This may be a very niche question, but I’ve recently wanted to buy some perfumes and was checking out Mercari to see if there’s discounted / second hand bottles as it would be cheaper than the full new bottles in store (some of which can’t even be found in Japan somehow).
I found some of that, but I also came across super discounted perfumes from shops that mass sell perfumes advertised as “brand new still in package never opened” and said to be originating from parallel import.
The thing is, all these shops use the same picture of these products, and they’re sometimes a third of the original price if not less.
At this point, I’d just avoid and say it’s just fake, but they have hundreds and sometimes thousands of positive reviews and very little bad ones.
From what I understand, Japanese people are very strict about their reviews (example : incredible restaurants getting a 3-4/5 max etc.). And I also keep thinking how likely could it be that all of this fake perfume market could be thriving in Japan especially on a renowned platform such as mercari.
Thoughts ?
Experience ?
(Example : look for “eau duelle” on mercari, you’ll see some bottles clearly being sold by individuals looking to sell their old bottles, but more than half the listings are 100ml for less than 5k when original price is 15k+ from shops that only sell high end perfumes and have hundreds and thousands of 🙂 reviews and very very few 🙁 reviews)
by Calm-University-7773