Depop has no bereavement phone line, but your Balance can be claimed

If someone you’ve lost had a Depop account – whether they sold a handful of items a year or ran an active resale shop – there are things that need attention. Active listings may still be visible to buyers. Money may be sitting in their Depop Balance. There may be orders mid-transaction at the time of death. And, like most apps aimed at younger users, the account almost certainly has two-factor authentication on a phone you may not be able to access.

This guide covers the full process for UK executors and next of kin: how to contact Depop, what happens to the Depop Balance as an estate asset, how to deal with open listings and pending orders, and what to do when you can’t log in.

Quick reference:

• Contact Depop: Submit a request at depophelp.zendesk.com or email support@depop.com
• Account closure email: close@depop.com
• Privacy and data requests: data@depop.com
• No dedicated phone line – all contact is through email and the Help Centre
• Documents needed: death certificate + your photo ID (+ probate documents if Depop Balance is significant)
• Depop Balance: an asset of the estate – must be withdrawn before account closure
• Buyer protection: buyers with unfulfilled orders are protected and will receive automatic refunds if items are not shipped within the required window

How to contact Depop

Depop has no dedicated bereavement team and no published bereavement phone line or email address. All contact goes through their general support channels. There is no equivalent of Etsy’s deceased members policy – you are working through the standard support flow, which means you may need to be explicit about the circumstances.

The main routes:

1. Submit a request online at depophelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-gb/requests/new. This is Depop’s Zendesk ticketing system and is the recommended first contact for account matters.

2. Email support@depop.com for general account queries. If you are specifically requesting closure, Depop has a dedicated address: close@depop.com. For data and privacy matters (including data deletion requests), use data@depop.com.

3. In the Depop app (if you have access): tap your profile icon, then the settings gear, then “Contact Support”. This gives the support agent immediate context about the account.

What to include when you make contact:

• The deceased’s full name and date of death
• The username or email address linked to their Depop account
• Your full name, your relationship to the deceased, and your contact details
• A copy of the death certificate
• Your photo ID (passport or driving licence)

Depop has confirmed that it is able to action requests from immediate family members. It will ask for proof of your relationship to the account holder alongside proof of death. For larger Depop Balances, it is likely to ask for a grant of probate or letters of administration confirming your authority to act for the estate.

Response times through the Help Centre typically run to 24–48 hours. Keep a record of your ticket reference number and follow up if you do not hear back within a week.

The Depop Balance – is it an estate asset?

If the deceased was a seller on Depop, they almost certainly had a Depop Balance: money from completed sales that has been credited to the account but not yet paid out to their bank account.

The Depop Balance is an asset of the estate. It must be dealt with as part of the estate administration process in the same way as any other financial asset.

Depop Payments – the platform’s payment system, powered by Stripe – handles all transactions on the platform. When a sale completes, the proceeds (minus Depop’s payment processing fee of 2.9% + £0.30 per transaction) appear in the seller’s Depop Balance. Payouts from the Balance to the seller’s connected bank account happen automatically on a schedule – typically 2–3 working days after the tracking status shows as “Delivered” for items sent with Depop Shipping, or 10 working days (14 calendar days) after the sale date for self-arranged shipping.

If the seller died between sales completing and the payout reaching their bank, money may be sitting in the Depop Balance.

How the Depop Balance works:

How to recover the Balance for the estate:

Depop’s policy requires that all funds are withdrawn from the Depop Balance before the account can be closed. This means the estate has an opportunity to claim those funds – but it also means you cannot simply request account deletion without first addressing the Balance.

If you have account access: you may be able to withdraw the Balance to the deceased’s existing linked bank account (if you also have authority over that account) or, once you have notified Depop of the death, ask them to assist with directing the funds to an estate account.

If you do not have account access: contact Depop’s support team directly (close@depop.com or via the Help Centre) and explain the situation. Provide the death certificate and your authority documents. Depop will advise on how to release the Balance to the estate.

Identity verification: Depop’s Stripe-powered payment system may have required the deceased to complete identity verification (KYC). If they had not completed this, or if their account was flagged for verification at the time of death, the Balance may show as unavailable for withdrawal. Raise this with Depop’s support team – they can advise on what estate documentation may satisfy the verification requirement.

Important: The Depop Balance is not a bank deposit and is not protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). However, as Stripe is a regulated payment institution, funds are held separately from Depop’s own operating funds. The practical risk is low, but the Balance should be dealt with promptly rather than left indefinitely.

