Is Your Walmart Purchase A Counterfeit?

Walmart opens its website to fraudulent and counterfeit product sellers.

March 23, 2018, Los Angeles, CA – Simply stated, Walmart sells counterfeit products. Consumers can no longer expect honest services, authentic, and safe products when they shop Walmart.

One-third of online shoppers received an unexpected surprise last year - they unwillingly received a counterfeit product.¹ An undercover investigation² by the U.S. Government Accountability Office ("GAO") of counterfeit consumer goods on Walmart (WMT), Amazon (AMZN), eBay (EBAY), Sears (SHLD) and Newegg validates that claim -- about 50% of the items purchased by the GAO were counterfeit.

The Counterfeit Report, a consumer advocate and industry watchdog, found over 1,600 counterfeit items on Walmart's website, purchased some, and then submitted infringement complaints authorized by the right holders to remove the counterfeit items. Some listings were removed, yet others advertising counterfeits and indisputable fakes still remain months later.

Accompanying Walmart's push to capture a portion of the exploding e-commerce marketplace, comes a seedy and dishonest practice - selling counterfeits. Walmart is a direct retailer of counterfeits, and has opened its website to global third-party sellers to list just about anything they want, including an inexhaustible supply of counterfeits on its website. The counterfeit items appear right alongside authentic products conveying Walmart's endorsement and deceive consumers into spending good money for bad products. Walmart takes a transaction fee for each item sold.

For example, consumers purchasing the items below from Walmart received a counterfeit;

(Photo: The Counterfeit Report ®)

• Vans, the popular footwear and apparel company, does not make or license the use of the Vans® trademark on iPhone 6, 7 or 8 phone cases. The fake item shown was offered by third-party sellers on Walmart's website.
• In simple terms, there is no authentic 64GB microSDHC® computer memory product in the SDHC standard, or any licensed manufacturer's authentic product line. The fake microSDHC and SDHC cards shown here were purchased from both Walmart as a direct retailer and third-party sellers on Walmart. The microSD® and SDHC® trademarks are owned by SD-3C, LLC, who licenses its registered trademarks to authentic, conforming SD products.
• Authentic Fullips® beauty products are made from safe food grade plastic and FDA approved colorant. Counterfeits have been found with lead and other dangerous materials. A three-pack version was never manufactured by Fullips. What's in the fakes sold on Walmart.com shown here?
• This counterfeit Duracell® battery with its easily peeled off label was purchased from a Walmart third-party seller. Would you trust a fake for a smoke detector, baby monitor or first responder's equipment?
• Composite Resources, Combat Application Tourniquet® (C-A-T®), has been supplied to the U.S. Military, police, first responders and the public worldwide for the past decade. Counterfeit versions of the C-A-T tourniquet have catastrophically failed during actual life-saving applications. The fakes can be found on Walmart.
• Authentic Dr. Numb® 5% Lidocaine Cream is a popular topical anesthetic used to reduce pain, tattooing and hair removal. Counterfeit Dr. Numb, as packaged here and offered on Walmart.com, did not contain any Lidocaine as indicated, but Tetracaine, an anesthetic known to cause fatal defects in animal testing, and can result in "full blown anaphylactic shock³."

Walmart expects its online sales to grow 40% for the current fiscal year. What counterfeit products will contribute to that growth?

Companies that enable and facilitate criminal activity and profit from dishonest sales which impact consumer safety, jobs and public trust create a public perception of deception and impunity. However, their reputation damage is only a small part of the problem: the value of counterfeit and pirated goods is forecast to grow to $2.8 trillion and cost 5.4 million net job losses⁴ by 2022, while manufacturer's brand integrity is tarnished or destroyed. Counterfeiting is now the world's largest criminal enterprise.

Congress can act to protect consumers, and consumers can shop elsewhere - will they?

View more Walmart fakes here.

Footnote:
⁽¹⁾ Global Online Shopping Survey 2017 – Consumer Goods
Prepared by: Clarivate Analytics for MarkMonitor® Inc.    November 2017

⁽²⁾ Report to the Chairman, Committee on Finance, U.S. Senate
Full Report: Agencies Can Improve Efforts to Address Risks Posed by Changing Counterfeits Market
GAO-18-216: Published: Jan 30, 2018. Publicly Released: Feb. 27, 2018.
Summary: https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-18-216

⁽³⁾ Dr. Tom Brock, Surgeon and Anesthesiologist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

⁽⁴⁾ THE ECONOMIC COSTS OF COUNTERFEITING AND PIRACY
The report was prepared for The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC BASCAP) and The International Trademark Association (INTA)
January 2017
Frontier Economics, Ltd.