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Vanishing one-star reviews: Is Cosette silencing ‘superfake’ victims?
When Melbourne woman Alicia Nolen became convinced the bag she’d bought from luxury retailer Cosette was a “superfake”, she was, in her own words, fuming.
Nolen took her frustrations to online review site Trustpilot, in part to vent, but mainly to warn potential Cosette customers. The company claims to access discounts on designer labels, such as Prada, Gucci and Saint Laurent through European buying networks, but is now under investigation by Fair Trading NSW and Australian Border Force for selling high-quality replicas.
Alicia Nolen says she felt pressured into removing her original one-star review of Cosette after her Saint Laurent (similar to that pictured) was allegedly fake.
But what happened next surprised 44-year-old Nolen. When requesting a refund for her Saint Laurent Lou camera bag, which cost her $1817 – significantly below the recommended retail price of $2550 – Cosette asked her to remove the negative review. Although it was never explicitly stated that her refund was conditional on her doing so, Nolen felt like she didn’t have a choice.
“I had the feeling if I didn’t remove it that they wouldn’t refund me,” she says. “They never said it, but it was implied.”
Haleigh Vinicombe, a 37-year-old marketing specialist from Brisbane, had a similar experience. She says she spent months chasing Cosette for refunds for two bags, purchased in 2020 and 2021, after three separate authenticators told her they were fake. She says she was required to show Cosette evidence she had removed her negative review before getting her refund. Even though she didn’t agree with the principle, she removed the reviews because she didn’t want the process to go on any longer. “I was over the whole thing,” she says.
As the fair trading investigation into Cosette edges closer to 500 complaints and $1 million in contested products, the company is accused of further misleading consumers by manipulating its online reputation by paying a company to delete unfavourable posts and reviews, and planting highly questionable positive reviews to bolster its reputation.
Since the first reports of the superfake allegations against Cosette last month, dozens of one-star reviews on Google seen by this masthead are no longer visible. On Trustpilot, 7 per cent of reviews are classified as negative, but many of these have been “flagged” by Cosette for “containing harmful or illegal content”. A spokesperson for Google said they were examining the situation. Trustpilot was contacted for comment.
Nolen, who has since published a new review, believes the company is “deliberately deceiving consumers by not letting people put up honest reviews”.
“They are backing people into a corner, to make them feel … that [Cosette] aren’t going to refund the money unless they remove the review,” she says. “That’s so dishonest. If other people had left [their reviews] up, I would never have bought from them.”
Cosette denies ever selling counterfeit goods. According to a company statement: “All products sold by Cosette are genuine and subject to quality control and third-party authentication. If Cosette was not satisfied with the genuineness of any product, it would not be sold to customers.”
But a third-party authenticator previously used by Cosette, Real Authentication, has raised its own concerns, telling customers via direct messages it has become aware its certificates “have been misrepresented to consumers by [Cosette] dispersing duplicate certificates with counterfeit items”. Regarding one customer’s authentication certificate, the company says: “Unfortunately, this certificate, since having originally been issued for a genuine order, is now void.” Real Authentication was contacted for comment.
Cosette has issued refunds to tens of customers who claim they bought superfakes, but insists this does not constitute an admission of wrongdoing, and is simply in the interest of customer service.
Still, some aggrieved customers are taking matters into their own hands. Brisbane woman Fleur Sharpe posted a YouTube video in which she visited a Saint Laurent boutique in Brisbane to compare her Lou camera bag, bought from Cosette in June for $1600, with one in the official store. In the video, Sharpe is seen comparing numerous facets of the bags, including the straps, stitching, zip colour and the leather quality.
Lack of trust ... Karlyn De Los Santos paid to fly from Melbourne to Sydney to return her suspect Cosette bag in person.Credit: Janie Barrett
“The findings were undeniable,” Sharpe wrote under her video. She also had the bag checked by independent authenticator Luxury Authentication Australia, which flagged it as fake. Sharpe has sent the bag to Cosette for a refund and is awaiting the outcome.
Other customers are refusing to trust Cosette to handle their return remotely. Melbourne nursing student Karlyn De Los Santos, 29, paid $250 in airfares to return her $1800 Saint Laurent bag in person to Cosette’s boutique in Sydney’s The Rocks on Tuesday. “I thought, I am not taking any chances,” she says of her decision to return the bag in person.
“I thought I was getting a good deal, given it was $250 to $300 below the [retail] price. I thought it has to be authentic ... Even my mum said there’s no such thing that these designers would put it on sale – that should have already been a red flag. It’s a lesson learnt.”
On Friday, a Fair Trading NSW spokesperson said it had received 463 complaints about Cosette regarding goods worth $953,527. Cosette says it is “co-operating with NSW Fair Trading to address any concerns that there may be by consumers”.
In other developments as part of this masthead’s investigation into Cosette, it can be revealed that since 2017, Cosette has been involved in at least five disputes at the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal. In one case, the tribunal ordered Cosette to refund a customer the full $2880 cost of her Celine bag, stating: “The tribunal is satisfied … that the bag is not a genuine Celine bag.”
Since the investigation began, this masthead has learnt from an industry source that a shipment of bags has been seized pending an investigation into whether it contains goods that infringe registered trademarks. A spokesperson for Australian Border Force says it could not “comment on matters that may or may not be subject to ongoing operations”. A uniformed Border Force agent was present at The Rocks store during trading hours on Thursday.
It can also be revealed that Cosette has links to another luxury-goods business, MyNetSale, which collapsed 10 years ago owing debts of nearly $12 million. In 2014, Burberry accused MyNetSale of alleged trademark infringement. As part of a Federal Court settlement, Burberry agreed to drop a damages claim, and in return, MyNetSale agreed to never sell or import Burberry product again.
As of Friday, Cosette was selling Burberry-branded product on its website.
With Hannah Sinclair
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