Misrepresentation

Listings or destinations that deceive users by excluding relevant product information or providing misleading information about products and businesses can compromise user trust. The Misrepresentation policy strives to ensure that listings are clear, honest, and provide information that users need to make informed decisions. For this reason we don’t allow the following:

• Offers that prompt customers to initiate a purchase, download, or other commitment without first providing all relevant information and getting the customer’s explicit consent.
• Offers that represent you or your products in a way that isn't accurate, realistic, and truthful.

Learn more about Building trust with your customers. Below are some examples of what to avoid in your listings.

On this page

• Unacceptable business practices
• Coordinated deceptive practices
• Dishonest pricing and transaction conditions
• Unavailable offers
• Manipulated media
• Unreliable claims
• Options to fix

Unacceptable business practices

Scamming people by hiding or misrepresenting info about your business, products or services isn’t allowed

• Examples (non-exhaustive):
  • Offer products for which you don’t have the right licenses or qualifications to do so
  • Present a false identity, business name, or contact information
  • Charging customers for products typically available for free
  • Impersonating brands or businesses by referencing or modifying the brand content in the listings, URL, destinations or misrepresenting yourself as the brand or business in customer interactions
  • Pretending to be a discount online retail store to entice people into buying products and then not delivering the items that they paid for
  • Denying return and refund for a product despite having a clear refund or return policy that allows for returns and refunds
  • Hiding, omitting, or misrepresenting material details about your actual business location, operational headquarters, or source of product fulfillment to mislead users or evade verification
  • Displaying a false or virtual physical address as your headquarters while operating entirely from an undisclosed region
  • Intentionally hiding the actual location from which your products are shipped to create a false impression of localized delivery

Phishing: trying to get people to give you their personal information like passwords and credit card numbers by pretending to be a trusted or well-known entity is not allowed

• Examples (non-exhaustive):

  • Sites that trick users into revealing their personal information by mimicking a trusted retailer

Falsely implying affiliation with, or endorsement by, another individual, organization, product, or service is not allowed

• Examples (non-exhaustive):
  • Misleading use or mimicry of official government sites, stamps, seals, or agency names
  • Make it seem like you’re affiliated with another brand, organization or government entity when you’re not

Coordinated deceptive practices

Coordinating with other sites or accounts and concealing or misrepresenting your identity or other material details about yourself, where your content relates to politics, social issues, or matters of public concern is not allowed

Directing content about politics, social issues, or matters of public concern to users in a country other than your own, if you misrepresent or conceal your country of origin, or other material details about yourself is not allowed

Dishonest pricing and transaction conditions

Failure to clearly and conspicuously disclose the payment model or full expense that a user will bear before and after purchase is not allowed

• Examples (non-exhaustive):
  • Not disclosing the total price, including all taxes, fees, and surcharges
  • Failing to explain the payment model
  • Omitting recurring costs and the billing interval
  • Not disclosing all applicable shipping costs, including those for returns if the designated return shipping location differs from the business address

Employing pricing practices that create a false or misleading impression of the cost of a product or service, leading to inflated or unexpected charges is not allowed

• Examples (non-exhaustive):
  • Bait-and-switch tactics: Deceptively advertising a product at an enticing, often unrealistic, low price to lure customers, with no genuine intent to sell it, only to pressure them into buying a different, typically more expensive or inferior, alternative after they’re engaged
  • Price exploitation: Exploiting individuals in vulnerable situations or under duress, leveraging their immediate need or lack of reasonable alternatives to demand a payment significantly higher than the prevailing market rate.

Concealing transaction conditions by failing to clearly, conspicuously, and consistently disclose post-purchase terms, fulfillment timelines, or refund restrictions before a customer commits to a purchase is not allowed

• Examples (non-exhaustive):
  • Claiming a delivery time in conspicuous text while hiding a longer order processing or handling delays in less visible secondary text
  • Concealing that a customer will incur cross-border or international freight fees to complete a product return
  • Failing to clearly and conspicuously disclose fees, such as unexpected restocking fees, before checkout
  • Setting international return windows to begin on the purchase date rather than the actual delivery date

Omitting material information when promoting content as benefiting a charitable or political organization is not allowed

• Examples (non-exhaustive):
  • Failing to display a charity or tax exemption number for products sold to benefit charities
  • Failing to disclose whether products sold to benefit political campaigns are tax exempt or not

Unavailable offers

Promising products or promotional offers that aren’t available for users is not allowed

• Examples (non-exhaustive):
  • Misrepresenting or concealing the location from where products are shipped in order to create a false impression of local inventory or rapid delivery
  • Listing items as available when you lack the capability to fulfill the orders

View the Product data specification attributes on availability and price for specific guidelines to comply with this policy.

Manipulated media

Manipulating media to deceive, defraud, or mislead others is not allowed

• Examples (non-exhaustive): Deceptively doctoring media related to politics, social issues, or matters of public concern

Unreliable claims

Making inaccurate claims or claims that entice the user with an improbable result (even if this result is possible) as the likely outcome a user can expect is not allowed

• Examples (non-exhaustive):
  • "Miracle cures" for medical ailments, such as extreme weight loss products
  • Products that claim to be “cure-all” for several diseases

Content that promotes harmful health claims, or that relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative scientific consensus is not allowed

• Examples (non-exhaustive):
  • Anti-vaccine advocacy
  • Denial of the existence of medical conditions such as AIDS or COVID-19
  • Gay conversion therapy

Claims related to politics, social issues, or matters of public concern are not allowed

• Making claims that are demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process
  • Examples (non-exhaustive):
    • Information about public voting procedures, political candidate eligibility based on age or birthplace, election results, or census participation that contradicts official government records
    • Incorrect claims that a public figure has died, or been involved in an accident
• Making claims that contradict authoritative, scientific consensus on climate change