Is it safe to buy from TikTok Shop?

It’s safe to say that TikTok is now a behemoth in the social media industry, rivaled only by the likes of Facebook, X, YouTube, and Twitch. Towards the end of 2023, the service decided to step up its game even further, launching a commerce platform called TikTok Shop. Here’s what you need to know about it before spending any real-world cash, and how to hide the feature if you don’t care about shopping where your funny videos play.

Fundamentally, TikTok Shop is about enabling impulse purchases directly through the TikTok app. Businesses get their own marketplaces on the service, complete with ads, product listings, promotions, and order tracking. On creator profiles, you may sometimes see a Product Showcase highlighting select items, but an account can have a Showcase without having a Shop presence too. Creators aren’t necessarily directly linked with the business(es) they’re hawking merchandise from, but more on that in a moment.

Currently TikTok Shop is available in these regions:

We mention impulse shopping because you’re encouraged to make purchases when watching related live streams, as well as what TikTok calls “shoppable videos.” During a makeup stream, for instance, you might see a pop-up for the eyeliner the person is demonstrating, complete with a pricetag and a red “Buy” button. Pop-ups may be more subtle during pre-recorded clips.

TikTok’s efforts go even further, though. Creators can earn affiliate commissions for selling products, and in the US at least there’s a “Fulfilled by TikTok” logistics option in which TikTok will store, pick, pack, and even ship out Shop products, much like Amazon. Businesses can also connect to outside commerce-related platforms like Shopify, Salesforce, BigCommerce, and Zendesk.

For its part, TikTok explains that it works with “trusted third party payment platforms” to provide secure checkout. In the case of US shoppers, all of TikTok’s related data is stored domestically, and overseen by the United States Digital Service — a federal government agency.

TikTok also offers review and reporting options, as well as baked-in returns and refunds. Listings are expected to adhere to both Shop-specific policies as well as the overall service’s community guidelines.

That said, even TikTok acknowledges the possibility of specific merchants or products violating its rules, so skepticism is the order of the day. The US-based Public Interest Research Group notes that some shoppers have already encountered issues with scams or undelivered purchases, and a lot of Shop products are cheap goods from no-name Chinese brands, if not outright counterfeits. Some people are honestly into buying “dupes” — but if you want to avoid rip-offs on TikTok Shop, we strongly suggest sticking to well-known brands regardless of which country they come from.

“Cheap” will depend on the brand you’re shopping from and the country you’re in, but yes, you may notice that Shop products are remarkably affordable — sometimes even less than a dollar, in an age when retail dollar stores in the US are regularly breaking that price ceiling.

There’s no definitive explanation, but when a merchant isn’t pulling a scam, there’s a good chance they’re a generic Chinese brand selling low-quality output. There are reputable Chinese companies, to be clear — but just as on Amazon, there’s a risk that generic products won’t quite work right, or won’t last nearly as long as they should.

Generic vendors also don’t have any overhead from running their own websites or retail distribution, and typically, they’ll lack much (if any) post-purchase support. If you buy a $50 knock-off computer desk, don’t expect compensation if your $2,000 computer crashes to the ground.

There have been claims that TikTok may be subsidizing some Shop products to spur transactions, but there doesn’t seem to be any concrete proof that we can find.

Apart from the importance of skepticism, a good rule of thumb is “buy once, cry once.” It may hurt to stomach the upfront price of a high-quality product from a well-known brand, but generics can actually cost you more in the long run if you have to keep replacing them or they never show up at all.

How to remove TikTok Shop from the For You page

Although there’s no quick toggle for whether Shop-related videos will appear in For You, you can filter many or most of them out if they’re interfering with your regular viewing. Here’s how:

• Open Settings, then tap on Content preferences.
• Filter out keywords like “tiktokshop,” “commission,” and “eligibleforcommission” from hashtags and descriptions. You can add more keywords if some Shop videos are slipping through the cracks, but be careful not to accidentally filter material you’re interested in.
• When a Shop video does infiltrate your feed, tap and hold on it, then choose Not interested. This could potentially backfire if the video overlaps with genuine interests, but probably not.