The Royal Mail QR Code Label on Vinted, Explained
If you have sold something on Vinted and Royal Mail came up as the courier, you may have expected a shipping label and got a square black and white code instead. That is the Royal Mail QR code label, and it catches a lot of sellers out the first time. This guide explains what it is, the two ways to use it, and how to get it onto a 4×6 thermal label without any fuss.
What the Royal Mail QR code label is
It is a digital shipping label. Instead of giving you a ready made label to print and stick on, Vinted gives you a code that stands in for one. Royal Mail scans that code and prints the real label at their end.
On Vinted you will find it on the sold order. Open the order and tap Open QR code, and a “Digital shipping label” window appears with the code, the courier, the recipient and an expiry date.
The important thing to understand is that the code is the label. You do not need a printed address on the parcel for it to be posted.
The two ways to use it
Take it on your phone. Go to a Post Office or Royal Mail branch, show the code on your screen, and staff scan it and print the label at the counter. Nothing to print at home. This is the route most people take, and it is covered in more detail in our guide on sending a Vinted order without a printer.
Print it yourself. If you would rather have it on paper, perhaps because you are using a parcel postbox or a drop off point rather than a staffed counter, print the code and attach it to the parcel. This is where sellers with a thermal printer run into trouble, which the next section covers.
Both are valid. Neither costs anything extra.
Getting the QR onto a 4×6 label
The problem with printing it yourself is that the QR code sits on a full A4 sheet with a lot of empty space around it. Send that to a 4×6 thermal printer and it scales the whole page down, so the code comes out small, faint, and slow to scan. Some scanners will not read it at all.
What you want is the code on its own, large and centred, filling the 4×6.
That is what Crop My Label does. Open the sold order on Vinted, tap Open QR code, and the extension offers to crop that code onto a print ready 4×6. You do not need to download the file first. The code lands roughly 4 inches square in the middle of the label, printed sharp, which is what makes it scan first time.
If you would rather print a full Royal Mail label instead of the QR, our guide to printing Royal Mail labels from Vinted covers that route.
How long the code lasts
The digital label window shows an expiry date, usually a couple of weeks out. Post the parcel before then. If the code expires you can generate a new one from the order, so it is not a disaster, but it does mean you should not print a batch of codes far in advance and leave them sitting around.
Common problems
The code will not scan at the counter. Turn your screen brightness up. If you printed it, the usual cause is that the code was scaled down with the rest of the A4 page, so print it cropped to the label size instead.
There is no QR code on the order. Not every Royal Mail order gets one. If Vinted gave you a full label rather than a code, print that instead and stick it on.
You cannot find the button. It is on the sold order in your inbox, not on the listing. Look for Open QR code near the shipping details.
The recipient name looks wrong. Vinted shows the buyer’s display name on the digital label window. The full delivery address is inside the code itself, which is why the code alone is enough.
A note on privacy
The code contains your buyer’s delivery details. That is worth remembering before you post a screenshot of it in a Facebook group asking for help, which people do more often than you would think. Crop My Label processes labels entirely in your browser and never uploads them anywhere, for the same reason.