大象传媒

It can cost a lot to look good - and it鈥檚 easy to spend a small fortune on makeup. With high-end brands charging big bucks, discount stores have made their own cheaper versions, but can anyone tell the difference?

Makeup artist Lisa Pugh says that the cheaper brands have upped their game, but the tell-tale signs are how long the make-up lasts during the day or on a night out. To put this to the test X-Ray decided to conduct an experiment.

Lisa used cheaper brands to make-up half of our volunteers face, and then on the other half Lisa used the more expensive high end products. The expensive products cost a total of 拢135, whereas the cheaper brand make-up totalled just 拢35. That gave us a saving of 拢100, but could the people of Caernarfon tell the difference?

Lots of people we spoke to simply guessed which side of our model鈥檚 face had been made-up with the expensive make up, and which with the cheaper one. Some based their guesses on whether聽 the make-up looked smoother, or had a better pigment. But one person perfectly summed up their guess with, 鈥淭here you go then, that was pot luck.鈥�

Lisa also analysed how well both sets of make-up had lasted. She said:聽 鈥淭he cheaper foundation has worn off a little bit, especially round the nose area. But the more expensive side of the lipstick has definitely worn off more than the cheaper one.鈥澛�

Overall, the differences between the two were minimal, and not many of the people we spoke to could notice the difference.

X-Ray investigates the booming underground trade in fake online reviews. We joined social media groups which openly advertise payments in return for good reviews.

Customer reviews can be invaluable in helping consumers choose what to buy. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) estimates that 拢23billion a year of UK consumer spending is influenced by online customer reviews. Research from Which? has also shown that 31% of people had bought a product because of excellent customer scores and had been disappointed by it.

X-Ray carried out an undercover investigation to see whether we could get full refunds on Amazon purchases in return for posting a mixture of positive and negative reviews for the products.聽

We joined two Facebook groups offering free products through Amazon in return for good reviews. Each group had thousands of members.聽 In total, we spoke to a total of twenty six sellers on the groups. Of these, eight offered refunds on items in return for 4-5 star ratings of their products on Amazon, one simply asked us to 鈥渓ike鈥� another positive review for their product and a further eight offered refunds in return for reviews without specifying a star rating. We then successfully ordered six items from these sellers - four of whom refunded us the costs of purchase once we鈥檇 left them good reviews.聽

An internet expert, Joe Williams, said, 鈥渢he value of the review is worth more than the item itself to a lot of the sellers. If you get a certain rating or volume of reviews 鈥� it means a lot of more sales. So sellers are looking at reviews as a monetary value.鈥�

X-Ray sent our findings to Amazon and Facebook for a response.

Amazon told us that they, 鈥渋nvest significant resources to protect the integrity of reviews in our store because we know customers value the insights and experiences shared by fellow shoppers.鈥�

Facebook added that, 鈥渆ncouraging the trade of fake user reviews is not permitted on Facebook and we have removed the groups flagged by 大象传媒 Wales.鈥� 聽