Dishonest practice: Amazon products resold as “handmade” on Etsy

PUT À DAY

Rogue sellers are using the Etsy platform to resell name-brand products at exorbitant prices, passing them off as handmade by an artisan, an investigation has found.  

“Our research shows that some sellers on Etsy brazenly defraud their customers by making misleading claims about their products,” commented Rocio Concha, director of policy and advocacy for product and services analytics firm Which?, according to “The Guardian” reported on Thursday. 

The survey revealed that some sellers would charge up to seven times the price for an item labeled “handmade”, but previously purchased from a major banner such as Amazon, Ebay, Alibaba or a clothing or furniture chain. 

In its rules, the Etsy platform would however indicate that all items offered for sale must be handmade – that is to say that the seller must have been involved in the manufacture of the object -, antique or be handicrafts.

Anyone involved in the creation of the object must also be listed in the announcement, the English media continued. 

By analyzing only the first page of several categories, including furniture, toys and clothing, Which? would thus have determined that at least 23 of the 192 products analyzed and sold “handmade” would in fact come from another platform. 

For example, a rustic bedside table supposedly “handmade” the hand” and sold for £128 – around $215 – could be bought for £44 ($75) on Amazon. The same goes for a children's book, whose price of £4 ($6.80) on Alibaba would have jumped to £28 (about $47.60) on Etsy, an amount seven times higher.  

Etsy needs to “up its game by tackling these dishonest practices,” Rocio Concha hammered, adding that “a crackdown on dubious claims and online advertising is expected for a long time.” 

Last year, 36 million listings were reported to the platform, which would be double the previous year, according to Etsy. A total of 1.9 million ads have also been removed from the website, an increase of 16% compared to 2021, according to the British media.