The fear of fakes. Temptation, will power and regret.

So, in the world of fragrance we often find highly sought after fragrances out of stock in certain countries. I am in the UK and here we have fragrances that are spoken about all over YouTube being incredibly cheap but in our circumstances because they are so hard to find they can become very expensive when in stock and often sell out in days, sometimes even hours.

An example of this recently is Hawas Rasasi for him. Fragrantica is full of recent reviews about how amazing it is for the crazy cheap price of $50. Here in the UK it was impossible to find but it became available at Sephora for double the price because they know it’s in high demand. Fragrance X even had testers for a while but they are easy to empty the bottles and fill them with fake juice according to some people so you should always buy a proper bottle and I was going to on my next pay day but by then even they had whacked the price up to about £80 instead of roughly £50

Another that has been very popular is the clone house of Lattafa and one in particular of theirs is "Khamrah | Lattafa / لطافة" which should cost £30 , but when you look at the price on Fragrantica with Notino as one of the discounters , it is sitting at £90!!! Luckily they are being kind and doing a 60% sale of it and it is another you see being talked about a lot and the only place I was almost willing to put my money on the line to buy it from was Amazon. Not quite as infamous as e-bay for fakes but pretty close to it. Lucky I held off and it seems to have paid off now that it is in stock at Notino , for now at least.

I am curious has there been a fragrance you wanted so much that all the trusted high street stores that are also online now, have been sold out for almost a year, but you do your daily google and up it pops without fail every day on e-bay or Amazon and you think to yourself, “Wow not only is it available but it’s cheaper than everywhere else!” 🤩.

Have you been pulled in thinking “No way would they fake a cheap clone like that” and ended up pulling the trigger on one of those less than trustworthy websites that have stock coming through the roof? Meanwhile everywhere that you normally would go has not had any in stock for a year and in doing so you get the delivery. The package looks like it has not been interfered with so that’s good, you get in to the package and the box for the product is there, sealed with wrapping film, you open it up and it looks like the pictures of it you have seen everywhere and then you do what you have been waiting for all this time, after a year of hunting this fragrance every damn day and you finally have it in your hands ,the spray button has your finger on it and at last you spray! Expecting this orgasmic smell to please you in so many ways the juice whips over your skin and filling your senses … Oh NO! This is not at all as described by the hundreds of reviews you have been reading, ah wait though, maybe it’s a new batch right? It must be since you had to wait this long, yeah that’s it it’s a new batch and needs time to macerate, all will be good in a month or two. So a few months later you open it up again with the anticipation of it all, it has been sat there in your collection all this time and every morning you wake up knowing it’s there and you pick something else knowing what you really wanted was that bottle that’s been macerating for how long now? Finally today is that day and it’s going to smell so much better and last so much longer. Damn! Nothing has changed 😭. This is when you realise it’s not real, it is a fake and now you know it 💯 %

For me this is not something I have experienced (as of yet) and the reason is because every time I go near E-bay or Amazon I play out that exact scenario I described above in my head and I keep my money. I have more than enough fragrances and lots of others that are similar in stores that I can buy from instead, because what I don’t have lots of is money to waste on a gamble. Sure I have heard ways that you can get a good purchase on those sites and people mention a good seller they got the real thing from on E-bay but how do I know that they are that person who owns that seller account and are on the forums promoting themselves as genuine? The answer is I don’t.

I don’t doubt there are honest people on those sites and I hate that they lose out also because of the scammers making people scared to buy on a website that doe’s have genuine people on them that do sell at amazing prices.

So have you ever made that mistake in your early days of collecting? What happened? Where was it from? Could you send it back and get a refund? Or maybe you was lucky as I have heard of people getting a fake that actually smelled exactly like the real thing and performed better. Anyone reading, this, please don’t think that’s a good reason to try get a fake because there are other reasons to avoid them. They sometimes use very dangerous chemicals that can have harmful effects on your body. There are lots of videos on YouTube on how to spot fakes in general and then the popular Real Vs Fake videos where someone has the fake and the real bottle with their boxes side by side and they show you the differences. Often if you ask them kindly enough for them to make a video on a fragrance that there are no Real Vs Fake for a fragrance, they will do it for you.

The times I mostly do a check is if I get a bottle and the performance is way off from what it is reviewed to be by both YouTube or people in comments of forums after doing a batch check first to see if it’s a relatively new batch and maybe hasn’t had time to macerate.

So please if you have had any experience with a fake even from a reputable store which is worse imo or any store please, I would like to hear how you handled the situation and maybe you can help educate us on what to do if this happens.

Thanks for reading.