Hi, everyone! Welcome to another “Reader Submission”.
I must say that I was really surprised and shocked when I learned what happened to Nadia after reading her email. She was trying to buy a Gucci Ophidia GG Shoulder Bag from Poshmark. And it turns out to be fake even though she was being careful about it.
Alright, I shouldn’t be jibber-jabber here. Let’s take a look at Nadia’s email for more detail about this “Poshmark Scam”.
Here is the content of the original email (I bolded the parts that are worth paying attention to):
| Hi Angie,
How are you doing? I’m a fan of your blog and hoping you could post this horrible experience of mine in your blog, so to help others avoid what happened to me. Not long ago, I bought a Gucci Ophidia GG Shoulder Bag on the Poshmark website. The seller was asking for $1,200 and I offered $800. She accepted it. I was really glad coz I thought $800 was a great deal considering the bag still looked pretty new even though she told me she had worn it before. And I want to emphasize the price here. There were a lot of Gucci shoulder bags under $300 when I was looking for the one I wanted, but I deliberately avoided those bcoz I knew they were too good to be true, so those must be fakes. More importantly, according to Poshmark.com, they have this policy that offers free authentication on all items over $500, which made it more convincing that the Gucci bag I bought should be “real”. I was more than happy when the bag arrived. And I totally believed it was authentic, without a hint of suspicion. Until one day my friend knew about the bag and told me that I should get it re-authenticated. Her reason was no one would let go of this nearly brand-new Gucci Ophidia bag for less than $1,000. Of course, I thought she was joking. However, the other day she sent me a link to a website that offered authentication services. Then I realized it was not a joke. So I listened to her. I mean, she has tons of bags, she’s like a bag expert. Besides, there’s no harm in it. Right? In short, the Gucci bag was confirmed as a fake by two different places. I didn’t believe it the first time and I thought they must make a mistake. I mean Poshmark already authenticated this bag. So I searched for another organization only to get the same result. I WAS COMPLETELY LOST. Didn’t know whom to trust. After I told my friend about this, I started doing some research and my friend said she would ask some people to see if they knew anything. Then, after so much digging, we found that it seems Poshmark does not actually authenticate its items in person. They just send pics of your item to other authentication services. I didn’t know why the authentication service that worked with Poshmark had a different opinion from the ones I went to. But I started to accept the fact that my Gucci bag from Poshmark.com had a high chance of not being real. They sent an “authenticated” fake Gucci bag to me. Right now, I am in the phase of contacting Poshmark.com to see if I can get my money back. And I will make sure to give you an update about this. From now on, I am done buying from the Poshmark website no matter how good the deal would be. I’ve also attached some pics of the Gucci bag for your information. Yours, |
I can’t imagine how upset Nadia was when she learned that her beloved Gucci bag was not real.
I checked on the Poshmark website and saw they had this Buyer Protection Policy, so I think Nadia is likely to get her money back. But since I haven’t been through this, I don’t know how long the process will take. Let’s hope for the best for her.
In addition, I also want this to be a head up for those who prepare to buy authentic items from a third-party platform – there is always a risk no matter how careful you are.
Yea for these kinds of items, I avoid and advise people to avoid Poshmark like the plague. Unfortunately, there are other sites that are supposed to be genuinely authenticated by the company’s authenticators themselves that have been reported for selling fakes as authentic brands. *cough* the Real Real uh hem. Unfortunately with so many insanely amazing quality replicas/dupes flooding the resale market, they are slipping by these companies’ appointed authenticators. If you’re looking for an authentic resale bag, don’t just look for authenticated, look for authenticated by a licensed or verified authenticator/luxury brand authenticator company or professional. If you’re looking for an authenticated luxe brand bag Sothebys has auctions and buy-it-now listings for luxe brand items. They can be a bit pricier than most re-sale sites, but they are legit. Also What Goes Around Come Around, NYC is very good for resale luxe brands items. But Poshmark… NO eBay NO even the Real Real NO and so many others.
My guess these scammers are good at what they do. They send pics of the real one and send the fake one.
It’s always good to click on the photo and do a Google image search of the provided photo. Everywhere that photo has been used will come up. Heck even just a screen shot search will provide info if it was a photo pirated from the internet. 🙂