The €100 bargain: how the payment link scam works on second-hand sites
A great price, a friendly family profile and a payment link in the chat. How this second-hand scam works, how to spot it and what to do if you have already paid.
Imagine you find a €500 espresso machine for €100. The seller looks friendly, the reviews are good, and a payment link arrives in the chat. You pay, and the machine never comes. This scam works because each step feels normal. The safe rule is short: keep the whole deal inside the site’s own messages and never pay through a link another user sends you.
How the scam works
1. A bargain you do not want to miss
A branded product is on sale far below its usual price. The low price does the work: you want to act before someone else does, and a buyer in a hurry checks less.
2. A profile that looks safe
A happy family, a tidy home, 30 glowing reviews. None of this tells you who you are really dealing with, because photos can come from someone else’s life. Marktplaats suggests checking whether a listing’s photos also appear on other sites, for example with an image search such as TinEye.
3. The link in the chat
The seller offers to post the item and sends a payment link. Marktplaats is direct about this: a link sent by another user is suspicious. It can lead to a copy of a payment site that asks for your bank details. The scammers copy those details, log in to your online banking and move money to their own account. That means they may take more than the price you agreed.
4. What you do not see
The screen says your payment went through, so you wait. Nothing arrives. In the story in our video, the scammers turn your money into a gift card. How the money disappears differs from case to case, so check your bank account as soon as something feels wrong.
How to protect yourself
- Keep everything on the site. Negotiate, pay and arrange shipping in the site’s own messages. Marktplaats says it cannot check anything outside its platform.
- Treat every link from another user as suspicious. Read the address before you tap. Official Marktplaats links start with www.marktplaats.nl, www.help.marktplaats.nl or www.marktplaatszakelijk.nl.
- Say no to WhatsApp and email. Scammers use an excuse to move you away from the chat. Marktplaats says it will never ask for your email address or phone number in a chat.
- Check the profile. Be careful with new users, read the reviews, and look for signs on the listing such as a checked bank account or checked ID.
- Be suspicious of the price. A big discount on a branded product is a reason to slow down.
Already paid? Act today.
- Tell your bank straight away.
- Take a screenshot of the conversation and keep the listing number and the seller’s details, as Marktplaats advises.
- Report it to the police. To make an appointment, call 0900-8844.
- Report it to the Fraudehelpdesk online, or call 088 786 73 72 on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday or Friday from 9:00 to 12:30.
- Report the listing or the user to the site.
For emotional support, you can contact Slachtofferhulp Nederland.
Tell us your scam story
This is episode 1 of our series Scams in the Netherlands. There are many kinds of scams. Tell us what happened to you in the comments under our video or in a private message on Instagram, and we may add it to this series. We check the stories we receive and leave out private details.
