Beware Of The Rubie

[brothers]

Murray I'm glad to hear that your blades are good. I received a full refund from the seller, and they confirmed that I am free to keep the blades which are useless anyway. Aside from waiting for a possible response from P and G, I'm hoping to locate a source of some good Rubies.

[CMur12]

Gary, the eBay seller that I named in the PM I sent you should be a reliable source of the blades.

- Murray

[brothers]

Thanks!

[brothers]

This morning I received a response from Gillette. They have asked me to preserve and hold the product and packaging, etc. for two or three weeks to permit the interested parties time to review and discuss the information contained in my original message.

[Ouchmychin]

I just received a refund from the seller. I guess that is good for me, but I hope ebay checks on him.

[Ouchmychin]

I received a refund from the seller on ebay. When I went to leave feedback, it turns out I purchased them in 2015 and I couldn't. When I looked up the seller it said he had modified his offers on this blade. I clicked his items and they were not listed, but I didn't do a search on ebay for them.

[CMur12]

I don't think the eBay sellers in question are automatically evil. They may well have bought blades with the understanding that they were genuine and were just trying to put food on the table. They may well be victims of a scam, themselves. I'm more wary of the supplier who sold the blades to the eBay sellers.

- Murray

[brothers]

That's the most likely. The manufacture of fake products has to be a rather large criminal enterprise. It would be quite impractical to create products that pass for real on a large scale, then become a seller on ebay and sell one at a time for $20. As an ebay seller myself, on occasion as we all are probably, if I sell somebody something and they come back at me and tell me the product I sold them is a fake, I'll immediately give the money back, and would feel terrible. On the other hand, I'm not going to be in any hurry to buy more Rubies from a dirt cheap source located in Russia, either.

[brothers]

Today I received two 5-blade tucks of genuine Gillette Platinum Plus Rubie blades. When compared side by side to the fakes, the differences are obvious, not to mention the most important fact that the fakes do not cut whiskers.
Here are some of my observations (see photos below):
Genuine - end flaps are glued; fake - the box opens with at reclosable flap
Genuine/fake - there are small differences in the details printed on the boxes
Genuine - individual blades are wrapped in plain paper neatly folded and wax in the center; fakes are inside a printed wrapper, plain paper is folded crookedly, no wax
Genuine - blade is a true rectangle (edges are parallel); fake - one side is a millimeter too short, measured from the center of the blade to the edge.
Genuine - blade openings and edges are uniformly cut and smooth; fakes are jagged and crooked
Genuine - printing is dark and crisp, four corners of the blade are numbered 1,2,3,4; fakes - no numbers, print is different than genuine

[CMur12]

Thanks, Gary, for going to the trouble of providing us the photos and the analysis. Aside from the excellent shave I got last night, my blades clearly match the ones you show here as genuine.

I must say that the packaging of my blades, in the fold-over cardboard display pack, so closely resembled the packaging of my Perma-Sharp Super blades, that it was hard to imagine that they weren't the real P&G product. I'm just lucky that the first eBay vendor I found selling lots of 100 blades had the real thing.

- Murray

[brothers]

Murray, I've placed an order with the same seller you bought yours from. I feel good knowing I'm getting genuine blades the second time around. Thanks for the information.

Edit: I was looking at the 5 pack boxes and found the largest error that clearly shows the fake box. The counterfeiter tried too hard to be perfect, and as a result he or she made a huge blunder as shown in the photo below.

[brothers]

Just to follow up --- the genuine Rubie provided an outstanding first shave this morning.

[brothers]

Thanks, Gary, for going to the trouble of providing us the photos and the analysis. Aside from the excellent shave I got last night, my blades clearly match the ones you show here as genuine.

I must say that the packaging of my blades, in the fold-over cardboard display pack, so closely resembled the packaging of my Perma-Sharp Super blades, that it was hard to imagine that they weren't the real P&G product. I'm just lucky that the first eBay vendor I found selling lots of 100 blades had the real thing.

- Murray

Murray, following my instant refund from the seller of the counterfeits, and finding very few alternate sources for the Rubies, I placed an order from the ebay vendor you recommended. Shipping was only 2 weeks from Russia, and the blades are as right as rain. Thanks!

[CMur12]

Good news, Gary. It sounds like our seller has a reliable distributor and a consistent supply.

- Murray

[BPman]

Do you fellas agree with me that the bonafide Rubie is the best modern DE blade now in production?

[CMur12]

BPman, I would say that it is certainly up there with the best, but there are a number of blades that I really like, all of which are sharp and smooth. I really appreciate your having brought these to our attention, however, and I'm very happy to have bought 100 of them. (I confess that I am debating ordering another 100. )

- Murray

[brothers]

Do you fellas agree with me that the bonafide Rubie is the best modern DE blade now in production?

Presuming it's still in production, I have no reason to disagree. When I loaded my first Rubie in my best/favorite razor the result was surprisingly close and smooth.

[Ouchmychin]

Gary, I thought your favorite was the Personna Hospital.

[brothers]

Pete, that hasn't changed. It's still my go to favorite. I enjoy finding other outstanding blades and using them, too.

[Sparksx]

New to the forums and made an account just to reply. About two weeks ago I received some razors I bought from ebay. It was a mix of (razors listed below). I havent tried the other ones except voskhod and I'm not sure if those are fake. However, I do know that the Gillete Rubies are fake. I'll post pictures tmrw morning. It has the exact same packaging the fake you posted. Can someone recommend me the course of actions and also how to contact Gillete for this and how to identify if the others are fakes?

- Sputnik
- Voskhod
- Ladas
- Gillette Rubie
- Rapira Super Stainless
- Rapira Swedish Supersteel
- Rapira Platinum Lux