This woman spent nearly $1,000 on a pair of luxury sandals. As it turns out, they might be fakes.
Customers have become apprehensive about buying luxury goods, particularly handbags, at retailers like T.J. Maxx and Marshalls that sell brand-name items at lower prices.
Within the last year, multiple people have posted about buying an item at T.J. Maxx or Marshalls, only to get home and realize they may have just spent a pretty penny on a knockoff.
Some suspect that the retailers aren’t purposefully selling fakes but lack quality control when processing returns.
Some say a customer will buy a luxury item and then return it to get their money back. But they’re not returning the item they purchased, instead, they’re “giving back” a knockoff. So the scammer gets to keep the original item while putting counterfeit items on store shelves for unassuming customers to buy.
Some TikTokers have made videos to help people spot fakes, while others have shared the fakes they accidentally bought (like this woman and her red Louboutins).
That may be exactly what happened to Aja Bella (@ajabella2) who likely thought she was safe buying from luxury retailer Saks Fifth Avenue.
“I feel like Saks Fifth Avenue sold me a pair of fake Chanel sandals February 14,” Aja said.
Aja explained that she was down in Miami for Valentine’s Day and got a pair of light pink Chanel sandals as a gift. She didn’t decide to wear them until a few days ago when she got home.
At first, she said she planned to return the shoes, noticing that they were a display item, but because they were from a Saks outlet store she couldn’t return them to a regular Saks store, so she was stuck with them.
She said when she took them off, she noticed something weird. The label on the left shoe shifted to the left, which shouldn’t happen given that the label is stitched down.
Upon closer inspection, Aja said she realized the stitched label is just a sticker that’s glued down.
“Did Sak Fifth Avenue just sell me a pair of fake Chanels? Maybe I’m tripping. I need experts to tap in. Chanel experts? Maybe this is just the way you make your sandals, where you just glue them down, sticker. I assume that they were supposed to be stitched. Especially for them to be almost an $1,000 sandal,” Aja said.
“Like, come on, man. This is so disappointing. They’re falling apart already,” Aja lamented.
Aja’s video has nearly half a million views on TikTok. People in the comments section had plenty to say about the possible knockoffs.
“DHgate swap out,” the top comment read.
“It’s giving legion,” a person said, referring to the scammer from Reesa Teesa’s TikTok series.
“I work at Neimans & honestly alot of Chanel items have been defective lately I’m not sure why,” a person said.
“This is probably a Chanel quality control issue,” another countered.
The Daily Dot reached out to Aja for comment via Instagram direct message and to Chanel via email.