Reseller abuse

The reseller-abuse use case detects bulk-buyers who place orders through multiple identities to resell on secondary marketplaces (StockX, eBay, Grailed, etc.), bot-driven order placement on limited-release and high-margin SKUs, and inventory hoarding that erodes brand equity. Pinch scores every order at checkout, writes a decision as a customer tag, and feeds a Shopify Flow (or your own backend) that can cancel the order, hold for review, or let it through.

Setup

1. Orders workflow (decisioning at point of order)

In Workflows → Orders, add Decision blocks for reseller patterns:

Sub Decision label	Decision type	Example condition
Known Reseller	DENY	Num orders per device fingerprint in last 30 days greater than 20 AND cart contains a SKU on the limited-release list
Suspect Reseller	REVIEW	Num orders per address in last 30 days greater than 5 AND Num distinct emails per address in last 90 days greater than 2
Bot Signal	DENY	Device risk score greater than 90 OR IP risk score greater than 90
Default Approve	ALLOW	Catch-all

The Orders workflow runs at the moment the order is placed, so decisions land before the box is picked. Branches are evaluated top-down — DENY first, then REVIEW, then ALLOW.

2. Playbook to tag Shopify

In Playbooks → + New Playbook:

Playbook	Segment	Action chain
Reseller Block	Known Reseller or Bot Signal	Shopify Tag → Customer → Add pinch-reseller-abuse + Shopify Tag → Order → Add pinch-cancel + Notify on Slack #orders-escalations
Reseller Review	Suspect Reseller	Shopify Tag → Customer → Add pinch-review + Notify on Slack #orders-escalations

3. Enforce the decision (Shopify Flow or your backend)

The pinch-cancel order tag is the trigger your Shopify Flow (or custom backend) listens for to actually cancel-and-refund the order:

• Shopify Flow — Trigger Order tag added equals pinch-cancel → Action Cancel order with reason "Suspected reseller abuse — see Pinch".
• Custom backend — Subscribe to the orders/updated webhook and call cancelOrder mutation when the tag appears.

For Suspect Reseller orders, your CX team picks them up from the Review queue → Orders tab, inspects the device + identity graph, and decides whether to let the order ship.

4. Downstream: block their returns too

Customers tagged pinch-reseller-abuse keep the tag on their customer profile, so when they come back to place more orders or return anything, your RMS Workflow treats them as blocked by default. Same mechanism as return abuse — the RMS reads the Pinch customer tag.

What you'll see once it's live

• Reseller-tagged orders get auto-canceled by Shopify Flow with your custom reason.
• The Analytics Orders tab tracks Bot Trend, Top Resellers (by email / phone / address), and Decision Outcomes.
• Device + identity graph on the customer profile shows which identities are linked to which addresses and devices.