So, I thought I'd get a deal by buying some cologne on ebay. Not so fast! I absolutely love (and other people love too!) the smell of some of the cologne I have worn, two of my favorites have been Dolce&Gabbana and Dolce&Gabbana The One. I recently bought a bottle of each on ebay with mixed results. The original Dolce &Gabbana bottle seems to be the real thing and it smells like it, too. The only thing I noticed was that it had the older style bottle with the "chrome" tag on the front, the newer ones are just printed. So, maybe I got an older bottle, but it still seems to be the real thing.

Different story when my bottle of The One arrived. I could tell right away when I opened the package that something was up. The bottle, which on the real thing is a nice, square glass bottle, wasn't really square, it had rounded bulges on the longer sides of the bottle, something I've never seen before in the many bottles I have bought at Macy's or other department stores. Then when I tried spraying it, it felt cheap, the sprayer put out a large amount of cologne. The scent, I have to admit was fairly close at first. Notice I said "at first"! For one thing, the scent seemed to fade pretty quickly, while the real stuff stays for hours. The real surprise came the next morning, when I took a whiff of the shirt I had on the previous day when I sprayed the fake D&G-it smelled nasty, like stale, cheap, nasty women's perfume-yuck! The real thing still smells the same the next day, although obviously not as strong! I immediately contacted the seller, who offered a full refund, but claimed no knowledge that his products were fakes. I looked at his feedback, nearly perfect with many satisfied customers. Now, maybe the people buying from him just don't know the difference between the real thing and a fake like I do, maybe they don't buy bottle after bottle of the real thing like I do. I doubt however that this was the one fake bottle that slipped through, I'm sure that whoever he gets this stuff from is simply selling fake perfume, probably right next to the guy selling the fake Rolex's!

I guess the difference to me is that the fake stuff I got was useless as far as cologne goes. I wear cologne to smell good, I love hearing from women when they tell me that I smell "delicious"! That's worth spending the money on! The fake cologne I got, even though it smelled somewhat close to the original when sprayed, wore off very quickly and smelled nasty the next day on my clothes. To me, that's not worth two cents, let alone the $36 (with shipping) that I payed for it. Now, I  thought I was getting a deal because at any nice department store, it costs $70 a bottle and you NEVER see Dolce&Gabbana on any discount store shelves. One happy ending to the story, the day after I got the fake junk in the mail, one of the local department stores had a sale going on where if you donated any old article of clothing to a charity, they'd give you a voucher for 15% off any fragrance, even ones like D&G that never go on sale. So, for $60 with tax I got a new (real!) bottle and free aftershave, too.

Now, I see that there are some ebayers that sell a lot of cologne on ebay, that sell their stuff for slightly below department store prices. I'd be tempted to give them a shot, that might be the real thing. As far as getting the real thing for half price or less, use your common sense, it's probably too good to be true, either its something stolen from somewhere or its fake junk like I found!