Open listings – what happens to items still for sale

Depop is a peer-to-peer marketplace: each seller holds their own inventory. The deceased’s physical items – the clothes, accessories, or other goods listed on their Depop shop – are assets of the estate in the same way as any other personal property. Depop itself does not hold stock.

When someone dies with active Depop listings, those listings remain live. Buyers searching Depop can still find the items, view the profile, and – critically – purchase them. A buyer who purchases from an active listing creates a new obligation: they have paid and are expecting the item to be dispatched.

First steps with listings:

If you have account access, the most urgent task is to take down all active listings to prevent new purchases. On Depop, listings can be removed through the app or website – navigate to the item and delete or deactivate it.

If you cannot access the account, contact Depop’s support team immediately and ask them to suspend the account and prevent new purchases while the estate is being administered. This is one of the clearest arguments for contacting Depop early, before buyers place further orders.

What happens to the physical items:

The goods the deceased had listed belong to the estate. They are not Depop’s property and are not controlled by Depop. The executor can choose to:

• Remove the listings and retain the items as estate assets
• Have a family member continue selling the items through a separate Depop account
• Donate or dispose of the items as appropriate

The shop’s feedback, reviews, and seller history cannot be transferred to another account.

Pending orders – sales mid-transaction at the time of death

The more time-sensitive issue is any order where a buyer has already paid but the item has not yet been dispatched.

Under Depop’s buyer protection policy, buyers who do not receive their items are entitled to a full refund. As of February 2025, Depop also introduced automatic cancellations: sellers have a set timeframe to ship an order, and if the item is not marked as dispatched within that window, Depop automatically cancels the order and refunds the buyer in full.

This means that, in most cases, buyers with unfulfilled orders will receive automatic refunds without you needing to take action. The buyer protection mechanism handles this. However:

• If you have account access and can identify pending orders, it is worth contacting buyers through Depop’s messaging system to explain that the seller has passed away and that their refund is being processed. This is the considerate thing to do.
• If the items exist in the estate and a family member is willing and able to fulfil the orders, that is also an option – but it carries legal and practical complexity, and in most circumstances the simpler path is to allow the automatic refunds to proceed.

What about items already shipped?

If the deceased had recently dispatched items that are still in transit, those deliveries will complete normally. Once the buyer receives the item and marks it as received, the proceeds will appear in the Depop Balance as a pending payout – where they can be claimed as part of the estate.

Outstanding fee debts:

Depop’s current fee structure in the UK has no marketplace commission (the old 10% fee was removed in 2024). The only ongoing fee is the Stripe payment processing charge (2.9% + £0.30 per transaction), which is deducted automatically before funds reach the Balance. There is no ongoing subscription or recurring charge that would create a debt to Depop. Boosted listing fees, if the deceased had opted into Depop Boost, are also deducted at point of sale. There should be no outstanding fee liability owed by the estate to Depop in normal circumstances.

Account closure – the formal process

Once you have dealt with the Depop Balance and active listings, you can proceed to formal account closure.

What you need before the account can be closed:

• All funds withdrawn from the Depop Balance
• All outstanding sales completed or cancelled
• All open disputes resolved

Depop will not close an account with an unresolved financial position. This is standard for marketplace platforms.

Documents to provide:

Photo ID should be a current UK passport or driving licence.

Grant of probate is the court document confirming your authority to administer the estate. If the estate is small and you have not applied for probate, explain this to Depop – for modest balances, they may accept alternative evidence of your authority. You can read more about when probate is required on our guide to applying for probate.

If you need additional certified copies of the death certificate – you will, since other organisations will each want their own – copies cost £12.50 each in England and Wales. Order them from the General Register Office at gov.uk/order-copy-birth-death-marriage-certificate. Order at least three or four when registering the death.

2FA and account access

Two-factor authentication is almost universal on Depop, and it is one of the most common access problems executors face with younger people’s accounts. Depop uses SMS-based 2FA by default – a code sent to the account holder’s mobile phone each time they log in.

If you have the deceased’s phone and it is not locked, the 2FA code may appear on the screen when you attempt to log in. Some phones also show SMS notifications on the lock screen without requiring the phone to be unlocked.

If you cannot get past 2FA:

Depop provides a 12-character recovery code when 2FA is first set up. If the deceased saved this code – in a notes app, a password manager, or a document – it can be used as a substitute for the SMS code. However, many users do not save their recovery code.

If you cannot find the recovery code, contact Depop’s support team at support@depop.com or via the Help Centre. Explain that the account holder has died and that you cannot complete 2FA without access to their phone. Depop can verify your identity and authority through other means and may be able to disable 2FA for a bereavement request.

