Etsy sellers duping buyers with 'handmade' items that cost up to six times more

Some Etsy sellers may be scamming customers by falsely describing items as handmade and charging more than they cost from other retailers, a Which? investigation has revealed.

We analysed the first page of items in a selection of categories on Etsy – bookshelves, coffee and end tables, dressers and armoires, and vanities and nightstands – and conducted a spot check on toys and clothes. 

We filtered to see only ‘handmade’ items, then used Google image search to check whether the images used in each listing appeared anywhere else online. 23 of the 192 ‘handmade’ items we checked were also available through other online platforms or retailers, and all but two had a higher price on Etsy. 

Some were £100 more on Etsy, and one was an eye-watering seven times the price compared to elsewhere.

Dodgy sellers ripping buyers off

All but two of the products we found for sale on other websites were more expensive on Etsy. Nine were more than twice the price on Etsy compared to the cheapest price we found elsewhere.

Prices collected between 23 and 27 March

Bookshelf buyers could pay six times the price on Etsy

This supposedly 'handmade' bookshelf is being sold by a UK-based seller on Etsy for £60 – but we also found it on China-based Alibaba for £10 ($12.50), eBay for £28.90, Amazon for £28.88 and OnBuy for £30.99.

One dodgy Etsy seller claims that it’s ‘all about designing the best product’, and has been tagged as a ‘star seller’ – a status awarded to sellers who respond to messages quickly, make at least five sales worth $300, have an average star rating of 4.8 or higher and dispatch orders on time. 

But in reality, this seller hasn’t designed the items they’re selling. They'd listed a nightstand for £146.10 on Etsy, but the same item was on sale for just £43.99 at Amazon. 

• Find out more: how to get the best price when shopping online

Misleading seller profiles

Another Etsy star seller was selling this shabby chic chest of drawers for £175, plus £25 delivery. The cheapest price we found elsewhere was £72.99 (on B&Q's marketplace) with free delivery – a £127 difference.

When we dug a little deeper, we found the seller's profile picture – which features a woman wearing a suit – was actually a stock image. At the time of writing, the account had 105 products for sale. We checked seven of those as part of our investigation, and all were available for less from other websites.

• Find out more: best and worst places to shop for second-hand products online 

Asda and Dunelm furniture sold as handmade 

One account was selling 19 items, all advertised as 'handmade', but none were unique to Etsy. In fact, six were actually from Asda, one from Dunelm and another from B&M. Every single one of the items was available from at least one other online retailer or marketplace.

The dodgy Etsy account was listing a £22 Asda side table for £42.99 – nearly double the price – and a £23.99 bee-print shower curtain for more than three times its Asda price of £7. They were also advertising a tortoise-shaped glasses holder for £32.99, available from Dunelm for £15.

• Find out more: best furniture and homeware shops 

Toy and clothes buyers also being ripped off

To see if this problem extends beyond furniture, we did a spot check on toys and clothes, too. In the toy category, we checked a handful of busy books – a popular toy for young children. One ‘handmade’ busy book – available on Alibaba for £4 ($4.40) – was selling for seven times the price on Etsy, at £27.98.  

In women’s clothing, we found sellers claiming items were handmade – despite the same items also being available on Amazon and eBay from what looked to be different companies.

• Find out more: best fashion, beauty and health shops

Etsy’s handmade terms and conditions 

Online marketplaces allow third-party sellers to reach buyers. The difference between Etsy and other platforms is its emphasis on unique, handmade items.

In its house rules, effective from December 2022, Etsy states that it’s a ‘unique marketplace’ for people looking to buy items that they might not find elsewhere. It also says that everything listed for sale on Etsy must be handmade, vintage or a craft supply.

To be listed as a handmade item, sellers must have been involved in the making or design of the item. If there are others involved in the process, they must be open about who.

This means that sellers can technically describe mass-produced items as handmade, as long as they’ve had a role in the design process and they declare this on the listing page.

For the items we found, at least one image in the listing was identical to an image in a listing on another platform. We checked for added shelves, different knobs and other alterations, ruling out any items that we felt might have a slightly different design. Only two sellers mentioned that another company had helped in the production process, but we couldn’t find any evidence that the named companies existed.

Etsy responds to Which?'s investigation

When we put our findings to Etsy, a spokesperson said: '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. Etsy users are also encouraged to report potentially violating listings via our site-wide flagging tool. 

'Since 2018, we’ve quadrupled our investments in the trust and safety of our marketplace and, in 2022 alone, we put $50m towards these efforts. Specifically, we are intensifying enforcement of our Handmade Policy, and we have expanded our team of content moderators and strengthened our automated detection systems to steadily increase our removal of resold content.' 

Etsy also shared a link to its 2022 Transparency Report.

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Tougher laws needed to crack down on rogue sellers

Our research suggests that Etsy needs to step up its efforts to scrutinise claims made by sellers. The listings we identified would classify as misleading advertising because the sellers pay Etsy to post these listings and make the accompanying false claims to market the products.  

Currently, online platforms that host the type of misleading listings we identified in our investigation face little punitive action from regulators. The government is currently looking at how misleading advertising can be better regulated. Which? recommends putting in place a statutory regulator with powers to ensure platforms have sufficient processes in place to prevent misleading advertising, including issuing fines to platforms that break the rules. 

Rocio Concha, Which? Director of Policy and Advocacy, said: 'Our research shows some Etsy sellers are brazenly ripping off customers by making misleading claims about their products. Etsy needs to up its game in tackling these dishonest practices, which serve as an example of why a crackdown on dodgy claims and advertising online is long overdue. 

'The government must put a statutory regulator in place with the powers to crack down on the problem of platforms promoting misleading advertising. This should include the ability to issue fines against platforms that flout the rules.'

Since we shared our findings with Etsy, the company has removed some of the sellers from its platform. 

• Find out more: your shopping rights on an online marketplace 

How to shop on Etsy 

Of course, many sellers on Etsy are legitimate, only selling handmade items via Etsy and their own websites.

To work out whether you're buying a genuinely handmade item, investigate the listing further using these tips:

• Using Google Chrome, right-click the listing image and select ‘search image with Google’. This will show you where else the image appears online. It isn’t perfect, though, so you’ll need to click on the related images to find out more.
• Look at the reviews of the product and any other items the seller is listing, and don’t just read the positive ones. You can't sort reviews by star rating on Etsy, but scroll through a few pages to see what the less positive reviews say. If you spot a pattern emerging, such as the materials being cheap or badly put together, then tread carefully.