EBay – one of life’s guilty pleasures. The feeling you get when you’ve grabbed a great bargain; a beautiful dress at half the price you would have paid in the shop, a necklace you could never pay full price for or maybe a high quality foundation made by your favourite brand for only a third of the RRP. However, these items do not usually come with a certificate of authentication – are they really what they say they are?
- EBay – one of life’s guilty pleasures
Counterfeit cosmetics are on the rise – fake, big brand name items of make-up being sold on the internet for a fraction of the real price but being advertised as the real deal. The item looks almost identical to the genuine product but many of these cosmetics contain harmful substances or dangerous and illegal amounts of a particular ingredient. It wasn’t until recently the sellers have been sentenced or charged by the crime although it has been happening long before and many customers are unaware that this is what sellers are able to do. Many quality brands come with a hefty price tag that in today’s economic climate, we can simply not afford; so many consumers seek out the item they want by using these sites to buy them cheaper, but these sites cannot often tell if the sellers are advertising the genuine brand. The dangerous components that have been found in cosmetics and the uncertainty of the ingredients can lead to severe reactions and even trigger an allergy – which can ultimately lead to an anaphylactic shock or even death. Harmful cosmetic procedures that you can carry out at home through using a needle and the tragic reactions to consuming fake alcohol; just applying something to the skin couldn’t lead to something as harmful is a common thought – but wrong none the less.
High street shops are very likely to buy the cosmetics from the real retailers themselves, but independent make-up shops have no guarantee that they sell the genuine product bought from the genuine retailer – just like the internet. Agatha Kowalski, 28, Islington resident, said: “I wear make-up every day and get lipsticks and eye liner from Amazon and EBay because it is cheap – I cannot afford buying it from some shops.”
Many of these false items have been tested for what ingredients they contain and have been found containing household cleaners, nail polish removers, paint strippers and extremely harmful amounts of copper and lead. However, even more disturbingly – some fake cosmetics contain urine as a substitute of genuine stabilisers. Recently a woman called Leanne Wertheim, a 24-year-old care worker, was found selling cosmetics worth £30 for as little as £3.99 – these goods had three times the legal amount of lead whilst two men were found selling mascaras that had 20 times the legal amount of lead.
To be sure that you are buying the genuine product, you can only do it by buying it from the genuine retailer’s website or a well-known, chain shop. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true – it probably is.