Oops
All Posts,  Miscellaneous,  Soapbox

Fake eBay Perfume In The Markets

UPDATE 2019

Turns out the real scammers are the company who makes the perfume I used to use. They changed the formula and watered it down. The stuff I bought in this entry was, I think now, genuine but it does bear very little resemblance to the original product hence my belief it was fake.

My kids and I went cruising the Easter day sales on Sunday and we ended up at the Victoria Markets in Victoria Street here in Melbourne. I have not bought any more perfume since I got scammed by a seller on eBay some time ago. I have been using their watered down, over-priced, forged perfume. I paid too much for it to throw it out and the scent, what there is of it, is genuine – I think.

My daughter knows I plan to buy some more real perfume sooner or later so, when we passed a perfume seller, she looked for my designer perfume and found it. They had a price tag of $100.00 on it which is 169 dollars less than it normally sells for. It was, however, double the price I paid for it on eBay. They had a tester bottle there so I tested it and I knew, from the second I smelt it, it was the same stuff I got from the eBay scam sellers.

I said I didn’t want it. I said it’s fake. I said it’s the same stuff I got from eBay. My kids smelt it and said it smelled like the real thing to them but I said no, it’s fake, it’s the watered down version.

The seller must have overheard me because he appeared beside us real fast and, from the hostile look on his face, I don’t think he liked hearing the word “fake” being used near his goods. It was late in the day and I had no intention of getting into an argument with him so I just told him no, we were fine, he couldn’t help us.

There were three clues in my eBay purchase that were the only things I could use to tell the real from the fake. The cap was smaller and more plastic looking than the real caps.

Diorcap
Diorcap

In the following image the larger cap is from a 50 ml bottle of the real thing and the smaller cap is from a 100ml bottle of watered down fake product I bought from eBay.

Poison Fake
Poison Fake

The tube inside the fake product stopped short of the bottom of the bottle so it wasn’t possible to use every drop like I can with the real thing. Last, but by no means least, the perfume itself is watery and smells of spirit when it lands on your skin. Have a look at the following pictures and see if you can pick the real thing.

Poisonalt
Perfume Poisonreal

I think the first image is the real thing but even I can’t be certain. In the case of my perfume the fake was also the wrong colour. As soon as the spirit evaporates, which takes about the same amount of time it takes for you to go back for a second sniff, the scent of the perfume emerges and all you can smell is what seems like the real thing.

None of the clues to it’s authenticity are available from an unopened package – it looks totally genuine to me although I have not compared a fake package to the real thing.

At the market today the cap for the tester was nowhere to be found so I could not check that. When I held the tester bottle up to the light the tube inside it was not as short as the ones in my bottles but it did not curl along the bottom of the bottle like the genuine product either so I was alert when I sprayed it.

I looked at the colour and consistency as I sprayed it on my wrist then I smelt it straight away and it was identical to what I am using now. What I am using now is the fake product.

My designer perfume is Poison by Christian Dior. It is a purple colour and a much stronger purple colour than the fake, watered down version, so I have much more to go on to tell real from fake than is normal.

The eBay store(s), and this market seller, were selling ALL the designer perfumes and I mean ALL of them! The following list is just a small sample of what they had online and at that market store today.

CHRISTIAN DIOR; GIORGIO ARMANI; BVLGARI; REVLON; CALVIN KLEIN; GUCCI; YVES SAINT LAUREN; JOOP; ISSEY MIYAKE; ESTEE LAUDER; VERSACE; GUESS; JOHN VARVATOS; GIVENCHY; CHANEL; BURBERRY; RALPH LAUREN; HUGO BOSS; ELIZABETH ARDEN; CHOPARD; VANDERBILT; DOLCE & GABBANA; DAVIDOFF; and DKNY.

They also had celebrity perfumes from ELIZABETH TAYLOR, JENNIFER LOPEZ, BRITANY SPEARS, PARIS HILTON and SARAH JESSICA PARKER.

If they were selling watered down Christian Dior perfume what are the odds that all those other perfumes they were selling are also watered down?

My son thinks the real designer companies put a watered down version of their scent in their “tester” bottles to avoid wastage and these people are selling testers.

That would explain the genuine smell of the perfume once the spirit evaporates. It would also explain how they get such genuine looking bottles and packaging but I am not convinced. Would a real designer perfume company bother making inferior caps to go with their tester bottles? Would they put inferior perfume into bottles that are supposed to convince people to buy their product?

I think the companies that are producing the real thing for the designers are doing a deal with the knock-off merchants on the side. The stuff looks real and smells real. It was just one small fluke of an experience that showed me it was not real.

I had sprayed the last of my bottle of the real perfume on one arm so I grabbed the opened, eBay purchased, bottle of the fake perfume and sprayed it on the other arm and it felt different so I took a closer look. The colour difference was obvious to me and the eBay product looked runny and smelt of spirit.

I smelt both wrists and the scent of perfume on one was strong. All I could smell on the other arm was the spirit at first. I waited a few minutes for the perfume to dry on both wrists them smelt them both again. It was unmistakable – one had a strong scent and the other was weak. They both had the same smell but I could only just smell it on the wrist I had sprayed the fake perfume over. Even a second and third application of the fake did not bring the strength of the scent up to the same level as the real thing.

There is no way I would ever have picked the fake as being fake if I had not been able to compare it with the real thing like that. Now that I have been able to do that comparison I can tell the difference immediately.

I can state, with 100 percent certainty, that there was at least one bottle of a watered down version of Poison by Christian Dior at that perfume seller’s store today. It was, it is true, a test bottle but my guess is that the bottle he would have sold me for 100 dollars would have contained about five dollars worth of real perfume just like the two bottles I bought from eBay.

If I was Christian Dior I would find out if the other perfume designers are using the same manufacturer(s). I bet they are. I would then join forces to investigate them because I just bet they are making a fortune on the side!

If that seller had been selling the fake for what it was worth – 20 bucks maximum – I would have bought it. If I spray the watered down version all over myself and on my clothing it does the job. I just object to being cheated. I hope the owners of the real thing do too and they do something about it.

Until then I’m going back to buying my perfume from someone I can trust. I would rather be cheated by choice via the ridiculous overpricing that goes with designer products than be cheated by forgery and lies!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.