OMG- Look at these Fakes- DISCUSSION THREAD.

#109
mrssparkles said:
These sites are, if you like "wholesale sites" - evident in their marketing policy of "if you buy more than 5 blah blah blah".

The danger is the distribution of these through ebay resellers. Knowingly or unknowingly that they are fakes. The experienced (not neccesarily knowledgeable) ones will price it close to retail as gimmick that it's the real thing.

And in some cases, there are middlemen involved. So by the time the eBay reseller gets the bags, he or she might have been totally fuzzy about the source of bags. This is where the risk goes up.

So, a long time customer of H, nervous about the authenticity of any Birkins sold on eBay, may just never want to buy from resellers. Unlike tPFers, they cannot tell the difference buying from reputable resellers like LZ, CDL, LW etc and other lesser known.

Very recently, my manager just told all of us to stay away from eBay. She knows I get some of my lovely Birkins from a reseller in Zurich and have no issues with me using a reseller when she can't get the exact combo I want. So I can imagine she has been cautioning alot of her very good customers not to go via the eBay route as well, because of the rising risks. (better for her, of course) I did assure her the "community" knows who to trust. :yahoo:
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Couldn't agree with you more, Mrs S.....this has the potential to become a real problem, doesn't it?
 
#110
oy vey! :yucky: Fakes make me sick!!
I hope something can be done about this. But I wouldn't hold my breath. If you close this website down, they will have another one up, under a differet name but selling the same garbage.
 
#111
CynthiaNYC said:
That makes perfect sense to me, actually, and I see your point about some sellers possibly not even knowing the bags are fake. I have come across one or two of those lately, where the seller responded to my questions/challenges about the bag with "I'm a housewife in (Texas/Idaho/wherever there's not many H boutiques) and I got this from (wholesaler/friend/purse party/whatever)!! It has to be real!". Oy. :rolleyes:

Frankly even I am sometimes afraid to buy on eBay, and I trust my instincts & knowledge of H pretty well!! That's why I always try to communicate fully with any potential seller. I trust my gut after having some conversations, usually. If I'm not 100% positive, I walk away, no matter what it is.
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I agree--this is the danger--unwitting ebay sellers and buyers.
 
#112
mrssparkles said:
I see where you are coming from, DQ and I appreciate this level of discussion. We all come from different backgrounds and treat such information rather differently.

I am basically TWO minds about distributing authentication information and exposing sites peddling fakes. I made myself very clear that my personal opinion of the former is to conceal. On the latter, to expose. This reminds me of "Hermes Galleria" which is still an active site today, and how all of us exposed the fakes behind it (the thread is still around). I am sure that action helped to avert some buyers from making a mistake and trusting them.
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I agree. I think, aside from the human rights/working conditions issue, there are 2 issues--protecting unwitting buyers and preventing fakes from diluting the brand.

As we can see, there are 2 sides to posting or not posting the sites with fakes, but IMO, there should never be any posting of identifying characteristics that aid in authentication.
 
#115
Washington Post article today about a proposed bill to allow designers to copyright their designs: I didn't realize they couldn't do so before. No specific mention of Hermes in this article, but based on what it says, it sounds like it would be completely legal (under US law) to copy a bag, stitch-for-stitch, as long as the logo is not copied. I can't believe that!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...007080902019.html?hpid=features1&hpv=national

So, maybe one thing we can do is contact our congresspeople in support of this bill. It doesn't specifically apply to the situation of fake bags complete with logos, but it would be a step forward for the general issue of knock-offs.
 
#116
The US Supreme Court reversed a ruling in favor of the original clothing designer when Walmart had someone copy the design except for minor changes and sold it in their stores making billions. So with the current state of the US law, it is hard to prevent copies of design.
http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/Wal-Mart.htm


http://www.copyright.gov/docs/regstat072706.html

They are recommending a short term for fashion design protection where no one else can imitate like 3 years as compared to the creator's life plus 70 years (copyright) or 14 years from registration (design patents) respectively in the US.
 
#117
BlkLadyLaw said:
The US Supreme Court reversed a ruling in favor of the original clothing designer when Walmart had someone copy the design except for minor changes and sold it in their stores making billions. So with the current state of the US law, it is hard to prevent copies of design.
http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/Wal-Mart.htm


http://www.copyright.gov/docs/regstat072706.html

They are recommending a short term for fashion design protection where no one else can imitate like 3 years as compared to the creator's life plus 70 years (copyright) or 14 years from registration (design patents) respectively in the US.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your professional input.
 
#119
tangle said:
Washington Post article today about a proposed bill to allow designers to copyright their designs: I didn't realize they couldn't do so before. No specific mention of Hermes in this article, but based on what it says, it sounds like it would be completely legal (under US law) to copy a bag, stitch-for-stitch, as long as the logo is not copied. I can't believe that!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...007080902019.html?hpid=features1&hpv=national

So, maybe one thing we can do is contact our congresspeople in support of this bill. It doesn't specifically apply to the situation of fake bags complete with logos, but it would be a step forward for the general issue of knock-offs.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately manufacturers of fakes are not in the US, and the countries they are in have no regard for US/foreign IP law. We're talking about utter lack of governmental control here.
 
#120
I'm not sure if someone else said this already, but if you look carefully at the site, there's not a place where they say outright that these are replicas and not the real thing. If you go to another replica site, it'll say that these are not real, so at least a shopper isn't fooled. But I don't see that here, which makes me think that shoppers believe they are getting real Hermes bags for a fraction of the real price, which is totally misleading.
 
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