The overwhelming popularity of eBay has led to a surge of interest among fashion conscious but budget minded women in collecting designer bags and purses. While it’s rare to find purses for cheap prices, in light of the tremendous cost of many new designer bags, they can often be had at very significant discounts.
There is available on the internet a number of excellent articles detailing the best ways to take part in the fun of buying on eBay and minimizing one’s risk of being sold inauthentic articles. If you’d like to start or expand your collection of cheap designer purses, educating yourself in that regard is essential. While eBay and most of its sellers are committed to customer satisfaction, it’s not possible to completely avoid the responsibility of let the buyer beware.
Having said all that, and assuming you educate and protect yourself by dealing with reputable sellers with good feedback, let’s suppose you make a purchase of a cheap bag. You take delivery of it and unpack it and give it the once over. How do you know if it’s genuine or a high quality rip off?
Unless you have a substantial amount of experience at examining such articles, you may feel quite unconfident in your ability to assess your purchase. Even if you’ve had high quality department store label purses or handbags, you may fail to totally appreciate the ‘cut above’ quality of genuine designer purses and bags.
As a general rule, and defect of materials or workmanship will tell you that the item is a fraud. Designers simply do not allow defective items into the stream of commerce bearing their name. It’s a good idea to take your purchase to a store that sells purses and bags by your designer and compare what you’ve bought to their stock of genuine articles.
Compare not just the workmanship, but logos, badges and linings. Does the leather or fabric have the same feel and heft? Is the hardware of the same quality?
Even if you get a cheap bag that purports to be by a designer, it pays to make these comparisons soon after your purchase. If you find problems or discrepancies you will then be armed to contact your seller and advise them in detail about your concerns.