If you've ever had to sell or buy a miscellaneous item in your life, you probably went straight to Facebook Marketplace. The holy grail of (re)sold goods that come straight from the hands of sellers is also known as a host to a range of scams, including fake products, catfishing and even hacking.
If you compare eBay, Amazon, and Facebook Marketplace, the latter is like the Wild West of online selling. Brogan Woodburn from Red Points reports that “One scammer even stole $800,000 from victims through the platform.”
Some of the more popular scams on Facebook marketplace include a MacBook Air made of air. “It’s when the seller then made up excuses as to why they couldn’t meet (remember, Facebook Marketplace is for local dealings, so this is a red flag). The seller offered to ship it with tracking, and the buyer then sent the money.”
“Can you guess what happened next? Nothing was shipped. The seller went missing, and the buyer never got the item,” Brogan explains.
Counterfakes is another big problem on the marketplace. “Since creating or even forging a profile is so easy on Facebook, scammers can sell counterfeit goods with almost no restriction.” According to Brogan, “Tiffany alone reported taking down 2000 fake Marketplace ads in 2017. And in the first six months of 2017, Facebook removed more than 200,000 posts that were flagged as counterfeit.”
Sometimes it’s not the scams themselves that enrage the buyers, but rather the items delusional sellers are trying to make money off of. This collection of ads is a good example of the bad side that happens on this widely popular reselling platform.
