Receiving fake products online is the most common problem faced by online shoppers. There are a lot of cases where online shoppers have received fake products instead of the genuine article. Recently, the Ahmedabad Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (ACDRC), had sent a notice to an e-commerce company, over a complaint claiming the sale of fake products. The complainant had received a fake kajal instead of the original one.
Using fake products, especially cosmetics, can have a negative impact on your health, so you have to be very careful while purchasing anything online. In this blog, we will discuss how to identify fake products.
See Also: How to avoid Online Shopping Fraud?
While selling fake products, sellers usually offer huge discounts to attract more customers. This happens mainly in online shopping. So, before buying the product, see how much discount other sellers are offering on the same brand. If the offer is too good to be true, then the product may be a fake.
Usually, good brands take a lot of care and spend good money on product packaging. Product packaging will be neat and attractive. But, fake products may be packed very badly. They use poor materials like cheap plastic or sagging cardboard. Sometimes fake products can be delivered without any packaging at all.
You can identify fake products through grammatical and spelling mistakes. Fake products may have the wrong spelling. For instance: Adidas will be written as Adiddas. It is a trick used by sellers to cheat careless customers. So make sure to read the brand name properly, before making a purchase.
4. Fake products are sold by fake websites
Fake online shopping websites sell fake products. You can check the authenticity of the website by looking at the URL. The website link should start with lock sign and http.
Quality of fake products is bad, as cheap alternatives will be used in place of the original. For instance: low-quality cloth, cheap glass, artificial leather, tacky plastic will be used for manufacturing products. In the case of electronic appliances and gadgets, old parts will be used.
Original product will have a lot of information like serial number, code, trademark, and patent information. Fake products will not have all this. They usually miss certain information while copying the original. If you have doubts, you can check the number with the original product online.
See Also: How To Identify Fake Currency Notes?
7. Logos
You can identify if the product is original or fake, just by looking at the logo. Logos of fake products are easily identified if you know the original logo. If you are not able to identify, you may take the picture of the product you think is fake and compare it the original product online. Usually, there will be some changes in the color or font of the fake product.
In the case of the original product, there will be contact details of manufacturers like address, e-mail id, and phone number. But this information will not be listed in fake products. In case of any issues, you won't be able to contact the manufacturer. So it is better to avoid the products which do not have contact details.
Hope this has helped you to identify fake products.
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