ShoeFraud

In August of 2009, there was a seller on eBay selling several different colorways of the Vivienne Westwood for Melissa Lady Dragon shoes. I had coveted these shoes for ages, ages I tell you! And at the time, they were really hard to find in the US – I’m not even sure if any online retailers had them readily available. I won a pair for $71 USD, which was about half off retail ($140-160 USD) at the time.

When I received the shoes, I was really disappointed with the quality, but (like many American customers) had never seen a pair of Melissa shoes, so I just figured it was another over-hyped brand. They were so uncomfortable that I didn’t go to wear them until the weekend of October 23rd (so well past Paypal’s 45 day cut-off) when I had a perfect outfit for them; after walking around inside the house for ten minutes I realized I’d forgotten quite how uncomfy they were & took them off. Later that day, someone on Twitter mentioned counterfeit Melissa shoes. I got a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach and went to look at photos from Melissa and Zappos to compare them to my shoes – sure enough, they were counterfeit.

Paypal was of no help and neither was eBay; I honestly have to wonder how much of their anti-counterfeit stance is real, as I’m sure they make a lot of money off counterfeits. After going through that experience, I wanted to start a site where people could go to find out if a shoe was counterfeit or not, hopefully before buying it, and have all of the resources at their fingertips for what to do if it was. Thus, ShoeFraud was born!

A little bit more about me specifically: I’m 21 & live in Austin, TX with my husband and our two cats. In addition to ShoeFraud, I write at Wicked Whimsy about personal style & fashion.