If you are about to buy a woocommerce site - BEWARE

Hey, I have been playing with one of my woocommerce websites, and I noticed something really strange.

There is a very simple method to create fake orders, and make the system believe you've got paid for it. Which means on the "Report" tab, that order will reflect, and it will look like you have really made that sale.


So, if you are buying a woocommerce website, don't solely believe on the woocommerce reports, as they can be easily manipulated. Ask the seller to match every sale with the PayPal payment, so you can be sure that the order was actually real.

Obviously I won't reveal the method, as I don't want to be the reason more people get scammed on Flippa. Plenty of scammers already exist there

You should not have this problem with the paypal checkout on woocommerce.

The order will not be marked as payment received unless the account is deposited in your account

But it will show a failed order if someone clicks checkout but does not pay

As I said, there is a simple method to fake this. Just beware.

I would ask the seller to link their Paypal to Godaddy book keeping, it will give you a semi accurate account of what they are actually pulling in.

thanks for shared information.Its help me step back from the door step of buying one.

So is there any easy way to spot this? They can also manipulate their Paypal screenshot to match WooCommerce report.

Is it related to sandbox?

This advice applies to ALL self-hosted platforms, not just woocommerce.

As long as something is self-hosted (i.e. works out of your server), it's easy to manipulate any and all reporting data. It may take a little bit more knowledge with other platforms but it's always rather easy with even a tiny bit of knowledge on SQL.

Because of this, you should never, ever rely (solely) on any reports that are generated by self-hosted platforms/tools and always insist on tracking all revenue back to its source. Furthermore - do it via live access (or a screen sharing session if you must), as screenshots can never be given any credibility, considering how easy it is to manipulate screenshots.