Is Bleame trustworthy? A review of new products and business practices

If you’ve been seeing ads pop up on social media for Bleame products (like their crystal hair eraser, Skin Sonic, or Booty Boost Mask), it’s a good idea to do some research before buying. We share some information we found on some of the Bleame products and their business practices.

Hey all! I initially had written a blog post about my experience with the Bleame crystal hair eraser and my injuries using that product. Using as directed, by the way, and their safety recommendations which change regularly… I digress.

I started to find out more and more about how the company was using false advertising and shady business practices, so I started adding updates to that post.

I had so many updates to add that the post got long. Really long. Like 13K+ words long. Pretty much a short story.

The super long post was getting very cumbersome to read and edit, and I had even more info to add, so I decided to split the post in August 2023. I moved the Booty Boost Mask updates (which I started adding in April). And I added some updates about Bleame’s newest product, the Skin Sonic, and more false advertising I uncovered with that new product launch, too.

Keep reading for honest thoughts on their business practices, and check out my Bleame crystal hair eraser review for even more info on Bleame’s business practices!

Since this post includes health and beauty products, I am obligated to say that this post is in no way intended to be taken as medical advice, or to replace the advice of your doctor or dermatologist.

I also have some YouTube videos where I go through some of these topics in video format:

• Does the Bleame hair eraser actually work?
• Why I don’t recommend Bleame, part 2
• A deeper look at Bleame’s Booty Boost Mask advertising
• My review of the Skin Sonic product pages and potential review manipulation
• TikTok video update on Bleame’s changing recommendations
• I just started a Bleame YouTube playlist so all my Bleame videos are in one place!

Bleame’s Booty Boost Mask

Since quite a few people have been getting injured with the crystal hair eraser and people have been seeking refunds and dissuaded from purchasing it, it looks like Bleame is expanding their product line.

Over the past few months they have added several new products, including the brand new Booty Boost Mask. A lotion/cream that is supposed to firm and reshape your butt. Let’s go through some of these claims, but I want to first point out the date this was released and the “reviews”.

Fabricating Booty Boost Mask reviews and customer numbers

The Bleame booty firming lotion was just released this month, April 2023. The first Facebook post of theirs for this product was posted on April 15th, just 10 days prior to the date of writing this portion of the post (I’m writing this part April 25, 2023). During my earlier perusals of the site in late March and early April, I did not see this product offered, so it appears to have been just released about that April 15th timeline, 10 days ago, and was it is being listed as a brand new product.

I double checked on Instagram and their first post of the launch of their product was announcing it as a teaser on April 10th, and releasing it for official sale on April 15th, 2023. So this Bleame product has only been on the market for 10 days as April 25.

When we go to the product page for this item, it’s showing that in only 10 days being available for sale, this product supposedly has already amassed over 100 mostly 5-star reviews….

Likewise, farther down on the same product page, we see a claim made that their booty cream specifically is loved by 175,000+ happy customers, and 500,000+ happy customers.

In 10 days. 10 DAYS.

Notice they mention “consistent use”. This has only been for sale on their site for only about 10 days, that’s not likely long enough for 500K customers (much less 5K) to discover the product, buy it, get it in the mail, and try it multiple times consistently to make sure it actually works before doing a factual review.

And we see a completely different number thrown at us in another area of the same page, claiming they have over 5K 4.8/5 star ratings. But wait, this product only has 111 5-star “reviews”. Not 5,000. Their hair eraser doesn’t even have 5,000 reviews (most of those reviews aren’t real either).

Interestingly, some of the reviewers claim to have been using this product for 2 to 4 weeks even though this product that just got added to their shop about 10 days ago. Conveniently there are no dates accompanying any of their “reviews”.

I censored out a couple of the photos because I don’t want my ad network removing ads on my post for including photos of nude and nearly nude bums.

A couple closer looks at a few “reviews” that claim they’ve been using this product for months.

Notice anything fishy about those top 2 reviews from “Heidi K.” and “Eliza J.”? They’re the same review. So are the reviews from “Madilyn T.” and “Elisabeth D.” on the left.

These top 2 “reviews” are supposedly written by completely different people and are on 2 different pages of reviews, they even have a different rating from each other, but they both have the exact same wording even down to the misspelling of the word “definately”.

Their own product information implies results in 8 weeks, however the product has only been for sale for 10 days at this point and they are already getting 5-star reviews.

Looking through the reviews, they are pretty much ALL 5-star and positive. Brands rarely ever get 100% 5-star ratings with hundreds of reviews, even with incredibly popular and reputable brands like Estee Lauder and Elizabeth Arden.

I think it’s safe to assume that most (if not all) of these reviews are fake and they are seriously inflating their “happy customer” numbers. This is of course my educated opinion based on the information I have been finding the past few months on Bleame.

One might argue that those 111 reviews are done by people who were beta product testers, however anyone who receives free product is required by the FTC to disclose that they received free product in any online reviews (that is considered a material connection). None of the reviews I looked through had disclosures of any kind, so I’m assuming that they were not beta product testers, or they’d be required to disclose that. If they are in fact testers that received free product but aren’t disclosing that, then they are still violating FTC guidelines.

That explanation also does not cover the absolutely ridiculous claim of having over 500K happy customers on this product in only 10 days on the market. