Fake products on eBay - my experience with bareMinerals

This post is basically a warning to all you beauty lovers about purchasing cosmetics on eBay. We've all been there - an expensive product catching your eye and then immediately logging onto eBay to see if you can get it for a much cheaper price. 

After finally finishing my first ever pot of bareMinerals foundation bought from a beauty counter in Debenhams, I really didn't want to part with that much money. So I had a look on eBay. I was told that as long as they have lots of positive feedback, they can be trusted. 

I ended up purchasing an 8g pot of bareMinerals Original Foundation in Medium Beige. I paid £11.95 for it. What a bargain.... or so I thought.

The funny thing is, I never even tried to question how genuine the product was when it arrived. I just used it. I think I just assumed that if they were selling fakes then surely they would no longer be allowed to trade. 

Needless to say, it was fake. And it took me over half a year to realise! I even switched over to Lily Lolo foundation because I thought that bareMinerals wasn't doing anything for me anymore. AND I wrote a blog post about bareMinerals Original Foundation a few months ago, which I have now removed as it was a fake product which does not reflect the brand at all. I did do a blog post on the bareMinerals Matte Foundation though, which is a 100% genuine product. 

So what made me realise it was fake? Well I decided to get myself a new bareMinerals product, but thought I'd go for the Matte version instead to see if it was any better. Despite not questioning the eBay bareMinerals product at all, I still didn't feel too comfortable purchasing make up from eBay (which makes me question why I felt comfortable doing so back in September). Anyway, I purchased the foundation from Feelunique.com, a trusted discount cosmetics retailer. As soon as it arrived, I felt stunned. The colour was completely different to the one I got from eBay. I knew there would be a slight colour difference due to the fact that one was Original and one was Matte, but it's not supposed to be that much different. The texture was also different - the fake foundation was a lot more powdery, almost like talcum powder. 

I immediately started to panic. I'd always thought that my foundation had a weird red tint to it but I brushed it off and assumed that it was just that shade of foundation. Then the biggest tell tale signs were when I flipped the foundations over and looked at the bottom of the pots. The fake pot of foundation (which actually had a weird stash of paper covering it that I had to rip off) was missing several things including a bar code, a list of ingredients, and also the little jar symbol that tells you how long a beauty product can be kept for. 

I'm normally quite a vigilant person but I let my guard down at that time. I was a student in need of a new foundation and thought I'd found a bargain.

It shocks me that I've been using that on my face for over half a year. I'm just happy that it wasn't a harmful product because the results could have been much worse. 

I would personally advise against making cosmetic purchases on eBay. Yes, there are some genuine sellers on there selling genuine products. The issue is, how will you know? 

If you're looking for affordable cosmetics, my strongest recommendation is Feelunique. They're not dirt cheap, but cheaper than if you bought it directly from the brand and you'll also know it's the real thing.

From my experience, I would say that it is worth spending that extra money to guarantee that you have a genuine product. Skin is delicate and who knows what you could be putting onto it with a fake product.

Lastly, some of you may want to know who this eBay seller is that sold me the fake bareMinerals product. Well, I don't know what the policies and laws are on naming eBay seller's but I will edit this post with the sellers eBay name if I manage to find confirmation that it is okay to do so. What I will say is that they are definitely still trading on eBay and, surprisingly, have a 99% positive feedback score. The majority of this seller's negative feedback revolves around buyers claiming that the bareMinerals products are all fake. 

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope this has been of some use to you.