Etsy bills itself as a marketplace for “unique and creative” goods but scrutiny of its product listings has revealed sellers peddling fake “handmade” products that could be bought for a fraction of the price from big retailers including Amazon, Asda and the discount chain B&M.
The investigation by the consumer group Which? found rogue sellers charging up to seven times more than on other websites for the items, falsely claiming they were made by hand.
One Etsy seller had 19 “handmade” items on sale but six were from Asda, one was from the furnishing retailer Dunelm and one from B&M. In another case even the seller, with 105 items listed on Etsy, was not real – with the profile picture associated with the account being a stock image of a woman wearing a suit.
In its house rules, Etsy states everything listed for sale must be handmade, vintage or a craft supply. To be described as a handmade item, sellers must have been involved in the making or design. If others are involved in the process, they need to say so on the listing page.
Which? analysed the first page of items in a selection of categories on Etsy last month, including furniture, toys and clothes. Researchers then filtered results to show “handmade” items only and used Google image search to see if they were for sale elsewhere.
It found that 23 of the 192 “handmade” products were available on other online platforms or retailers and all but two had a higher price on Etsy. In toys, Which? checked a handful of “busy” books aimed at young children. The same book was listed on Alibaba for £4 and just shy of £28 on Etsy – seven times the price.
One “star” seller’s “handmade” rustic bedside nightstand table was £128 on Etsy but could be found for £44 on Amazon. An industrial coffee table from the same seller cost £146 on Etsy but was listed on the Wowcher site for £60.
In women’s clothes, Which? found some Etsy sellers claiming items were handmade that were also on Amazon and eBay from apparently unrelated sellers. One of these Etsy clothing sellers had made nearly 9,000 sales.
“Our research shows some Etsy sellers are brazenly ripping off customers by making misleading claims about their products,” the Which? director of policy and advocacy, Rocio Concha, said.
After the consumer group shared its findings with the US-listed company – which bought the British secondhand fashion site Depop in 2021 – some of the sellers it identified were removed from the platform.
Concha said Etsy needed to “up its game in tackling these dishonest practices”, adding: “A crackdown on dodgy claims and advertising online is long overdue.”
The government is looking into how online advertising can be better regulated. Which? has called for a statutory regulator with the power to issue fines against platforms that flout the rules.
In a statement Etsy said: “Protecting the integrity of our marketplace is critical to our business.” It added: “Our policies prohibit counterfeit and resold merchandise on Etsy, and we use a combination of automatic controls, manual review, and user flags to continuously monitor the marketplace and identify policy violations.”
In its annual transparency report, Etsy said potentially non-compliant content was flagged 36m times last year, which was double the figure for 2021, as it policed areas such as counterfeit goods, product safety and handmade claims more closely. In total it removed 1.9m listings for violating its policies in 2022, a 16% increase on 2021.
