How to Avoid a Custom AF1 Scam

Custom sneaker scams are real and well documented, and the pattern behind most of them is consistent enough to check for before you pay anyone. Consumer protection bodies have tracked a clear shape: a seller pressures you to pay quickly, often through a personal payment app meant for friends and family rather than commerce, sends a fake or nonexistent tracking number when asked, and goes quiet or blocks contact once money has moved. None of that is specific to shoes; it is the standard shape of an online prepayment scam, and custom sneakers are simply a category it turns up in.

The single clearest warning sign is pressure. A legitimate custom studio has no reason to rush you into paying within the hour, to claim a slot is about to disappear, or to discourage you from asking questions before you commit money. If a seller's main sales tactic is urgency rather than showing you real, verifiable work, that is worth pausing over regardless of how good the design mock-up looks.

Payment method matters more than most buyers realise. Being asked to pay a stranger through an app built for splitting a dinner bill, with no order record and no buyer protection, is a genuine red flag; a legitimate studio takes payment through a traceable, documented method and confirms the order in writing. This studio's own commission process is confirmed over WhatsApp and settled by bank transfer, with the conversation itself standing as the order record, which is a very different footprint to a stranger's personal wallet.

Tracking is the second thing worth insisting on. A studio that cannot or will not give you a real, checkable tracking number once your pair has shipped is not behaving like a business with nothing to hide. Within Pakistan a tracked domestic courier typically takes two to four working days after your pair is finished and photographed, and the tracking number is sent directly once it ships, which is the standard this studio holds itself to and the standard worth expecting from anyone else.

Portfolio verification is worth five minutes before you commit to a design. A studio with a real history should be able to show you photographs of pairs it has actually painted, ideally with some evidence of process rather than only finished shots pulled from elsewhere. If every image a seller shows you looks identical to stock photography or to another seller's listings, that is worth a direct question before you pay anything.

None of this is meant to make commissioning a custom pair sound risky in general; it is meant to make the genuine risk specific enough to check for. A studio confirming your brief in writing, naming a real timeline, giving you a traceable payment method and a real tracking number afterward is behaving exactly as it should, and asking for all four before you pay is a reasonable thing to do anywhere you commission from.

How this studio's own process runs from brief to delivery, so you know what a legitimate commission actually looks like end to end, is laid out in the anatomy of a commission.

Ask us for tracking, ask us for proof of past work, and ask us before you pay. A studio worth commissioning from will never mind the question.