How to sell your wedding dress safely

Selling your wedding dress through an online marketplace is getting ever more popular; it makes sense to pass your ‘worn once’ dress on to another bride for so many reasons, including making the most of your wedding budget and environmental awareness. As it becomes more popular, however, it’s attracting the attention of scammers.

“Eddie Townsend, of Action Fraud – the national reporting centre for fraud and cyber crime – says fraudsters are regularly targeting people who trade online. Wedding dress sales, he says, are one of the areas where fraudsters are prevalent – in part because the market is relatively recent and growing rapidly. He says: ‘Consumers must be vigilant and have their eyes open to potential scams.’”
thisismoney.co.uk

Although the vast majority of buyers on wedding marketplace websites will be genuine, being careful when buying or selling online is unavoidable these days and at Bride2Bride we’re here to help.

How you can spot a scam

• The buyer is offering to pay more than the asking price. They will then ask you to pay them back the surplus, to pay for shipping, for example, and once you’ve transferred this money, they then cancel the original payment.
• The buyer wants to pay by cheque. A cheque can clear into your account, only to be refused weeks later.
• If the buyer offers to pay by money order, Moneygram, Western Union or any other untraceable method, this is likely to be a scam.
• If you are sent a link to a PayPal website by email from the potential buyer, ignore it. Always log in to your account to check the payment has been made and transfer the funds to your bank account before sending the dress. And remember that PayPal will never request you to send money in order to release funds owed to you.

Tips for safe selling

• Make sure that all payments have cleared before sending your dress and that the payment you receive can’t be reversed in any way before sending your dress.
• Never send money to a buyer for any reason.
• If you receive an overpayment, return it immediately and ask for the correct amount to be paid.
  Ignore any emails asking for personal details (logins/passwords/credit card details) whoever the apparent sender. We will never send you emails asking for any information like this.

What we’re doing to stop scams

• We immediately block anyone who sends one of our sellers suspicious emails/messages – you can help us by reporting these to us as soon as you receive them. Report a suspicious buyer or seller to us via a Facebook message or email to [email protected]
• We regularly monitor traffic to our site and block anyone who has registered from outside of the UK that we don’t think is a genuine buyer.

So please don’t worry about selling your dress online with Bride2Bride – you’re in safe hands! For more help and advice, take a look at our page on Safe Selling