The Authentication Risks for Hermès Resale
As the luxury resale market for Hermès handbags continues to thrive, the importance of ensuring their authenticity is more crucial than ever. While online authentication tools have become increasingly popular among professional luxury resellers, relying on them doesn’t guarantee a genuine product.
In this article, we will explore the risks and limitations of online authentication for Hermès products, and highlight the key factors that professional luxury resellers need to keep in mind to ensure a successful and authentic transaction.
- Essential authentication elements
- Online authentication websites
- Why relying on online authentication is not enough
- The importance of buying from professional resellers
Essential authentication elements
When it comes to authenticating Hermès products, there are several essential elements that professional luxury resellers must consider. These include the quality of the materials used, the craftsmanship of the product, the placement and quality of the brand's stamp and reference codes, and the accuracy of the product's dimensions.
But another crucial key that needs to be taken into account is the source from which the product has been bought since authenticity can vary drastically depending on this point.
If the bag comes from a safe provenance, which means that its acquisition was recent and direct in an official Hermès store, there is some certainty of the authenticity of the product, which is accompanied by an invoice and a payment receipt in store.
However, the buyer can demand a bank movement to see it in real time in the buyer’s banking app, this justifies the payment of the product in the store. Since there have been cases in which invoices and payment receipts have been falsified. The bank movement detailing the amount, date, time, and store is an extremely important element, which cannot be falsified since it depends on a bank to be issued.
When a bag is purchased through third parties, it becomes even more complicated, since it involves one or more intermediaries between the actual buyer and the final customer. This product could easily be a counterfeit, as today they have become very meticulous, and almost indistinguishable from an original Hermès bag.
Counterfeiters are capable of creating exact replicas of a Hermès bag, using leather from suppliers whose quality is identical or close to that of the French atelier, and strive to imitate every detail of an original model. Counterfeiters often take reference codes from existing real bags and stamp them on the inside of a fake bag, allowing them to create fake invoices and payment receipts that look identical to the originals by adding the reference code of an original bag.
However, it would be really difficult for them to create a fake bank movement, because not only it needs to be from an official banking app, but also because it takes a lot of time to counterfeit a Hermès bag for it to look exactly like an original one, and let alone to counterfeit all the documents, it would be almost impossible to do it in a short amount of time.
For this reason, the bank movement that justifies the payment of the Hermès bag in an official store is one of the definitive proof that the bag is completely authentic, added to a meticulous review of each of the aforementioned details, and the presence of an original invoice and payment receipt verifiable with the Hermès databases.
Online authentication websites
Today there are several online authentication websites. Here are 6 of the most popular authentication apps of the moment:
And although the aforementioned websites claim that they can authenticate and identify some luxury products, almost all of them work remotely, which means that they try to authenticate a Hermès product solely through pictures. Needless to say, this method cannot provide trustworthy authentication, and let alone just by examining pictures.
We are aware of testimonials from real customers, which show that despite all these websites guaranteeing and promising a true certification of authenticity, many times a bag is confirmed to be authentic and then turns out to be a replica.
The reason falls by its own weight, no one can authenticate a product with pictures or even with a leather scan, because there is simply no certainty that the photos that are sent to these entities correspond to the bag that requires certification. That’s why these websites can only detect bad counterfeits, but not good or perfect copies.
The correct thing would be for these companies to have the product in their hands, in order to certify it. This would be the most correct way to do it, and assuming that the person who receives and inspects the bag is qualified to do so.
Even so, no one can assure that the protocol on which they are based for their authenticity is not based on pictures of other similar bags. Such websites can only detect bad fakes, as perfect copies are impossible to detect. A true expert needs to have the invoice, the payment receipt, and the possibility to check the banking movement in the buyer’s banking app to be completely sure that a handbag is 100% authentic.
But all these factors become inconvenient and come at a great cost that these companies are not interested in taking on. Sending a product of great value, receiving it, storing it, examining it, and then returning it to the client, implies a lot of responsibility, inconveniences, and high costs, which is not attractive to the client. That’s why online authenticators put a fixed rate through their website and try to make it easy for customers that don’t want to wait.
Why relying on online authentication is not enough
The process of certifying the authenticity of an Hermès handbag is not an easy task, because it entails countless elements that require attention. That’s why online authentication websites are not prepared to offer a real authentication service, and they must not be trusted with the absolute authenticity of a product, because they can never truly tell if a product is original or not.
Online authentication websites can try to spot really bad fakes, as they may be able to detect important details of the structure that differ from the original bags, but when it comes to a really good or even moderately good fake, it is impossible to know if the product is genuine or fake, especially if it is done only through photographs.
When it comes to a physical examination of an Hermès handbag, it is also challenging to try to verify its authenticity with the naked eye, since like we stated before, some counterfeits are indistinguishable from the original bags, so much that not even a leather examination can reveal a true result, because many counterfeiters use high-quality leather that is similar to the ones used by the brand.
The truth is that certifying that a Hermès handbag is authentic is completely impossible if the expert doesn’t have access to the original invoice, payment receipt, and bank movement of the transaction, only these elements make it possible for someone to completely certify that a Hermès product is authentic, since they can be compared to Hermès databases and banking information.
The importance of buying from professional resellers
Many customers buy Hermès bags as a fashion accessory, while others do so for investment purposes, and since it is something as important as an exclusive luxury product, authentication is a key element when deciding to buy one of these products.
It is well known that many of the products offered on the resale market are not authentic, and that thousands of people are affected by bad practices and increasing counterfeits, especially those that are hidden in the luxury resale marketplaces all over the internet.
That is why when making the commitment to purchase a Hermès bag, it is very important to resort to a renowned and reputable professional luxury reseller, a person who is capable of offering traceability from the purchase of the product in the official store to the hands of the final customer, someone who is willing to offer invoices, payment receipts, and original bank movements that corroborate the transparency of their business. Only then is it possible to purchase a Hermès bag with confidence and be 100% sure that it is an original product.
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