Collector pays P1.3 M for fake high-end bags

MANILA, Philippines - A 21-year-old businesswoman, who collects designer bags, has filed charges against an online reseller who sold her two fake Hermes Birkin bags, for which she paid more than P1.3 million.

“It was only when I decided to re-sell them that I found out they were fake,” she told The STAR in an interview yesterday.

The woman agreed to talk on condition of anonymity. She also asked that the online reseller, whom she charged with estafa before the National Bureau of Investigation, not be named. The two parties are set to meet tomorrow at the NBI headquarters.

The complainant said she only wants her money back.

“Everyone we consulted, even the Hermes store here, told us the bags were fake,” the woman said.

She said she found the reseller through Instagram in November 2012 and bought a bubblegum pink Birkin (a rare color, according to her) for P660,000 and an orange Birkin for P690,000.

The two bags were delivered to her in January but she had kept them in their boxes and never checked them until she decided to sell the bags after she gave birth later that month.

When her elder sister took the bags to a prospective buyer, she was told they were fake.

Collectors

The two sisters had been collecting bags over the past five years and have about 100 pieces, most of them by well-known designers.

The elder sister said the deal made by the complainant, which she did not know about, seemed a good one since the two Birkin bags she bought were really rare.

“We could get those from the Hermes store (in Greenbelt) but the waiting time is about two years,” the elder sister said.

The complainant said when she told the reseller that the bags were fake, the reseller referred her to a “Birkin expert.” The reseller “told us she would return my money if that person would say the bags were fake. But when he did say they were not authentic, she still refused to give me a refund,” the woman said.

The expert told her to go the Hermes store in Greenbelt to have the bags checked. “We were told by the store manager that the official authentication from France would come in after about three months since we would have to send the bags there. But the manager said that based on just the paper bags, the boxes and the feel of the leather, the bags were fake,” the complainant said.