I have now had this happen to me twice, which is two times too many for my blood pressure and my faith in social commerce.
The pattern is depressingly familiar. You see an ad on TikTok or another social platform showing what appears to be a specific product from a recognisable or desirable brand. The video looks like user-generated content. It feels authentic, casual, and reassuring. It feels like someone has found a little gem and is sharing it with you before it sells out.
In my latest experience, it was even more persuasive because the video featured an influencer I follow and recognised. So, before I had even clicked, there was already a layer of trust in play. I was not seeing a random product from a random seller. I was seeing a familiar person demonstrating something that appeared to be from a brand I recognised.
I clicked. I landed on a website that continued the same impression. I ordered. Then the product arrived, and it was not the product I believed I was buying.
Not a slightly different shade. Not a packaging update. Not a harmless substitution.
A different product.
That is the part that matters. This is not simply a case of buyer disappointment, where the colour was not quite as expected, or the texture was not as lovely as the video made it look. This is about an advertising journey that creates the impression you are buying one thing and then sends you something else.
And when I challenged it, the response tried to drag the issue into a technicality. I had ordered three shades. I had received three shades. Case closed.
Except, no. Absolutely not.
Because the issue is not whether three lip products arrived in the parcel. The issue is whether the advertising and buying journey led me to believe I was purchasing a specific brand or product, when the seller was actually sending something else.
In this case, the ad appeared to promote a specific lip product and included a named shade that helped make the product feel identifiable and legitimate. I clicked through from the social ad to the retailer’s website and placed my order based on that journey. What arrived was not the product I believed I was buying.
And what made it even more questionable was that, out of all 24 shades available, only one had an actual name. The rest were identified by numbers. That one named shade was the shade highlighted in the ad.
That is the kind of detail that makes you stop and think, oh, so this was not an accident then.
This is not just a product problem. It is a trust problem.
What makes this type of bait-and-switch so unpleasant is that it takes advantage of how people behave on social media.
Nobody shops on TikTok the way they shop in a department store. We are not standing under bright lights, comparing product packaging, checking brand names, and asking a sales assistant whether this is definitely the right item. We are scrolling, half-watching, half-relaxing, and allowing the platform to serve us little moments of temptation.
That is why UGC-style advertising works so well. It lowers our guard. It does not feel like a polished brand campaign. It feels like a recommendation. And because we have become so used to creator-led product discovery, we often transfer some of that trust onto the product and the retailer.
This is also why using another brand’s product cues, aesthetic, shade name, or visual identity is so powerful. Familiarity is a shortcut. If something looks like a product we have seen before, or resembles a brand we already associate with quality, our brains do not start from zero. They fill in the gaps. And those gaps are where unethical sellers make their money.
They do not necessarily need to say, in big bold letters, this is the original product. Sometimes they only need to imply it strongly enough that the customer assumes it. A familiar-looking video, a product name, a shade reference, a lookalike listing, a social account connected to a website, and a frictionless checkout can do an awful lot of persuasive heavy lifting.
By the time the parcel arrives, the sale has already happened.
It is not just the customer being misled
There is another layer to this that makes it even more uncomfortable.
The video featured an influencer I follow and recognised. That mattered. It meant I was not seeing the product cold. I was seeing it through the lens of someone familiar, someone whose content I already knew, and someone whose recommendation carried more weight than a random product ad from a seller I had never heard of.
But it appears that her video had been taken and used without her permission. And that changes the whole thing.
Because this is not just a seller borrowing trust from a product or a brand. It is a seller borrowing trust from a person. A real creator. Someone who has spent time building an audience, developing credibility, creating content, and earning recognition.
Her face, voice, and reputation were being used as part of a sales journey she may never have agreed to. That is not a small detail. It is the mechanism.
The ad worked because I recognised her. The product felt safer because she was in the video. The click felt lower risk because familiarity had already done half the persuasion before I even reached the website.
And that is what makes this feel so grubby. The trust was not earned by the seller. It was lifted from someone else.
For the buyer, the result is a misleading purchase journey. For the influencer, it is reputational risk. If the customer receives a different product, has a poor experience, or feels deceived, some of that frustration may attach itself to the creator in the video, even if she had nothing to do with the seller, the ad, or the product being shipped.
That is trust theft on both sides.
The defence is often deliberately narrow
When I complained, the response focused on fulfilment accuracy. I ordered three shades. I received three shades. That is a neat little deflection.
It reduces the complaint to the parcel contents. Did they ship three products? Yes. Did the parcel arrive? Yes. Did the products broadly correspond to the selected shades? Possibly. But that is not the full issue.
The real issue is whether the consumer was misled before purchase. If the ad and website journey caused the customer to believe they were buying one product, and the seller then shipped a different product, that cannot be brushed away by saying the shades were correct.
That would be like advertising a pair of premium trainers, taking the customer through a buying journey that gives the impression they are buying that product, sending a cheaper alternative, and then saying, please check your order, you ordered white trainers and you received white trainers.
No. The colour was not the promise. The product was the promise.
And in this case, the person in the video was part of that promise too. Not because she necessarily endorsed the seller, but because her recognisable presence helped create the impression that the product, the ad, and the buying journey were legitimate.
Social commerce has made this easier
The uncomfortable thing about modern social commerce is that the gap between attention and purchase has become tiny.
A consumer can go from seeing a product in a video to checking out in less than a minute. That is brilliant when the brand is legitimate, the creator relationship is genuine, and the product is accurately represented. It is a problem when the ad, the landing page, and the product fulfilment are all stitched together just loosely enough to create plausible deniability.
