Walmart Has A Dark Side - Selling Counterfeits

Walmart slides into the abyss of counterfeit sellers.

January 3, 2018, Los Angeles, CA – Walmart is the world's largest retailer and employs over 2-million employees, but practices a shady business - Walmart sells counterfeit products. Walmart operates as both a direct seller of counterfeits, and allows third-party sellers to list just about anything on its website - including fakes. Consumers can no longer expect honest services, authentic, and safe products when they shop Walmart.

Counterfeit products appear right alongside authentic items conveying Walmart's endorsement and deceiving consumers into spending good money for bad products. Counterfeits products destroy the reputation of the manufacturers of the authentic items, and U.S. jobs.

Walmart's push to capture a portion of the exploding e-commerce marketplace has exposed it, and consumers, to the same deceptive and dishonest dealings flooding Amazon and eBay. These web giants profit while being utilized to enable and facilitate the sale of an inexhaustible supply of counterfeit products, mostly from China.

The Counterfeit Report, a consumer advocate and industry watchdog, found hundreds of counterfeit products on Walmart's website, purchased some, and also submitted dozens of infringement complaints authorized by the trademark holders to remove the counterfeit items. Some listings were removed, yet others with indisputable fakes remain months later. Emails sent to Walmart's legal department were acknowledged, but went unanswered, while Walmart's reporting system remains inadequate and dysfunctional.

For example, all the items shown below are counterfeit but available on Walmart.com;

(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 is offered by third-party sellers on Walmart's website.
• In simple terms, there is no authentic 64GB microSDHC® computer memory product in the microSDHC standard, or any licensed manufacturer's authentic product line. The fake microSDHC cards shown below were purchased both from Walmart as a direct retailer and third-party sellers on Walmart. The microSDHC® and microSD® trademarks are owned by SD-3C, LLC, who licenses its registered trademarks to authentic, conforming micro SD products.
• Authentic Fullips® products are made from safe food grade plastic and FDA approved colorant. Counterfeits have been found with lead and other dangerous materials. What's in the fakes sold on Walmart.com shown here?
• Duracell confirmed the Duracell® battery with an easily peeled off label, and purchased from a Walmart third-party seller, is a fake.
• 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, packaged as shown 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 shock¹."

Companies that 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 losses² by 2022, while manufacturer's brand integrity is tarnished or destroyed.

Consumers who purchase counterfeits online receive little if any value in return, yet are supporting terrorists and other criminals while destroying U.S. jobs.

View the Walmart fakes here.

Footnote:
¹ Dr. Tom Brock, Surgeon and Anesthesiologist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

² 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.