Do You Actually Save Money When Buying Counterfeit Goods? Here Are The Real Reasons Why You Actually Don’t

When visiting commercial areas like Divisoria and Greenhills, you will see scores of stalls hawking designer bags bearing the brands “Louis Vuitton,” “Gucci,” and “Chanel.” They may look and feel like genuine products, but they are actually just cheap knockoffs for people who want to experience the feeling of having such brands pressed on their skin. While they may actually look like their real counterparts, do people actually save when they buy counterfeit goods instead of the genuine ones? Here are the reasons why buying fake products aren’t actually worth your money.

Substandard quality

Shoppers who are not savvy when it comes to spotting the quality of fake goods can easily mistake them as real one. However, people with discriminating eye when it comes to the quality of the products can definitely see through the deception of counterfeit goods. While knockoffs such as fake sunglasses may be cheaper than their real counterparts by tenfold, do not expect the same quality from such products. Since the price of fake items is cheaper, expect that the materials used to make the product are also substandard. If a pair of glasses offers protection from the sun’s ultraviolet rays, do not expect its pair counterpart to offer the same kind of protection to your eyes.

Potential health risks

Aside from the shoddy quality of counterfeit goods, another possible reason why you should stay away from them is potential health risks involved with fake products, especially the ones that are used on the body. Imitation make ups such as lipsticks, blush-ons, and eyeliners may have unwanted chemicals that can cause allergic reactions to your skins or worse, even serious medical conditions. According to health experts, fake cosmetic products contain high amounts of nickel, lead, and mercury, harmful substances that can cause serious health problems. If you don’t want to suffer from dermatological diseases and other health problems, you may want to stay away from fake make up products.

Serious market losses

When you purchase fake products, you are not merely buying products that are not worth your money. You are also taking away the livelihood of honest working people. When companies lose money due to continuous patronage of counterfeit goods, the fallback will always be on the workers involved—from the hardworking manufacturers to store clerks, they are the ones who will be affected when you buy fake products. Economic losses due to counterfeit goods can be devastating, both in large and small-scale levels.

Higher prices of real goods

When companies suffer from losses due to people buying counterfeit goods, they pass the burden of their losses to the consumers by increasing the price of their products. As a means to compensate for their losses, their products slowly become out of reach of buyers who will not trade quality over cheap price tags. These companies are fighting counterfeiting—at the cost of people paying more for their items. How else would companies recover the losses incurred by fake products? In the future, we will all be surprised that products have soared twice their worth due to counterfeiting.

In the end, there is no legitimate excuse to purchase fake goods. Both the manufacturers and the consumers are on the losing side of this. The only winners in this game, after all, are the counterfeiters, who are making quick bucks because people continually patronize fake products.