With the explosion of E-Commerce and Online Shopping, particularly since the Pandemic a nasty by product has appeared : Online Scammers. These unsavoury characters are becoming more common place the larger online shopping becomes.
There are significant numbers of online scammers that operate on Facebook Marketplace as it is a relatively easy (if only for a short amount of time) sales channel for scammers to enter.
At Variety Trade Source we list all of our products on Facebook Marketplace as it represents a fantastic sales channel for us to showcase our products and reach new customers. As a legitimate merchant on Facebook Marketplace we recognise the need for consumers to feel safe. Thus we have developed some key markers which will help consumers identify whether the seller is legitimate or indeed a scammer.
We believe that sellers should have all three of these markers to classify as a legitimate seller that consumers can be safe in dealing with.
1. Secure Website
The seller should have a secure website. Scammers will very rarely offer a website at all and if they do then will almost certainly not be secure. To check if the website is secure look at the top left hand corner of the browser and there will be a padlock symbol. If this symbol doesn't appear then the website will not be secure.
2. Payment Gateways
The seller should be offering payment gateways that offer buyer protection. Payment Gateways such as PayPal, Zip and Afterpay all have buyer protection. This means that if the consumer orders a product and pays via one of these gateways the funds are held by the gateway until the product is delivered. If the product doesn't arrive with the purchaser then they are forwarded an immediate refund. Scammers never use Payment Gateways with buyer protection.
3. Facebook Marketplace Ratings
A legitimate seller will always have ratings and a large percentage of those ratings being high. Scammers will almost always have no ratings. Scammers will generally create an identity, rip someone off and then shut that identity down (if Facebook doesn't first) then start the process again with a new identity. Therefore it is virtually impossible for a scammer to build ratings on Facebook Marketplace.
We hope that the above information is useful and helps you feel safe when browsing Facebook Marketplace in the future.