Fakes – My brush with fake Bioderma Sensibio

Remember the last time you bought something really cheap online, thinking that you have scored a bargain with your haul? I made a shocking discovery recently so I thought I should alert all beauty junkies like me who would at times take the risk to buy something cheap online.

I bought a batch of 4 bottles of Sensibio from a vendor six months back from an online shop. There was a 1 for 1 sale and I thought, geez… thats really good deal! So i placed the order and you can imagine how thrilled I was when they arrived.

Fast forward 6 months later, I finally finished my bottle of Bioderma Sensibio that i had purchased at retail price from local pharmacy. So I thought hey, I can now open one of the four bottles to use now! The bottles of Sensibio looks genuine as the vendor had claimed. However, my first reaction when I wiped the solution with my cotton pad was “hmmm, this doesn’t feel quite right… its quite slippery and foamy…”. I thought I was just too tired, so I used it again for the next few days just want to be absolutely certain that something is not right. On the fifth day, I couldn’t take the soapiness any longer, so i started googling to see if there was supposed to be new formula in the product or whether I was over reacting. I chances upon a blog which described how Sensibio should feel like on our skin, and the texture of fakes. Then I recalled that I still had a small sample bottle of Sensibio tucked somewhere in my room (bought it from pharmacy) so I broke the seal to make a comparison. True enough, the Sensibio that I’d  bought from the pharmacy was exactly how it should have been, but the one I bought online at one for one promotion was way too soapy and had a faint apple scent.

The fortunate part of this story is that I did manage to obtain refund for 3 out of 4 bottles. The vendor refunded without question, and I am now left with 4 bottles of fakes in my room.

From this I learnt that I should have been more prudent and careful with those super sales online, although there are genuine sales around. I just want to caution fellow readers out there to be more careful in dealing with vendors who claim to import products in parallel.

How about you? Have you experienced similar incidents?