The Dutch consumer watchdog ACM has dealt with over 20,000 complaints so far this year about dropshippers, topping the 2023 total of 18,000 with holiday season spending still to go.

“Consumers have complained about incorrect and missing information for delivery times, the identity of companies, unreachable customer service, and problems with returning purchases,” ACM spokeswoman Saskia Bierling told Dutch News.

Now the agency has launched a campaign warning consumers what to watch out for. It includes a website with helpful YouTube videos, advertisements, and radio spots, many aimed toward 18 to 30 year olds, one of the groups most likely to fall victim to these dodgy webshops. 

Dropshippers attract customers with flashy advertisements on social media sites like Instagram and TikTok. They often claim they only have limited items available to convince consumers to make hasty purchases. Many rush to order after being warned ‘There’s Only 3 Left!’

The websites themselves are typically well designed and look legitimate. Even the most shrewd shopper can be duped. But once the order has been placed, consumers often don’t receive their purchases or it can take many weeks for them to arrive.

Sometimes the items are bootlegs, damaged, or low quality. Return policies are typically involve high shipping costs and many people never receive their money back. Customer service departments are slow to respond or entirely nonexistent.

But now dropshippers have taken things a step further and are pretending to be local retailers.

Marie is one shopper who was recently lured in by a dropshipper posing as a cute boutique located in Amsterdam.

After spotting an advertisement for a Gilmore Girls advent calendar on Instagram from a boutique called Blossy-Amsterdam, she quickly ordered one after its website claimed only a few were still in stock.

“I was taken in by the site looking like a legitimate and decent shop in Amsterdam, so I felt safe ordering from them,” Marie said.

At first glance, Blossy-Amsterdam looked like a local retailer. It claims to have been in business since 2018 and features photos of models posing in front of the city’s canals. As of last week, its website even featured a photo of the exterior of its boutique in Amsterdam.

Upon closer inspection, however, the image appeared to be AI generated. An address on Blossy’s Facebook page was for a nonexistent location. Both have since been removed from the company’s websites.

Marie realised she’d made a mistake when she never received a tracking number or confirmation that the calendar had shipped. She clicked on a link in the email confirmation she received after ordering the calendar and learned it would be coming from China instead of a charming boutique in Amsterdam.

The package, when it arrived 13 days later, was a bootleg, full of mangled English and grammatical errors. When she complained, Marie was offered 20% cashback instead.

Numbers

The sheer number of dropshippers is increasing every month. According to Oberlo, a website that helps entrepreneurs launch them, the industry was worth $243.42 billion in 2023.

“The huge number of webshops and dropshippers brings challenges with regard to enforcement,” Bierling said. “We cannot tackle all the fraudulent ones and therefore have to prioritise. We do this on the basis of various criteria. This can include social relevance and impact, legal feasibility, and effectiveness.”

Even when the ACM does find out about a dropshipper engaging in deceitful practices, it can be downright impossible to get them to stop, especially if what they’re doing skirts the line between deception and full-fledged fraud.

“Unfortunately, we cannot prevent entrepreneurs from starting fraudulent webshops,” she said. “However, the ACM does make an effort to inform companies of their obligations and to inform and advise consumers. In this way, the ACM tries to prevent deception in advance.”

What you can do 

The ACM recommends checking reviews on multiple websites to find out if the company you are considering doing business is the real deal.

If you’re worried that a local retailer might not be the based here, you can look up their details on the KvK’s website via its ‘Business Register Search’ page.