Shopee

Shopee is an e-commerce website, founded in 2015 in Singapore, operating primarily in southeast Asia and Latin America. Shopee operates under Sea, Ltd., which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the $SE ticker.

Shopee serves as Amazon for the East outside of China, being named the largest e-commerce platform in southeast Asia, with almost half of the the region's $47.9 billion in total gross merchandise volume in 2023 being attributed to Shopee.

Shopee is known to engage in unethical behavior similar to Amazon. While Shopee does not sell the majority of its products directly and relies on a vast number of sellers to shape its online marketplace, the fact that unethical or illegal practices have been allowed to continue for years and are still present to this day without any intervention suggest that Shopee is complicit in misleading customers.

Review manipulation

Product and review stacking

Shopee enables review fraud and manipulation further by allowing multiple variants of a product to be listed under one product listing.

This is obviously intended for use cases such as:

1. Same base product with different colors as variants (e.g. Clothes, home appliances)
2. Same base product with different sizes as variants (e.g. Phone cases)

Stacking used and new products

But unethical sellers often group used and new products together, so that the lower price shows up on search results (See the given screenshot on Alienware AW3225QF).

In the given example:

• The customer is able to see RM4,690 (1,040 USD) as the listed price of the Alienware AW3225QF monitor on search results and the seller's storefront.

Shopee product stacking and review stacking by listing multiple variants under 1 product listing

• Upon clicking on the product, the customer will discover that the displayed price of RM4,690 is actually for a refurbished product
• The real cost to buy the product new is actually RM5,170 (1,147 USD).

Stacking completely different products

Some sellers also outright group different, unrelated products together under one listing to stack reviews. (See the screenshot on Dell UltraSharp U4025QW)

In the given example:

• The customer searches for a "Dell U4025QW" and sees one listed for RM7,000 (1,553 USD) in search results.
• Upon clicking on the product, the customer will discover that the displayed price is actually for a refurbished Dell U4021QW (a different, older product that is refurbished)
• And the real cost to buy the Dell U4025QW new is actually RM9,740 (2,161 USD).

Product hijacking

Shopee enables its sellers to completely change a listed product in title, description and images, while retaining reviews of the originally listed product. This allows sellers to boost newly launched products which would not yet have any buyers, to have glowing 5-star reviews off the bat.

Shopee product stacking with seller listing unrelated products as variants under 1 product listing

Misleading advertising

Misleading coupon codes

Displaying large discounts but with usage limits create a false sense of a good deal. Their most common misleading coupon is "-75% OFF! Max $1 discount"

False low pricing

Since one product listing can have multiple "variants", sellers often will list a refurbished and/or completely different product with a low price as a variant so that the lower price appears on the search.

Fraudulent products and/or advertising

A lot of fake products (2TB SD cards selling at 1/5th what their price is supposed to be, obviously spoofed capacity like those sold on Amazon too) and fake claims ("Magnetic" screen protectors for tablets which come with no magnetic properties and tear-off strips for adhesive)

Deterring returns and exchanges

Shopee and its sellers operate under the very South East Asian low trust principle which assumes the customer is always lying. The default way to handle returns and exchanges is to always ask for the original product back.

This makes it challenging for returning products that are low priced but bulky (e.g. clothes drying rack) and/or require assembly (e.g. cheap Chinese furniture, which make up the bulk of furniture across Shopee's regional websites)

Gating content behind login wall

From time to time, when landing on Shopee's website (either direct or via search results), users will be redirected to the login page and are prevented from browsing products.

No doubt this is a feature still being A/B tested. There are several advantages for Shopee doing this, such as being able to link browsing behavior directly to users and making it difficult to compare prices without an account.