[imagesource: ImagineChina / AP]

Louis Vuitton selling fake bags has become a trending topic on Chinese social media.

At the same time, many authentication centres across the country have been enjoying a surge in business.

The reason? One of the French luxury brand’s boutiques in China has been accused of selling a fake bag to a customer.

As DMarge notes, Louis Vuitton is one of the world’s most counterfeited brands, with flea markets and car boots piled with fake LV goods across the planet.

When one steps into an official LV store, though, one should be guaranteed that their money is going towards something truly authentic.

A customer bought what they thought was a genuine AU$3 500 (almost R40 000) Vaugirard handbag from the LV store in Changsha, China. When the customer took the bag to a third party authenticator, they discovered that it was actually fake.

Image: AP

As a result, the store has been ordered by a local court to compensate the customer for the money that they spent on the fake item, reported Yahoo! News:

On top of returning the amount of money the customer spend on the brand, Vuitton was ordered to pay an additional three times the amount of the bag, as a compensation.

Louis Vuitton said it has appealed the decision and settled with the customer, but maintains that it never sold anything but fully authentic goods through any of its point-of-sale channels.

The bizarre situation has been unpacked on Chinese social media:

Some reckon that shop staff were fooled by a ‘superfake’: a counterfeit bag made to such a high standard that it’s nearly identical to the real thing. Perhaps another customer bought a real Vaugirard handbag and returned a fake one to try and swindle the boutique, the boutique didn’t notice that it was a fake, and this customer was collateral damage. China is the home of superfakes, after all.

Others think it’s suspect that the aggrieved customer took the bag to an authenticator. It’s just as likely that they did the swap and are trying to extort LV. It’s an oddball situation for sure.

Another possibility is that the Changsha boutique was in on the scam.

It is not so far-fetched considering how a few years ago, a sales associate at the brand’s Guangzhou location was caught engaging in a counterfeiting scheme:

“As the ‘middleman’, her role in the operation was to sell unreleased handbags to counterfeiters, who would then sell their versions at the same time the authentics hit the market. The benefit to her? Profiting off both instances – first by selling the bags to the counterfeiters at a higher price, and then by presumably making commission on sales of the actual bags to LV customers in-store.”

In this recent verdict, Louis Vuitton did not submit evidence to prove that the customer was a professional fraudster.

The customer, however, submitted a shopping receipt and payment records confirming that the bag was purchased from the store on that day.

If you’re worried you’re buying a fake, make sure to check the kind of leather used (usually real LV is made from top-quality leather like crocodile, lambskin, or snakeskin) as well as how the tag is presented. LV never attaches the tags to the bag itself.

Otherwise, just lean into the fake. At this rate, nobody will know the difference anyway.

[sources:dmarge&yahoo]