Catawiki review: Online auction — buyer shipping charges and customer support

Buying on Catawiki has become increasingly risky due to poor support and unclear shipping terms. Two recent incidents:

I won two lots from the same seller in the same auction and at the same time (No. 105507558 and No. 105507906). Nowhere in either lot description was it disclosed that shipping would be charged separately for each lot rather than combined — despite both being small, easily shipped-together items from the same seller. Support took 3 days to respond, and when they did, they simply explained that "combined shipping is the seller's choice" and suggested I pay first and hope the seller refunds the difference afterward. There is no way to contact a seller before payment to sort this out in advance — the platform is designed to leave buyers with no leverage once they've paid.

In June 2026, I won and paid for a silver coin (Netherlands Indies Java Rupee, 1766, lot No. 104281710). Days later, support cancelled the order and refunded me, claiming the seller failed to ship. The seller told me directly that the lot had been duplicated by Catawiki's own system, and he had warned Catawiki support about the duplicate before the auction even closed, but support did nothing about it. I didn't spend time finding and winning that coin just to end up with a refund instead of the item.

In both cases, the root problem is Catawiki's support team failing to actually resolve issues — offering generic policy text or telling buyers to "sort it out after you've already paid," instead of stepping in and fixing what their own system caused (duplicate listings, unclear shipping terms). On top of that, the site itself needs to be far more transparent about costs upfront: shipping can run €45 while the lot itself costs €5 (this happened to me with a Belgian tray) — if I buy two such lots from the same seller, I should be warned in advance that I'll be charged €90 for shipping, not €45, instead of finding out only after I've committed to paying.

I've been buying here for 6 years; this is not the experience I'd expect from a platform charging buyer's premiums on every lot.