A fridge for 60 pounds. Trainers half price. A "delivery failed - click to reschedule" text. It looked normal, and that is the entire trick. Purchase scams are now the single most common kind of fraud in the UK, and the one least likely to feel like a scam while you are paying for it.
Why purchase scams are everywhere in 2026
- 71% of all authorised push payment (APP) fraud cases in 2025 were purchase scams, with losses up 20% to £118.1 million (UK Finance Annual Fraud Report 2026).
- Online shopping was the top trap in Citizens Advice research - 26% of people personally deceived were caught while shopping.
- Almost two in five people report seeing a scam on an online marketplace (Experian), and Cifas estimates around £9.4 billion is taken from UK consumers each year.
Volume is the point. Scammers do not need to steal 50,000 pounds from you - they steal 80 pounds from a hundred thousand people, which is far harder to police and far easier to run.
The four tricks to know
- The fake advert. Ordinary products at 40-70% off, pushed in social feeds. The website is cloned or disposable and the payment goes nowhere.
- The look-alike marketplace listing. A real platform, a fake seller. Pay by bank transfer outside the platform and you lose its buyer protection.
- The parcel-text scam. "Delivery failed, click to reschedule" - the link harvests card details or sets up a payment. This "smishing" text fraud is one of the fastest-growing routes into a victim's account.
- The fake invoice or customs fee. A payment request that appears days later as a "deposit", "tracking charge" or "customs clearance".
Before you pay, search the site name plus "scam" or "reviews", or run it through our free scam checker - it checks names and payment details in seconds.
Red flags before you pay
- The price is far better than any honest seller can match.
- The site only accepts bank transfer or crypto, never a card with protection.
- There is no verifiable company address, landline or registration number.
- The domain was registered weeks ago, and there is no real returns policy.
- You are pressured to move the chat or payment off the platform.
How to get your money back (the routes, in order)
- Paid by credit card? Use Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 - for goods between £100 and £30,000 the card provider is jointly liable with the trader. This is a legal right, not a favour.
- Debit or credit card? Ask your bank for a chargeback for goods never delivered. It is quicker and broader than Section 75, though at the bank's discretion.
- Bank transfer? Call your bank the same day, ask them to recall the payment and apply for APP scam reimbursement under the PSR rules - purchase scams count when the money moved by Faster Payments or CHAPS. Our guide explains will my bank refund a scam payment.
- Paid on a marketplace? Report the seller and open the platform dispute fast - and never finish the payment off-platform next time.
- Report it. Action Fraud at reportfraud.police.uk, and tell the platform that hosted the advert so the listing is removed.
If your bank says no
Banks often wrongly call a purchase scam "you got what you paid for, just not what you wanted" and refuse reimbursement. Push back in writing: a fake trader is not a trader, nothing was delivered, and the bank's own Confirmation of Payee and scam warnings should have interrupted the transfer. Escalate to the Financial Ombudsman Service within six months - it regularly sides with purchase-scam victims where the bank did not follow its own process.
Speed and evidence decide the outcome
- Screenshot the advert, the listing URL, the seller profile and the checkout.
- Keep the payment reference, and every "delivery" text or email - do not delete them.
- Note the date you realised nothing was coming.
- Act in days, not weeks: chargeback and reimbursement windows are finite.
Our free evidence checklist is a one-page version of this, and how to report fraud in the UK sets out who to contact first.
When one order is really a network
Sometimes a fake "shop" is a front for a wider carding or money-laundering operation, and dozens of victims share one receiving account. That is where tracing changes the picture - and where a frozen mule account can return money a chargeback alone cannot.
General consumer information, not legal advice. Section 75, chargebacks and PSR reimbursement each carry their own limits and deadlines - confirm the current rules with your bank, the Financial Ombudsman or a solicitor.
Lost money to a fake shop, marketplace listing or delivery text? Send us what you have - a senior investigator will assess whether your payment can still be recalled or traced, free of charge.
