It is a sad fact that the internet has spawned a whole pile of fakes, rip-offs and scams, the trouble is that with a good looking website, a search engine ranking and a few convincing graphics its very easy to get drawn into thinking you are buying the real thing. This is what happened recently to a friend of mine who took her beloved and not entirely inexpensive Links of London charm bracelet in to one of the Links shops to complain that some of the links on the sweetie bracelet had fallen off revealing the elastic underneath, only to be informed that what she had was a fake. Like loads of people she had searched for her favorite bracelet on the internet and had looked at a few sites til she found some charms she liked at a price that was agreeable, so I thought I would peruse some of these scam sites myself and draw up a quick list of how to tell if a links of london bracelet is fake, and how to spot fake links of london websites.
Firstly if you insist on buying charms from links of london, then you should make sure you should do just that. Their website is linksoflondon.com and that is the only website so far as I am aware that you should feel confident in buying genuine links of london charms and charm bracelets from.
The bracelet itself should have one of the Links of London links in it (this is a round circular bead with links of london written on one side, and their logo of 3 rings interescting on the other). They are an expensive brand, and the bracelet should look and feel high quality with the correct number of links on a sweetie charm bracelet, and all the charms soldered on to big bails.
Telling what is and what is not a fake links of london website is easy. As with all websites you are obliged to put your business name and contact details – if a website does not have its company name (this is different from its website name) and a contact address, then it is probably a fraud. For example there is a website called linksoflondonsale which states it has a 100% authenticity guarantee, and yet it doesn’t tell you what the business is called nor any of its contact details. The website should normally have a terms and conditions page which also outlines who you are buying from (again many of the fake links of london websites do not have this). Lastly Links are a big brand and their charms aren’t cheap, so you should beware of any website which shows links of london products and reduced or sale prices. Sadly a lot of the fake websites including www.linksoflondons.com, www.linksoflondonstore.com and www.coolinks.co.uk/ have high prices to try and make them seem more authentic. You should definitely be warey of these websites.
Sadly there will always be people trying to make a quick buck out of fakes, and charms are pretty damn popular so it seems like an easy thing to cash in on, but don’t be like my friend and buy charms from a fake website, you won’t have any recourse if something goes wrong with your product, it might not even turn up at all, and if it does it is just going to be a cheap knock-off which isn’t worth anything, and probably won’t look very good!