Etsy is often seen as a platform where small business owners can enter the online shopping market without the hassle of building their own website. With over five million sellers, it houses a space for handmade, unique, and personal items. However, the chances of you running into a scam are still pretty high.

You begin to notice this pattern when you start seeing product descriptions stop matching with what is actually being sold. As I mentioned before, many of these sellers are small business owners, but how they market their products starts to feel disingenuous. 

Handmade jewelry is one of the more notable examples. If you search for something like a handmade birthstone cat necklace, seven different stores will advertise the same necklace, all in similar pricing, all claiming it is “Handmade.” These cat necklaces aren’t made by the people selling them.  They are just resellers claiming they made it themselves. Many of these items are bought in bulk from large e-commerce platforms from China, like Aliexpress or Alibaba, and all are resold. 

This tactic is not new, and it appears across the platform. People claim they are handmade and unique to their shop, and once you try to find it again, there are 12 other stores selling and claiming the same thing. But some sellers take it a step further. At the very least, buyers usually receive a product even if the product is badly made. 

Some stores use AI-generated images to advertise products that do not exist. One example of this is fantasy plants being sold as real seeds. An Etsy user named Whitney wrote a review stating, “DO NOT ORDER FROM THIS SHOP, IT’S A SCAM! They run multiple scam shops, so if you see any plants looking like this, they’re probably all fake. It will never be delivered, but it’s going to tell you it was delivered to a random/made-up city with no street address.”

This review is about an Etsy shop called NatureGardenSeeds. Despite its 2.8 stars and multiple complaints, it remains active. 

The issue becomes more complicated when you remember how Etsy presents itself. The company markets itself as “a global online marketplace of independent small shops selling handmade, handpicked, and one-of-a-kind items.” 

But when shops are allowed to sell mass-produced products or AI-generated images while claiming authenticity, that trust starts to fall apart. It makes it feel unsafe for all users to trust Etsy as a whole. It also creates a larger problem: real small businesses become harder to find and support. They are buried under listings of AI-generated and mass-produced products. 

Despite the increasing amount of disingenuous scam-like stores, there are stores that prey on people who want a cheaper option for real-life problems. A popular scam that many are now falling for is physics and mediums. 

From tarot cards to spells, Etsy has been filled to the brim with spiritual advice and magic, but the real question has to be asked, how many of these are actually real? My friend, Sam, went undercover and bought an anxiety and depression spell to test if it works. According to Sam, the spell didn’t help at all. When we tried to contact the shop, we were met only with an automated response. 

“0/10 would not do it again,” said Samantha Valencia

Spirituality is something that each person has their own opinion on, but even people who have worked in this business agree that the art of Etsy spiritualists are scams. Many of these spells and people advertising their spiritual guidance use AI and copy-and-paste descriptions. 

In the world of Etsy, witches and spiritualists, many argue that you don’t know the person’s intentions when buying these services, where they bought their products, or whether they are real. Many within the online community say to buy from real spiritualists and local shops rather than online. 

Etsy still has the potential to support small businesses and creative sellers, but that initial claim becomes harder to believe when scam-like listings are so easy to find. Like the spell we bought, which promised mental health and clarity but delivered nothing except an empty message and a reminder that maybe “magic” and “witches” don’t exist.