Crafter Story

7 Common Scams Marketplace Sellers Should Watch For

By

Crafter Story Team

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Scam guidance from the Federal Trade Commission, Etsy, and eBay is written specifically for sellers, not just buyers, because sellers are frequently the ones being targeted. A handful of scam patterns account for most of what actually lands in a seller’s inbox.

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This guide is general safety awareness, not legal advice or official policy guidance. Always follow your marketplace’s own seller policies, and report suspected fraud to your marketplace and local authorities.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Most marketplace-scam advice is written for buyers worried about a fake listing or a product that never shows up. Sellers face a different set of scams entirely, and they tend to be harder to spot, because they often arrive wrapped in something that looks like a normal sale.

In this guide, you’ll find seven scam patterns that specifically target marketplace sellers on Etsy, eBay, Shopify, and similar platforms, based on the fraud guidance those platforms and the Federal Trade Commission publish for sellers. Each one includes how it actually plays out, and the exact steps to shut it down before it costs you an order or your account.

Let’s start with the one that catches even experienced sellers off guard: the scam that looks like a buyer accidentally paying you too much.

1. The Overpayment or Fake Refund Request

A buyer “accidentally” sends you more than the listing price, then asks you to refund the difference before the original payment is confirmed as real.

This works because the request feels small and reasonable. The buyer isn’t asking you to do anything that sounds like a scam. They’re asking for a partial refund on a payment that, on the surface, has already landed in your account.

Here’s the deal:

The original payment is usually a fake check, a stolen card, or a payment made through a service that can later be reversed. Once you send the “refund” through a real, irreversible method like a gift card, wire transfer, or cash app, the original payment gets reversed or bounces, and you’re out whatever you refunded, on top of the item if you’d already shipped it. The FTC’s guidance for people selling online names overpayment requests as one of the most common scams sellers report.

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Never issue a refund for an overpayment until the original payment has fully cleared and settled in your account, not just shown as “pending.”
  2. Only process refunds through the same payment method and platform the original payment came through, never a different app, gift card, or wire transfer.
  3. If a buyer insists the refund has to go through a specific outside method, treat that as the scam signal itself and stop the transaction.

Pro Tip: If a payment amount looks unusually high for no clear reason, cancel the order and ask the buyer to repurchase at the correct price instead of trying to sort out the difference yourself.

2. The “Let’s Move This Off the Marketplace” Request

A buyer asks to pay you directly through a payment app, bank transfer, or cash, instead of through your marketplace’s checkout.

The pitch usually sounds like it benefits you: no marketplace fees, faster payment, a “VIP” arrangement for a bigger order. What actually happens is you lose every protection your marketplace offers for that sale, including seller protection against chargebacks and fraudulent payment claims.

Now:

Both Etsy and eBay’s Security Center specifically warn sellers against taking communication or payment off-platform, because once a sale happens outside the marketplace’s own messaging and checkout system, the marketplace has no record of it and can’t help if something goes wrong.

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Keep every part of the sale, messaging, payment, and shipping confirmation inside your marketplace’s own system, every time, no exceptions for “big” buyers. If the volume of messages already feels unmanageable, a system for handling buyer messages helps more than moving conversations elsewhere.
  2. If a buyer frames an off-platform payment as saving you fees, do the math on what you’d actually lose if that single order turned fraudulent instead.
  3. Report any buyer who pushes for off-platform payment to your marketplace, even if they eventually back down, since it’s a pattern worth flagging.

Pro Tip: Mention your policy of keeping all payments on-platform directly in your shop policies, so it’s not something you have to explain case by case.

3. Phishing Messages That Impersonate Your Marketplace

A message or email that looks like it’s from your marketplace’s support team asks you to “verify your account” or scan a QR code, and it isn’t actually from them.

This works because the message mimics real account-security language sellers are used to seeing. It creates urgency, a locked account, a suspended listing, a policy violation, so you click before thinking it through.

Here’s the deal:

Etsy’s own help documentation states plainly that legitimate staff will never request your password or send unsolicited requests to scan a QR code to “verify” your account. The same pattern shows up on eBay and Shopify under different wording, usually some version of an urgent account problem that needs immediate action through a link in the message.

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Never click a login link inside a message or email. Open your marketplace directly in a new browser tab or app and log in from there instead.
  2. Check the sender’s actual email address, not just the display name, since scammers often spoof a name that looks official.
  3. Forward suspicious messages to your marketplace’s official abuse or phishing report address instead of replying to the sender.

