transaction.

I’d like to share a frustrating, yet revealing experience with the French site Leboncoin, one of the country’s most widely used marketplaces. My experience raises a simple but crucial question: what do you do when you can no longer reach anyone?

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🔹 A Simple Sale… or So I Thought

A few months ago, I posted an ad to sell something rather ordinary — a rope — for €40. The sale was made in the name of a friend, who unfortunately doesn’t have a bank account. The result? The payment could not be transferred, because Leboncoin requires a bank account in the name of the seller.

I can understand that condition. But what truly concerns me is the complete lack of support or willingness to find a human solution to a very real situation.

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🔹 Two Emails, No Real Answer

I’ve contacted customer service twice. No solution. No human response.

And yet, I wasn’t asking for the moon: simply that the €40 — since we can’t recover it — be used for a good cause, such as a donation to a recognised charity, in this case Entraides Portugaises, a solidarity-based association in France.

That would be an ethical, simple and socially responsible answer.

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🔹 A Platform That’s Become Opaque

The real problem isn’t just the lost money. It’s the system’s opacity.

Today, it’s nearly impossible to contact Leboncoin if something goes wrong. No phone number. No actual person. Just endlessly looping forms. Auto-generated email addresses that never reply.

This algorithmic silence is especially troubling because it affects everyday people, small sales, simple human situations.

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🔹 Why I’m Writing This

I’m writing to inform, warn, and bear witness.

Because I’m almost certainly not the only one experiencing this. And because platforms that claim to “serve individuals” should begin by actually listening to them.

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🔹 Final Thought

I may never see those €40 again. But if this post helps even one person stay alert, better understand the system, or avoid this type of problem, then it will have served a purpose.

And if someone from Leboncoin ever reads this: please remember that behind every transaction is a person. And the foundation of good service is the ability to talk to someone.

SAISI