When it comes to luxury goods, I’ve always been a supporter of the “Fight Against Fakes” cause, or in short, anti-counterfeiting. Needless to say, can you imagine how appalled I felt when I found out that there are online stores selling receipts for designer bags a few years back? Sure, I’ve heard of fake designer bags being sold along with the fake receipts, but this really takes it to another level. These people don’t sell fake bags, or any bags at all for that matter, but just the receipts. And their reason for doing so? “It’s for people who have lost their original receipts for the designer bags that they have bought, sort of like a ‘replacement receipt'”. And guess what? For bags that come with serial numbers, we can’t afford to have mismatched serial numbers on the receipts now, can we? But they’ve got that covered too! The receipts can be “modified” so that the serial number on your bag matches the one on the receipt.

I  think that it’s a lame excuse for operating such a store. However, I can’t be too quick to judge. While there might have been a genuine intention to actually help people who have really lost their original receipts (I mean this we will never know for sure), but just think of how this can literally be abused. Imagine someone buying a fake bag and then going on to purchase a “replacement receipt” and then selling that replica off to someone and passing it off as the real deal? Or personal shoppers (this has happened to people I know personally!) using these “receipts” to scam unknowing customers into purchasing an “authentic” bag. More and more people are going to be conned into buying an “authentic” piece with “receipt” as proof!

If you live in Asia, you’d know now that replicas can look as authentic as the real deal — it’s so well made that you can hardly tell the difference because even the details are the same (yup, counterfeiters are starting to invest in making the details alike, including the lining, perfect stitching, etc). I don’t know about you, but this is might scary! Something really needs to be done about these things…

Image via Baghunter and South China Morning Post