GDPR data deletion as a fallback:

If Depop’s support team cannot help you access or close the account, you can submit a formal data deletion request under the UK General Data Protection Regulation. Depop’s data contact address is data@depop.com. As the deceased’s legal representative, you can request erasure of the account on their behalf. You will need to provide the death certificate and your authority documents.

Note that a GDPR erasure request closes the account and deletes personal data, but does not automatically trigger release of any Depop Balance. If there are funds to recover, address these separately with the support team before pursuing the erasure route.

PayPal and the old payment system

Before Depop Payments launched, all transactions on Depop were processed through PayPal. If the deceased had been selling on Depop for many years – particularly before 2022 – their account may have been set up with PayPal as the payment method.

Depop Payments (via Stripe) is now the standard for UK sellers, and new accounts cannot use PayPal. However, some older accounts may still have a PayPal connection, and any historical transaction history may reference PayPal payments.

If the deceased had a PayPal account, that is entirely separate from Depop and needs to be administered independently. The PayPal account holds its own balance and has its own closure process. See our guide to notifying PayPal when someone dies.

Personal shopping vs running a Depop shop

All Depop users have a single account that functions both as a buyer profile and a seller shop. There is no separate “personal account” versus “shop account” distinction – unlike some platforms. Every account can list items for sale from the moment it is created.

For estate administration purposes, what matters is whether the deceased was an active seller:

• Buyers only: simpler closure. No Balance to recover, no open orders to manage. The main concern is whether they had any Depop Credits (promotional credits from the platform) – these have no cash value and do not transfer to the estate.

• Active sellers: the full process above applies. The Depop Balance is the priority financial asset to identify and recover.

If the deceased was selling as part of a business – for example, if they were a sole trader using Depop commercially – there may be additional tax obligations. HMRC should be notified of the cessation of trading. The executor does not become personally liable for the deceased’s tax debts, which are limited to the assets of the estate. For guidance, contact HMRC or a solicitor with experience in estate administration.

Things to watch out for

Act quickly on listings. There is no grace period before buyers can purchase from a dead seller’s active listings. If the account has a large shop with many items listed, new purchases can keep arriving while you are still trying to contact Depop. Getting the listings down or the account suspended is the most urgent practical step.

Boost fees stop at deactivation. If the deceased had opted into Depop Boost – Depop’s paid promotion system, which charges 12% on sales resulting from boosted tiles in the UK – this fee is charged per sale, not as an ongoing subscription. Once no further sales occur, no further boost fees are incurred. There is nothing to cancel separately.

The shop profile and reviews are not transferable. A seller’s Depop profile – their follower count, reviews, and shop reputation – cannot be inherited or transferred to another account. Once the account is closed, the public profile is removed.

No phone support exists. Depop has no public customer support phone line. The phone number that sometimes appears on third-party sites (such as +44 203 818 0121) is not a verified official Depop support line. All contact is through the Help Centre or email.

Depop can take time to respond. The Help Centre is the only route, and response times can vary. If you do not receive a response within a week, follow up on your ticket or try emailing close@depop.com directly. If Depop’s support is unresponsive, the data@depop.com route (formal data deletion request) is a legitimate escalation.

Summary

Depop has no formal bereavement process, but accounts can be closed and Depop Balances recovered by working through the support team at depophelp.zendesk.com or by emailing close@depop.com. Contact them early with a copy of the death certificate and your photo ID. If the Balance is significant, you will need a grant of probate or letters of administration.

Before the account can be closed, active listings should be taken down, any pending orders allowed to resolve (buyers are protected and will receive automatic refunds), and the Depop Balance withdrawn. If you cannot log in due to 2FA, contact Depop’s support team – and use the data@depop.com route as a fallback if they cannot help directly.

Key steps:

1. Contact Depop via the Help Centre or close@depop.com, providing the death certificate and your photo ID
2. Ask Depop to suspend active listings immediately to prevent new purchases
3. Identify any pending orders – allow automatic refunds to process, or contact buyers directly
4. Recover the Depop Balance – ask Depop’s team to assist with releasing funds to the estate
5. Resolve any open disputes before closure
6. Request formal account closure once all financial matters are settled
7. Deal with any linked PayPal account separately

For related guidance, see our pages on how to close an Etsy account when someone dies, how to close a Vinted account when someone dies, how to notify eBay when someone dies, how to notify PayPal when someone dies, and the what to do when someone dies hub.