Are My GHD® Hair Straighteners Genuine Or Not?
The GHD has received fame as the "must have" hair straightener of the 20th century, with its lucrative advertising, celebrity following, and its revolutionary design with ceramic heating technology it soon became a multi-million dollar company.
However.......like most super brands this fame does come with its downfalls, and that is the counterfeit market.
In its infancy, some 15 years ago, the GHD was widely copied, the 3.1B pink which was produced by GHD to bring public attention to breast cancer, with a donation made on each purchase to the charity, was the first to suffer at the hands of the counterfeiters.
The GHD 3.1B pink was so widely faked that to find an original pair for sale now, is like finding a needle in a haystack, however there are thousands of pink fake dangerous GHD still being sold on the used market with not a single penny having gone to the breast cancer charity, all the profits going into the pockets of criminals.
The counterfeiters then moved to re-producing the black and pink 4.2B models, not only the Hair Straighteners, but the packaging, heat bags, styling DVD and safety / instruction manuals, the fake that was mass produced was the 4.2B Pink and like its earlier model the 3.1B Pink, of those found on the secondhand market, only 1 in 100 is an original GHD product.
But why be concerned I hear you say... the GHD brand is huge and the corporation Jemella Ltd is a multi million pound company producing millions of high end, expensive hair straighteners / hair dryers and hair products every day for sale world wide, so why not buy a cheap fake clone of a GHD after all what harm can it do?
Here at Siriushair® we will try to explain why it is important not to buy counterfeit / fake GHD and in fact any counterfeit goods.
- Is it illegal to sell none genuine fake GHD?
It is illegal to sell either knowingly or not a counterfeit item and if found in possession of them you will be fined.
- Are counterfeit fake GHD dangerous?
A counterfeit item cuts corners when it comes to safety, safety certification is expensive, and so the components used in fakes are none certified, not having passed any safety tests and often deadly.
This link is to an article where a hair straightener caused a house fire. If you look at the picture of the hair straightener you will see at the hinge a metal oval grommet......if you look at my images of fake hinge screws further in this post you will see this type of screw widely used on fake GHD.
Another house fire caused by hair straighteners we can not confirm if it was a GHD hair straightener or not but the devastation is very clear
https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/11664677.flat-is-gutted-by-hair-straighteners-blaze/
More information in the news about the fake market and a response from Amazon about counterfeit electrical products found on their marketing platform.
- But they are cheaper......so why not buy fake GHD?
Profits from the counterfeits fund criminal activities including sales of drugs, sex trafficking as well as prostitution, your money does not go to a good cause.
Recently with the ending of lockdown and people finally being able to venture outside there has been a huge increase in GHD Hair Straightener sales, and this has been noticed by the criminal fraternity, they in turn want a slice of these sales, and have started introducing a new range of fake GHD on the market.
Siriushair® has recently seen a large increase in sales on E-bay of "New GHD" that are advertised as being old stock and so can not be registered on the GHD website, however they state they are genuine and boxed with prices starting at £38.00.
Unfortunately these old stock are the new counterfeit fake GHD
ALL NEW GHD come with a hologram label on the cable and on the body of the GHD, this can be registered on the GHD website and in doing so activates the 2 year warranty, the counterfeit GHD have a universal code which when logged into the website will indicate it is fake.
This is not what the counterfeiters want you to do hence the wording " can not be registered on GHD website".
So what is this code.......unfortunately you have to buy 5000 counterfeit GHD at a time and quite often each batch of 5000 has a different code, however the recent batches coming into the UK have the same code, and in large amounts, so the criminal fraternity must have brought a container of maybe 500000.
Siriushair® has contacted GHD and advised them of the new versions of fake counterfeit GHD and received the following e-mail:
Thank you for your email.
Counterfeiting is an issue faced by all luxury brands and counterfeit electrical products can be dangerous, therefore we strongly advise that you refrain from using any of these products.
ghd has a dedicated Brand Protection team which work hard to tackle the sale of counterfeit goods. We would be grateful if you could provide us with as much information as you can about where you purchased this product, including the name and address of the retailer and copies of any correspondence and receipts. Please forward any information that you have to fake@ghdhair.com.
We must also advise that eBay is not an authorised website to stock ghd products and we would never advise to purchase ghd goods from this website due to the counterfeit items that are listed there.
Kind regards,
Rachel
We have contacted E-bay who have stated they would remove all offending listings, they still remain.
Trading Standards are investigating but listings remain.
We have contacted the sellers directly and yes we received abuse and statements such as:
- " I assume you are just going through the listings and clearing up the fake stuff which is a positive thing as I'm sure there are a lot of questionable items for sale although I'm not sure why you would think my items are not genuine. Saying that, I understand that it could just be a case of clearing out the competitors, which is to be expected I suppose."
- "You see it doesn't fall on you to contact everyone with a listing, that's the job of ebay and trading standards. I'm sure you can appreciate my slight annoyance. "
- "To who may concern I don't understand it. You repair GHD, we sell GHD, it is irrelevant.
We got our products from GHD's foreign factories, so we know our products are authentic. We also have regular invoice.It's old version machine so it can not registered in the system and can't be sold through official channels.
If you are free to report others' listings, others can also do the same thing, because your listings are also not allowed on ebay,you do not have the authority to repair GHD products.
We don't want to do this, so we hope you can stop it. Our buyers are not fools. If they bought fake products, they will naturally complain to ebay. You can see that we got 100% buyer satisfaction. There is no problem with our products.
Above is our explanation. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.For malicious competition, we will also protect our rights reasonably and legally." - "Irrespective of your intentions, I won't be bullied off ebay by threats of authorities or enforcement.Do not contact me again."
IF THE PRICE SEEMS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE IT PROBABLY IS!
A sure check of authenticity for all GHD with a sliding on/off switch.....if underneath the hinge caps you see the following then rest assured you have an authentic, genuine pair of GHD.
- GENUINE GHD SCREW
"Here at Siriushair® we break GHD so you can repair yours!"