Pro Tip: Turn on two-factor authentication for your shop account. It won’t stop a phishing message from arriving, but it stops a stolen password from actually getting a scammer into your account.

4. Fake Shipping or Tracking Text Alerts

A text message claims there’s a problem with a package delivery and asks you to click a link to “reschedule” or “confirm” an address.

This scam, often called smishing, doesn’t even need to know which marketplace you sell on. It plays the odds that anyone running a shop is shipping something right now and will recognize the pattern immediately.

Now:

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service specifically warns about fake package-tracking text scams, noting that real carriers don’t typically ask you to click a link to resolve a delivery issue over text. The link usually leads to a page built to steal your login credentials or payment information.

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Never click a tracking link from a text message. Go to your carrier’s official site or your marketplace’s own shipping dashboard and look up the tracking number directly.
  2. If a message references a real order, compare the tracking number in the text to the one your marketplace actually generated for that sale.
  3. Delete and report the message through your phone’s built-in spam reporting, or forward it to your carrier’s fraud reporting address.

Pro Tip: Save your real carrier tracking pages as bookmarks so checking a shipment never requires clicking a link from an unexpected message.

5. The False “Item Never Arrived” Claim

A buyer opens a dispute claiming an item never arrived, even though your tracking shows it was delivered.

Some version of this happens to nearly every seller eventually. The difference between losing the dispute and winning it almost always comes down to whether you have delivery confirmation on hand before the dispute starts, not after.

Here’s the deal:

Marketplaces generally side with whichever party has documentation. A tracking number showing “delivered” to the correct address is strong evidence in a seller’s favor, but only if you kept it and can produce it quickly when the dispute opens.

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Always ship with tracking, even on lower-cost items, and keep a record of the tracking number tied to each order.
  2. If a buyer opens a dispute, respond with the tracking confirmation and delivery date immediately rather than waiting to see if it resolves on its own.
  3. For higher-value items, consider shipping with delivery confirmation or signature requirements so there’s no ambiguity about who received the package, and keep your return and refund policy handy in case the dispute turns out to be legitimate instead of a scam.

Pro Tip: Keep screenshots of tracking pages for your most expensive shipments. Carrier tracking pages sometimes get purged after a set number of months, while a saved screenshot doesn’t expire.

6. The Suspiciously Large Bulk Order From a Brand-New Buyer

A buyer account created days ago suddenly orders an unusually large quantity, often asking for rush shipping or a payment method your marketplace doesn’t normally support.

The pitch flatters a seller who’s used to small orders. A sudden bulk order feels like a win, which is exactly what makes it easy to skip the caution you’d normally apply.

Now:

This pattern frequently pairs with the overpayment and off-platform payment scams above. A new account with no order history, pushing for rushed fulfillment before payment fully clears, is a combination worth slowing down for rather than rushing to fulfill.

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Treat a first-time buyer’s unusually large order as a reason to double-check payment clearance, not a reason to rush shipping.
  2. Be cautious of any bulk-order buyer who wants to pay through an unusual method or asks you to split the order into separate smaller payments. Logging each payment as it actually clears, rather than as soon as it’s promised, is part of why simple bookkeeping habits catch this kind of mismatch early.
  3. If something about the order doesn’t match how your typical buyers behave, it’s reasonable to message the buyer with clarifying questions before fulfilling, or to cancel and ask them to reorder normally.

Pro Tip: A real bulk buyer, like a boutique restocking inventory, will generally accept a short delay while you confirm payment. Pressure to skip that step is itself a signal.

7. Account Takeover Through Reused or Weak Passwords

A scammer logs into your shop account using a password leaked from an unrelated website, then changes your payout details or hijacks your listings.

Most account takeovers don’t involve a sophisticated hack of the marketplace itself. They happen because a seller reused a password that leaked somewhere else entirely, and a scammer tried it on marketplace accounts at scale.

Here’s the deal:

Once inside, a scammer can redirect payouts to their own account, clone your listings into a fake duplicate shop, or message your buyers directly while impersonating you. Recovering from this can take days and, in some cases, requires working through your marketplace’s account recovery process, which is a situation covered in more detail in how to recover a suspended marketplace account.

