Just this past season the NHL's Vancouver Canucks rolled out an excellent program called "Fight the Fake" which was aimed at educating fans about fake jerseys and the harm in buying them. This article will borrow heavily from their website, which we encourage you to visit by clicking on the link below this paragraph, but we also thought that those of us at THAT PRO LOOK would do our own part in the war against counterfeit jerseys by throwing up something here on our website as well.
There are a couple of things that you can look for right away when you are looking at buying a jersey online at any number of retail websites or even auction giants like eBay:
- Where is the company/seller based and where do they ship from. This is important to note because of two very subtle facts. If we take Reebok NHL jerseys as a primary example, AUTHENTIC Edge 1.0 or 2.0 jerseys are manufactured right here in Canada. It is very unlikely that any authentic jersey would be coming to your house by way of China or Korea. Even if you're buying a Reebok Premier jersey (a replica jersey), Reebok makes those in approved factories in Indonesia that abide by all internal labor standards - again, very unlikely that any legit seller would be shipping to you from China or Korea.
- If the price is too good to be true, then you're 100% getting a FAKE. AUTHENTIC Reebok Edge 1.0 and 2.0 jerseys retail for approximately $299.99. Sure that is a lofty price, but you're paying for the exact same quality and technology that the NHL uses for its skaters. Plenty of online jersey sites that have been thrown up in recent years are offering horribly bad "authentic" jerseys (you'll see what I mean later in the article) ranging in price from $15 - $75 dollars. REAL JERSEYS DO NOT SELL FOR THESE PRICES, OR ANYTHING NEAR THESE PRICES.
- What kind of website does the company have and how do they accept payment. An awful lot of the websites thrown up online in recent years feature poorly designed displays simply showing off their questionable product. Sometimes they are rarely updated and the links are often broken or the website goes down frequently because they are essentially being chased across cyberspace by companies and their lawyers trying to enforce international copyright law. Most times you will also find that payment to these "companies" require payment through PayPal email transfer rather than a certified merchant system. You and your money are not protected when sending your money to a random individual's email account.
