Should Beauty Gurus Be Blamed For Customers Buying Shady Products Because Of Their Reviews?

Buying hair weaves*, wigs*, and extensions* online has become the fast, easy, and convenient way to get your hands on high-quality hair that might not be available to you at your local beauty shop. The problem with this is that we can never be fully sure if companies are legit or selling products that are worthy of the hundreds they are asking for.

Complaints of hair weave smelling like corn chips, receiving raggedy synthetic hair in place of what they actually ordered, or never even seeing the product or their money again are the types of horror stories that have everyone searching frantically for reviews.

This is where YouTube comes in. When women started reviewing products on YouTube a few years back, it was refreshing and seemingly trustworthy. We got to see and hear real women give their honest opinions about companies’ products and services as well as we actually got to see the product itself.

Personally, this helped me save a lot of money and avoid shady business for quite some time. However, “beauty gurus” have become increasingly popular on YouTube these last few years—maintaining thousands of subscribers. Because of this, companies have been asking them to promote and do formal reviews for their products.

Hair companies, in particular, will send women who are known for reviewing hair frequently- or hairstylists- bundles of hair to install and review on YouTube, and sometimes other visual platforms like Instagram. Hair reviews for well-known and little known companies started to come out the woodwork and guess what? Regular women began buying from these companies like crazy!

That is great and all and most beauty vloggers are still very informative and helpful, but now something odd is happening: While they are giving positive reviews, real women are buying the products and having absolutely horrible experiences in every way possible.

What seems to be happening is that companies are sending their best high-quality hair to beauty gurus but sending questionable and/or bad quality bundles and wigs* to regular customers.

This problem has been addressed by many beauty vloggers and most of them are indeed very credible and truthful about the integrity of the companies they work with. However, there are a few that keep reviewing the same companies knowing that everyone may not be getting the same quality hair they received.

From what I have seen, beauty gurus who are involved with sponsoring and promoting tend to have more positive reviews because they are either sent a better quality of hair or are representing the company and getting paid to do so. Because this was happening so often, YouTube has asked vloggers to let their subscribers know about paid product placements and endorsements.

Even when beauty gurus and vloggers make it clear that they were paid with either money or products for their review, customers and subscribers have still been going in on them- saying that they are taking part in false advertisement and making videos for the perks and not to help or inform their subscribers.

So with that being said, my question to you is: Should beauty gurus be blamed for customers buying shady products because of their reviews, or should viewers be more careful when listening to the opinions of paid reviewers? Comment below!