Hello guys! 🙂

This is a little late but, thank you for all the support in my How to Spot Fake Urban Decay Palette 2 on Carousell post. Honestly, I had my reservations about posting such a controversial entry because I knew it would stir up anger in the sellers, especially those that I featured (and censored). But your encouraging comments made me feel that posting it was a right decision. Hopefully it had prevented many people from being conned on Carousell, the recently-launched Duriana as well as other online marketplaces like eBay and Groupon (if it did, please do let me know in the comments! 🙂) I do see more sellers stating their uncertainty in the authenticity of their UD palettes in their listings instead of blatantly declaring that they are genuine without first verifying them.

Today’s topic is going to be somewhat a continuation of the fake UD Palette 2 post. I believe this is a prevalent problem not just in Singapore and Malaysia but in other parts of the world as well so I hope I’m doing good for the community.

As you guys know, I’m pretty active on Carousell. Recently I noticed some sellers (can count with one hand) carrying out preorders for all sorts of Urban Decay palettes such as the Basic and Flushed palettes and also outrageously claiming to have a certificate to prove their authenticity.

As those listings were posted quite some time back, I had to do a search for “Urban Decay Authentic Cert” and “Urban Decay Authentic Preorder” to retrieve them. I will be censoring the usernames so if you’re interested to know who these people are, feel free to search for the same keywords. It’s usually the first few results with many likes.

I knew from the start that their palettes were fake but I was really curious about the certificate. So I private messaged one of the sellers above on the pretence of being totally interested in their stocks and I received this image upon request:

Let me get this straight: I can understand and read Mandarin. But I wanted to know what is stated on this certificate personally from the seller so that I won’t come across as being a bully who goes around accusing the innocent and saying mean things about these people on my blog (*cough* refer to one of the comments in my previous fake UD post). So according to the seller, this certificate is “from the china authority certifying that our factory is the only factory outsourced by urban decay to manufacture & distribute their products. Which (sic) includes the ones selling in sephora & several asia country“.

Wow, very convincing hor. Sadly girl, I can’t just listen to one side of the story when it’s also from YOUR factory. Plus, China is such a HUGE country. I’m sure the Chinese authority has better things to do than to meddle in the beauty business. Furthermore, why is the Chinese authority doing the verification instead of Urban Decay themselves?

Thus I shot an e-mail to Urban Decay (yes, as in urbandecay.com, the headquarters) to clarify and this was what they replied:

I guess their reply is self-explanatory. This also means there’s no such thing as “REJECTED GOODS” or “FACTORY SECONDS”. People who had bought their palettes from these sellers and are still very insistent that they are authentic, you can bring your palettes down to Sephora to get them verified.

I have to laud Urban Decay for their VERY swift response to my query too. I got a reply within 3 hours of sending my first e-mail which also showed how concern they were regarding this matter.

People say imitation is a form of flattery which I guess is pretty true for popular and widely-used brands like Urban Decay, Benefit, NYX, MAC and Bobbi Brown. Sadly this flattery results to great loss in profits and misconceptions among consumers who use counterfeits without realising that they pale in comparison to the real ones. Please don’t believe counterfeit sellers who claim that their fake products work as well as the real one (and that using a fake one is a good way to decide if you should buy the genuine one) because obviously they don’t! I mean c’mon, comparing a fake which costs $10 and an authentic one which costs 8 times more, you dare tell me they give the same results?!?

Also, before I conclude this entry, never believe testimonials especially those that “vouch” for the authenticity of the products. Frankly, only the ones who work for Sephora or Urban Decay are able to tell, not even myself. Trust your instincts. Many times, your intuition doesn’t fail you.

*Updated*
Some websites that you should be wary of when purchasing branded cosmetics:

1. Groupon.sg and other deal websites
2. Honeybay.com
3. eBay.com and other online marketplaces
4. Carousell and Duriana
5. qoo10.com and Taobao

These sites MAY have authentic products for sale. You just have to be extra careful when purchasing them.

I don’t know how to put it but no proper beauty sites would explicitly indicate that their products are “AUTHENTIC” in the description if they are really authentic. Look at ASOS and Beautybay, do you see them making their products’ authenticity known?