A little advice?

[ulf]

I followed the link in the first post in this thread and checked out the bag in question, as well as other offerings by the same seller. I have to say that I'm very suspicious about the authenticity of these bags and accessories... They appear to be fairly well made but a lot of details/materials seem odd or unusual.

Most of the plain leathers have a strange rubbery shine to them, the holes in the buckle straps look slightly too large. The triangular metal Prada logo is very visible on practically all the bags, right in the middle of the front of them; in my experience these are usually placed more discreetly on the side of real Prada bags. I've never seen the big messenger bag with a front logo, for instance. (I might be confusing it with a similar model, though.)

The leather wallets are also adorned with the metal logo; the ones I've seen (incl my own) simply have Prada embossed in the leather. The dustbags are all white with black print, the ones that came with my bags were navy with navy print. The dustbags probably come in different colours depending on what colour/style of bag you buy but they're definitely not all white.

The engravings on the hardware don't look perfectly neat everywhere and appear to be facing the wrong way in some places on some bags. The overall finish is less than perfect on quite a few items. There are more things I find odd but since I don't have intimate knowledge about Prada's entire line of bags, I'll keep quiet about those.

Sooo... I'm suspicious. Has anyone bought anything from this seller?

 

[LabelKing]

Yes it does seem that the Prada bag has some nuances to the real ones. The Pradas I've seen at Neimans all had some type of patent leather for the buckles, and such. Also as Ulf pointed out the holes seemd large.

Also I checked out the seller's other auctions, and there was an Armani belt that looked extremely badly made. And on the box it states "cinture" when since Armani is an Italian brand it should have "cintura" instead of "cinture" which is French without the "e." In French belt is "ceinture."

The Prada wallet looked odd as "Made in Italy" was not together with the Prada name inside.

 

[ulf]

The Prada wallet looked odd as "Made in Italy" was not together with the Prada name inside.

This is actually correct, at least on some (all?) models. All my Prada stuff is genuine, bought from a reputable retailer. Inside my wallet it says "Prada" with "Milano" underneath on one side/panel, "Made in Italy" on another. And speaking of Prada and Milan, I'm moving to Milan sometime in Oct/Nov. I'll be there for 2 years, maybe longer. Â

 

[GQgeek]

Well I bought one of the messenger bags and it arrived at my friends house yesterday. He's going to re-ship it to me in Canada so I'll get it sometime next week.

Last week I was up in Montreal and I went to Holt Renfrew. They had a lot of Prada bags and one of them looked, as far as I can remember, exactly like the one I ordered. I didn't look really closely at them but I did pick it up and feel the material etc. I can tell you that the leather for the straps wasn't patent leather. Aside from that, I can't say too much about the details.

As for the belts, you're right it should be Cintura, seems pretty fishy to me. On the other hand, my friend said the belts were VERY nice, and he's pretty in to clothes. Again, I'll have the judge the quality for myself when I get them. I own other Armani belts so I can compare the quality. Aside from the typo, what made you say they looked badly made?

Anyway, when I get my bag, I'll definitely go back to Holt's and do a really close inspection of the bags there to compare them. If I got a fake one I'll be sending it back cause that's not what I bid on.

 

[LabelKing]

What I thought odd of the belt was that the GA was rather badly engraved(?) on the buckle. On my Dunhill, and YSL belts the logos are very well made with the smallest details worked out. For some reason the belt buckle looks rather dull, and just sort of fakish.

And another point is the box. I have seen real Armani boxes, and the paper was not of that type. The name also seems badly printed. The thing that is most disturbing is the "cinture."

 

[GQgeek]

I fired off an email to the ebay store in question asking about the discrepancy. She responded saying that quite honestly she'd wouldn't have known that it should be cinture instead of cintura (guess she doesn't know italian heh). She also offered to provide proofs of purchase from her vendors (who she says are reputable and have been in business for 14 years) if I required it. I doubt I'll bother cause she said that if I thought they were fakes, she would give a complete refund anyway (and I have no reason not to take her word on that given the huge number of positives).

Printers aren't perfect either. I've met people that were here visiting Quebecor on business trips up from the states because some idiot missed an error or introduced one that wasn't there in the first place and it needed to be corrected ASAP and they wanted to oversee the rest of the job. So a typo isn't unheard of. As for the printing on the labels, it looks fine to me. In some places it doesn't look as sharp as it should be but that's just cause they've been photographed and there's some blurring due to the focus.

The typo really makes sets your mind thinking, but errors aren't unheard of in printing... It's totally possible that a number of them got printed with a typo before they realized there was one.. And lastly, do you really think that 2700 other bidders wouldn't have given a negative by now if they were peddling fakes as authentic? Certainly the typo, especially, makes you wonder about the authenticity... But think a minute about where else you've seen them: books, brochures, manuals, etc. Why not a box?

I think we're being a tad over-skeptical here because it's over the internet. IMO, it's one thing for people to buy fakes off a street corner in ny for 50 bucks or whatever they charge and not be pissed off that it's fake. There's no illusion that they're buying the real thing. However, if someone is paying hundreds of dollars for the real thing, I'm pretty sure that by now SOMEONE would have left some bad feedback and notified ebay of the scam.

Anyway like i've said a few times now, when it arrives I'll let everyone know.

 

[High_Roller]

Yeah, probably a typo? I think the seller uses the same picture for every belt he/she sells, since they are mostly the same Giorgio Armani belt, so maybe it was that one box with the error on it. When i first saw them, I never thought they were real, with the "Buy it now" price set at a mere $55, while on the same day, Gucci belts go for $100 and up. But I did find Armani belts at a discount shop for $50 canadian dollars, so I guess the price is justified.

 

[High_Roller]

Aright, I just went back to eBay, and found the same belt in a totally different auction by a totally different seller, with a totally different picture of the box and the belt. Low and behold, it says Cinture again. Here is a link - Belt

 

[High_Roller]

Oooh..I found more, all with "cinture".

 

[pstoller]

"Cinture" is plural; it translates as "belts." So, there's no reason to be suspicious on that account.

 

[Renwick]

While we're on the topic of prada items and ebay, I found a bunch of prada sport shirts up for auction. Â I'm a little worried cuz they're all from the same dealer and he seems to have this regular cycle of prada shirts which he puts out every few days, which I have been told tends to indicate fakes. Â On the other hand, he has a high feedback and power seller rating and shows close ups of the tags and nothing seems to be unusual. Â Nonetheless, maybe some ebay experts could reassure me before I do some bidding? here's an example one, he has many more like this

Be careful. There are many places on ebay that do tag stealing and just sew in tags. You can't tell until you get the item- check the stitching.

 

[GQgeek]

.. tag stealing? that's pretty low