The retailer can claim the website showed the product. The customer knows the ad led them to believe something else. The creator may not even know her content has been used. The platform may treat it as an ad issue. The retailer may treat it as a customer service issue. The payment provider may treat it as a dispute.
Meanwhile, the customer is left doing detective work over a small order like they are preparing evidence for a low-budget consumer rights documentary.
And that is another reason this works. The amounts are often small enough that many people will not bother. They will feel annoyed, maybe leave a comment, maybe warn a friend, but they will not spend hours chasing a refund.
The business model relies on friction. Not purchase friction, obviously. That bit is beautifully smooth. It relies on complaint friction. Getting the money back is harder than spending it. Funny how that happens.
The psychology is doing a lot of work
This type of bait-and-switch works because it leans on several behavioural shortcuts at once.
There is familiarity, because the ad appears to reference or resemble something we already recognise. There is social proof, because UGC-style content feels like a recommendation from a real person rather than a brand shouting at us. There is influencer recognition, because when the person in the ad is someone we already follow or recognise, the level of scrutiny drops even further.
There is also specificity. A named shade or product detail makes the offer feel more credible. A shade name feels more reassuring than a generic number because it creates a sense of continuity between the ad and the product page. And when 23 shades are identified only by number, but one shade conveniently has the same name as the product highlighted in the ad, that specificity starts to look less like helpful product information and more like a trust bridge.
That does not erase the broader issue if the customer was led to believe they were buying something else.
This is what makes stolen influencer content so powerful and so problematic. Even if the influencer did not agree to the ad, the psychological effect on the viewer is still the same. Recognition creates trust, and trust speeds up the buying decision.
That is why this type of ad journey is so concerning. It does not just borrow from the product being shown. It borrows from the influencer’s credibility, the brand’s desirability, and the platform’s frictionless shopping environment all at once.
This is trust laundering. The seller did not build the trust. They simply used it.
Why marketers should care
I am not writing this because I think every marketer is one dodgy lip liner away from moral bankruptcy. Most marketers are trying to do the right thing, sell good products, support customers, and create campaigns that work without making everyone involved feel like they need a shower afterwards.
But this matters because the same behavioural principles used in these bait-and-switch journeys are the principles ethical marketers use every day.
Trust. Familiarity. Social proof. Specificity. Ease. Relevance. Recognition. Desire. The difference is intent.
Ethical marketing uses those principles to help people make better, easier, more confident decisions. Unethical marketing uses them to get the sale before the customer realises the truth.
That difference matters enormously. Because when consumers repeatedly experience misleading ads, stolen creator content, unclear product listings, and customer service deflections, they do not just lose trust in one retailer. They begin to distrust the entire ecosystem.
They distrust the platform. They distrust social ads. They distrust creator recommendations. They distrust unfamiliar ecommerce stores. They hesitate before buying from legitimate small brands. They become more sceptical, more cautious, and more resistant.
And honestly, who can blame them?
Trust is hard to build and very easy to burn. The worst sellers are setting fire to it in bulk and leaving everyone else to breathe in the smoke.
What consumers should do when this happens
The first thing is to gather evidence before the ad disappears. Screenshot the ad, the account running it, the landing page, the product page, the checkout page, your order confirmation, the product that arrived, and any comparable listings that show the same or similar item being sold elsewhere at a significantly different price.
If a recognisable creator appears in the ad, capture that too. Not to attack the creator, but to document the ad journey. If you later discover their content has been used without permission, that becomes an important part of the story.
The second thing is to complain in writing and avoid letting the seller reframe the issue. Do not get pulled into a debate about whether you received three shades if your complaint is about product misrepresentation. Keep bringing the conversation back to the same point: the advertising and purchase journey led you to believe you were buying one product, and you received another.
The third thing is to escalate if needed. Depending on where you are based, that may mean raising a dispute with your payment provider, reporting the ad to the platform, submitting a complaint to the relevant advertising authority, and contacting consumer advice or trading standards.
It may also be worth contacting the influencer or creator whose content has been used, especially if it appears they did not give permission. They may want to report the ad themselves, protect their reputation, or warn their audience.
And, perhaps most importantly, do not feel silly for being caught out.
These journeys are designed to work quickly. They are designed to look credible. They are designed to make the connection between the ad and the product feel obvious enough to buy, but vague enough for the seller to deny responsibility later.
That is not you being careless. That is the mechanism.
The real cost is bigger than one bad order
The product I received is not the end of the world. It is lip liner. Nobody needs to send a search party. But the principle matters.
Because when consumers repeatedly encounter ads that misrepresent products, use stolen creator content, and blur the line between genuine recommendation and deceptive selling, trust starts to erode. Not just trust in one retailer, but trust in social ads, creator recommendations, small ecommerce brands, and platform shopping as a whole.
That is bad for consumers, but it is also bad for every legitimate business trying to sell honestly in the same space.
The irony is that the sellers using these tactics may think they are being clever. They may think the customer acquisition cost works, the conversion rate is strong, and the refund rate is manageable. But that is not a marketing strategy. That is a short-term extraction model wearing lipstick. Possibly not even the lipstick from the ad.
Good marketing does not end at the checkout. It continues when the parcel arrives, when the customer opens it, when they recognise what they bought, and when they feel reassured that the brand has kept its promise.
If your ad needs another product’s credibility, another creator’s face, and another brand’s desirability to sell what you are actually shipping, you do not have a positioning strategy. You have a trust problem.
And if what arrives is not what the customer was led to believe they were buying, do not insult them by pretending it is just a shade issue.
It is not. It is bait-and-switch. And this time, it came with stolen trust attached.
