Fake ghd – the easy way to waste £61!

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For much of 2009, the key search pages on Google for ghd (i.e. those returned when you search for ghd straighteners) have included a number of ever changing scam websites that claim to sell genuine ghd hair straighteners (and often claim to be Official Retailers) but instead sell counterfeit hair straighteners.

If you’ve arrived at this article, chances are you are worried about fake ghds and want some information on how to identify if a particular website is selling genuine or fake ghd hair straighteners.

Firstly, don’t worry you are not alone in being unsure about which websites to trust when it comes to buying ghd stylers and other hair products.  You can see from the extensive comments below that many other consumers have run into difficulties when shopping for ghd hair straighteners and sadly, some have ended up buying fake ghds that are not warrantied and, indeed, may actually be danagerous.

If you think you have bought a ghd product that is not genuine then the best approach is to call ghd on 0845 330 1133 or use the online product checker on their website.

Alternatively, if you are wondering if a particular website is legitimate, then the following steps should help you:

1. Is the ghd retailer’s site based in the UK?

Does the site have a clearly visable UK postal address?

2. Does the site selling ghds have a UK landline telephone number?

That could include 0800 or 0845 but not numbers starting with 07 or any number with an international dialing code.

3. Is the ghd website VAT registered?

Check the terms and conditions – you should find a VAT number and also a Registered Company number.  Sites that are legitimate don’t need to hide these and will always have them on display (indeed, displaying such information along with postal address is a legal requirement).

4. Will your ghds be delivered from within the UK?

Check the small print or any delivery details page. Your ghds should be dispatched from within the UK using a domestic delivery service that takes no more than 2 or 3 days.

5. Can you use a payment method other than Paypal?

This is an important tip.  If the site only allows you to pay using Paypal and doesn’t have its own credit card processing  then it is almost certainly a scam site.  Unfortunately it is very easy to accept payments using Paypal without having to undergo the same level of stringent checks that a company must pass in order to accept credit cards directly via their own merchant account.   A site that has its own credit card processing will not require you to login or pay via Paypal-branded pages.

6. Does the site offer “Tax Free” or “No Sales Tax” or “Non-Tax”

If so, then it is a scam -100%.  You live in the UK and the only websites you can buy genuine ghd products from are in the UK also.  Thus you can’t buy “tax free” – it is not legal to sell products free of “sales tax” (i.e VAT).  Can you buy a Sony Bravia tax free in the UK? No  Can you buy a Nintendo Wii tax free in the UK, No?

So can you buy the most popular hair straightener tax free?

7. Does the site sell other hair care products besides ghd?

Almost every genuine ghd website sells many other products alongside ghd hair straighteners (there are a few exceptions but these will not fail on the other points in this article).  You can normally expect to find Tigi, Kerastase, Paul Mitchell and other such Salon brands. You shouldn’t expect to find “ugg boots” or any other highly expensive and commonly counterfeited product.

8.  Does the site “feel” right?

To help you understand what we mean, we’ll take the scam site “www.ghd-hair-straighteners.net” as an example.

Look at the Privacy policy and the first line reads “Thank you for visit Official Ghd Online Retailer website and reviewing our privacy policy.”  Not only should “visit” be “visiting” but rather than the site name they have used “Official Ghd Online Retailer website” – so that they can cut and paste this same privacy policy into their next scam site.  Also nowhere in the privacy policy is there an address to which you can write to obtain a copy of your details (a legal right under the Data Protection Act).

Their shipping page uses a completely different text colour to the rest of site and again is written by someone with very poor English “Please contact us within 24 hours after delivered.”

Also, from their delivery details:

“Most approved orders leave our warehouse within one business day. The time it takes to receive your package varies depending on the shipping method you choose, but our standard is 8-days, meaning you will receive your package within 1week usually”

8 days?  For UK delivery by DHL, Fedex or UPS (as they claim later)?  Even if they were using one of the cheapest services from DHL, the slowest you’d expect to get your order would be 2 days following dispatch. 8 days pretty much guarantees you that the delivery is originating overseas – and is thus fake.

Now each scam site will have slightly different black marks that make identifying it reasonably obvious, but they will always be there.

9. Are they selling the “ghd gold” hair straightener with cluch bag?

This hasn’t been available for years from ghd, but was remarkably popular with counterfeiters who much still have relatively large stocks remaining. No legitimate website has this product listed.

10. IS THE PRICE TOO CHEAP?

This is really what it boils down to.  Is the price just too cheap?  We make it our job to source the cheapest ghds around to display on our website and we’ve NEVER seen genuine ghd IV styler’s priced at less than £87.99 (and even that was only for a few days, athough do note that the ghd mini IV styler can be as low as £80 as it has a £10 RRP).  There is very little margin to play with when selling ghd hair straighteners and as such prices of £61, or £59 or whatever are JUST NOT POSSIBLE!

No matter how desperate you are to grab a big discount, you need to understand that ghd’s are not even sold to retailers for £61, so there is 0% chance that a site selling them for around that price (or even £20+ more) is going to be genuine.   You cannot buy anything at less than the wholesale price, so why would you be able to buy the most popular hair straightener in the world for less than wholesale?

Finally if you are still willing to “take a chance” then please bear in mind that by buying a fake set of ghds, you are not only funding organised criminal behaviour, you might be risking the life of you and your family as the product could potentially catch fire even when switched off (but still plugged in to the mains).  A fake product will not have passed any electrical safety tests, won’t have been CE tested and will have been put together with the cheapest components available.

So remember, there are plenty of fake ghd products out there, and the only way to ensure that you are buying a genuine ghd product that is properly tested and manufacturered to the appropriate standards is to buy from a ghd approved retailer – check out our ghd price comparison tables on our homepage.

With your peace of mind our priority, here at Compareghd.com we only list ghd approved retailers in our price comparison tables, ensuring that you get the cheapest price for genuine ghd products!

Tagged as: counterfeit ghd, fake ghd, fake ghds, how to tell fake ghds