Is it Safe to Buy Beauty Products on Amazon? I Did the Research

Woman sitting at desk looking at amazon premium beauty page on laptop

As an Amazon Influencer, I may receive a small commission when you click on Amazon links in this post. (It will never cost you any additional.) The same is true with the other links in this post. It’s how I get paid for sharing good content with you! Thanks so much for supporting Empty Nest Blessed and allowing me to keep doing this job that I love so much! xoxo

Happy Weekend! Days are getting shorter, and today when I had to be somewhere at 7 a.m., it may as well have been midnight, judging from how dark it was outside! Still, the temperatures are absolutely lovely, the humidity is dropping, and it’s starting to feel like fall. It was nice to be in Florida, but I must say, it was HUMID, which made it feel a lot hotter than it was!

Last weekend I told you about my new format for my weekend posts. While I’ll still be sharing things like the best weekend sales and other features you enjoy, I’m going to provide you with more substantial content as well. In the old format, the content wasn’t searchable! But now, it will be using the search box at the top of my website — no matter what page you’re on. Simply enter keywords in the search box to access or reaccess content you may have missed or want to revisit!

The changing temps have me switching up my skincare routine a little bit, and I decided it was a great time to look into something y’all have asked me about over and over: Is it safe to buy beauty products on Amazon? Read on to see what I learned when I looked into it!

All About Amazon

If you’ve been following me for a while now, you know I often recommend products from Amazon — from carpet cleaning products (hahaha!) to Grandpa sweaters! I’m also a big fan of Amazon’s own in-house brands: from Amazon Essentials and Good Threads to my (very favorite) Lark & Ro. (Check them all out HERE.)

I’ve been a part of the Amazon Influencer program for a long time! I joined the program because I’m a huge fan of Amazon, use it myself, and they gave me the opportunity to have my own Amazon Storefront where I could share my personal recommendations with you in an easy, user-friendly format.

If you haven’t checked out the Empty Nest Blessed Amazon Page in a while, I’d encourage you to do that! My assistants and I update it — adding and deleting items — every single week. It’s filled with year-round Gift Guides for everyone from your Senior Adult parents to your Grandkids, curated fashion guides, and even lists of the makeup & skincare products that I use every single day! My hope is that you’ll find it a great place for inspiration!

Amazon Questions & Concerns

The rumors abound! Have you heard the chatter? People talk about receiving counterfeit products that were packaged as real products on Amazon. Has it happened to you? (Let’s be real — rumors usually don’t start unless there’s at least an element of truth to them.) In the past, I’ve been hesitant to link to beauty products on Amazon for this very reason. I’ve even gotten emails from some of you about whether I think it’s safe to buy beauty products on Amazon.

So I asked them. Like, I went pretty high in the organization and boldly asked! Here’s what I found.

computer sitting on a bed with Amazon beauty page on screen

Amazon & Counterfeit Products

First, a little background. When Amazon launched in 1994, it started off as an online bookstore selling books. But founder Jeff Bezos had a vision for the company that involved aggressive growth and e-commerce domination. Yep! He basically knew from the very beginning that he wanted Amazon to be an “everything” store.

It’s Business 101: When you try to grow a business too quickly, quality can suffer. If you’re not careful, you can gain a reputation for sloppiness, and dig yourself into a hole that can take years to get out of. That’s basically what happened to Amazon. They’ve had to crack down—big time.

In 2019, Amazon invested over $500 million and had more than 8,000 employees fighting fraud and abuse, including counterfeit. Amazon’s efforts have blocked over 2.5 million suspected fraudulent accounts before they were able to make a single product available for sale and they blocked over 6 billion suspected listings in 2019. A recent report from Amazon revealed that it blocked 10 billion attempted counterfeit listings in 2020—remember, this is up from 6 billion in 2019—and it destroyed 2 million fake goods in its warehouses.

If you’re concerned, that’s understandable. Amazon also shared a few tips with me that they use (and you can too) in order to sniff out counterfeiters.

Confusing, garbled language in the product description
Low-quality or clearly inaccurate photos
When reading reviews, look for “Amazon’s Verified Purchase” reviews. That means they’ve verified that the person writing the review purchased the product on Amazon