How to stop fake orders on your Facebook Page: 7 checks before the parcel goes

Published 7 October 2026 · 3 min read

A fake order is one placed with no intention of receiving it: a prank, a mistyped number, a competitor, or somebody who changed their mind before the order was even confirmed. Each one costs the shop the delivery charge to send it, with some couriers a return charge as well, and stock held away from real customers for a week. You cannot stop people placing them, but you can stop most of them before the parcel leaves. Here are seven checks, in roughly the order a shop meets them.

1. Know the signs

A brand-new profile with no picture, an order left in a comment with no message after it, an address with no area or landmark, a phone number that is not eleven digits starting with 01, and a customer who will not answer a call. None of these proves an order is fake, but two or three together are worth a second look.

2. Confirm every order in writing

Before booking anything, send the customer the product, size, total with delivery and the address, and ask them to reply “yes”. An order nobody confirms is not booked. This one step filters out most orders placed on a whim, and it gives you something to point to if the customer later says they never ordered.

3. Call before a large or distant order

A thirty-second call to the number on the order tells you whether the number is real, whether the person knows about the order and whether the address is right. Keep it for the orders where a refusal would cost most: expensive items, parcels going far, and first orders from new customers.

4. Check the number’s history

Look up the phone number in your own records before you send: has a parcel to this number come back before? Write numbers one way, so that +880 1711… and 01711… are found as the same customer. Some couriers will also tell a merchant how parcels to a number have gone with them; ask yours whether it does.

5. Ask for the delivery charge in advance when the risk is high

For a number with refusals on record, a first order going far, or an expensive item, ask for the delivery charge up front by bKash or Nagad and take it off the amount the courier collects. A customer who meant to order seldom minds; one who did not usually stops here, which is the point.

6. Keep a list of numbers that refused

Every time a parcel comes back, note it against the customer’s number with the reason the courier gives. Over a few months the list shows the handful of numbers that cause most of your returns, and you can ask them for an advance every time.

7. Make ordering a step, not a click

Take orders in a message rather than from a comment alone, and say on the Page how ordering works: orders are confirmed by message, and an advance is asked where parcels have come back before. People who mean to buy read it as a sign of a careful shop; people who do not usually move on.

Sells Pilot keeps every order and returned parcel against the customer’s phone number, however it was written, and before a cash on delivery parcel goes to a number whose parcels usually come back, it shows you why and offers to ask for an advance by bKash or Nagad instead. With a Steadfast account connected, Steadfast’s own record for the number is shown beside yours.