Counterfeit Doterra products

Many of you may know that doTerra products are unfortunately counterfeited. We also receive inquiries about this, and recently one of our customers fell victim to it. All doTerra products on the Vonia website are 100% original, sourced directly from the original manufacturer (doTerra). In this article, we try to help you identify what might give you cause for suspicion if you don't find the cheapest prices with us.

Our customer's story

One of our customers recently contacted us, stating that they received a counterfeit Lavender 15ml oil from another reseller. Their relative bought it for them as a gift – from the cheapest source on the internet on a marketplace (we won't name it). They asked what they could do.

First, we helped investigate what happened. Let's see what we found. The seller on the marketplace is a French company, registered with a French address and company registration number, but with a Chinese phone number (country code +86). Perhaps this is already suspicious. The listed bank account number pointed to the Irish branch of a Luxembourgish bank. But, of course, people don't notice this when paying by credit card. By clicking on the seller's name on the marketplace, you can easily access this information, so you can pay attention to it. Simply pasting the company name into the search engine immediately brought up reviews about the sale of counterfeit products in English ("...fake products and their sellers..."). Tracing the seller's registration number in the company registry showed it was founded in 2020, so unfortunately, we can say that this is not a newly established company.

We also examined the incoming packaging, which showed a German sender on the label. During the check of the German company, we saw that its owner has a Chinese name and the company was founded in 2016 (so this is not a new company either). The return address provided was in Budapest.

Comparison of Original and Counterfeit doTerra Products

We placed the counterfeit and original products side by side in the pictures above so you can see the differences. Those who don't see doTerra products every day can easily confuse them. On the left, you can see the counterfeit product, and on the right, the original.

Let's go through the differences we discovered. In the picture below, we have circled in red the differences we saw without opening the product. We emphasize that the original product is a doTerra Lavender 15ml oil, which we received from doTerra recently, at the time of writing this article. However, the packaging may be subject to change by the manufacturer.

1. Perhaps it's immediately noticeable that the original product only has "Lavender" written on it, while the copy has "Lavender oil" written on it.
2. Behind the doTerra logo, the original product has "TM" (trademark), while the copy has the "®" symbol (registered trademark).
3. Before the product quantity, the original product has an "e", which denotes "estimated" fill quantity in English. The "e" mark was not present on the copy.

What can an aggrieved buyer do? If, before opening the product, you think you received a copy, then exercise your right of return and withdrawal. If you opened the product and then noticed that the product was not of the usual quality, then be sure to notify the marketplace or webshop that you likely received a copy.

In our case, our customer noticed after opening that the scent of the product was not the same as the usual scent. It was then that they also discovered the external differences. The counterfeit product was only a few hundred forints cheaper than ours, unfortunately, due to lack of experience, they did not pay attention to the suspicious signs.