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Use a unique password for your shop account that you don’t reuse anywhere else, ideally generated and stored in a password manager.
  2. Turn on two-factor authentication wherever your marketplace offers it, so a leaked password alone isn’t enough to get in.
  3. Check your account’s login activity and payout details periodically, especially after any data breach notice from an unrelated service you use, and watch for a sudden spike in negative reviews you didn’t earn, which can be a sign a cloned listing is confusing your real buyers.

Pro Tip: If you ever get a “new login detected” alert you don’t recognize, change your password immediately and check your payout and shipping address settings before doing anything else.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most common scam marketplace sellers face?

Overpayment scams and requests to move payment off the marketplace are among the most frequently reported, according to the FTC’s own seller-focused scam guidance.

How can I tell if a buyer’s overpayment is a scam?

Wait until the payment has fully cleared and settled, not just shown as pending, before issuing any refund. A request to refund the difference before that happens is the clearest warning sign.

Should I ever accept payment outside my marketplace’s system?

No. Keeping payment inside your marketplace’s checkout is what makes its seller protections and dispute process apply to that sale at all.

How do I spot a phishing message pretending to be from my marketplace?

Check the sender’s actual email address rather than the display name, and never click a login link inside the message itself. Legitimate marketplace staff won’t ask for your password.

What should I do if I get a fake shipping or tracking text?

Don’t click the link. Look up the tracking number directly on your carrier’s official site or your marketplace’s shipping dashboard instead.

How do I handle a buyer who claims an item never arrived if I have tracking?

Respond to the dispute immediately with the tracking number and delivery confirmation. Documentation that’s ready right away is far more useful than evidence you have to go dig up later.

Is a large bulk order from a new buyer always a scam?

Not always, but it’s reason enough to confirm payment has cleared before rushing to fulfill, especially if the buyer also pushes for an unusual payment method or extremely fast shipping.

How does two-factor authentication protect my shop from account takeover?

It means a scammer who has your password from an unrelated data leak still can’t log in without a second verification step, which stops most automated takeover attempts cold.

What should I do if I think I’ve been scammed as a seller?

Report it to your marketplace through its official fraud or trust-and-safety reporting tool right away, and if payment or shipping was involved, consider reporting it to the USPIS or your card network as well.

Can my marketplace reimburse me if I fall for a scam?

It depends entirely on your marketplace’s own seller protection policies and whether you kept payment and shipping inside their system. Check your specific platform’s policy rather than assuming coverage.

Do these scams happen on every marketplace or just some?

These patterns show up across Etsy, eBay, Shopify, and most other marketplaces, since they target the sale process itself rather than any one platform’s specific features.

How often should I review my shop’s account security settings?

A quick check every few months is reasonable, and always right after a major data breach notice involving any other account where you might have reused a password.

Key Takeaways

  • Never refund an overpayment until the original payment has fully cleared, not just shown as pending.
  • Keep every payment and message inside your marketplace’s own system, even for buyers who ask nicely to move things elsewhere.
  • Treat urgent “verify your account” messages as suspicious by default, and log in directly instead of clicking a link.
  • Ship with tracking and keep delivery confirmation on hand before a dispute ever opens.
  • A sudden bulk order from a brand-new account is a reason to slow down, not a reason to rush.
  • Unique passwords and two-factor authentication stop most account takeover attempts before they start.
  • When in doubt, report it to your marketplace’s official trust-and-safety channel rather than handling it alone.

The Bottom Line

Start with the two changes that cover the most ground: turn on two-factor authentication today, and commit to never refunding a payment until it has fully cleared. Those two habits alone close off the scams that catch the most sellers off guard.

From there, the rest comes down to a simple filter: anything that asks you to move money, a conversation, or a payment outside your marketplace’s own system is worth stopping to question, even when the buyer seems friendly and the request sounds small.

See How to Spot Payment Disputes Before They Escalate for a closer look at what happens after a questionable payment turns into a formal claim.

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About This Research

Crafter Story Team is the in-house editorial team behind Crafter Story’s Editorial Guides, the site’s practical marketplace-selling advice stream, kept clearly separate from the submitted seller stories that make up the rest of the publication.

This guide draws on publicly available seller-safety documentation from the Federal Trade Commission, Etsy, eBay, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, cross-referenced against each source’s own published scam guidance for online sellers.

Content reviewed and updated: 2026-10-04

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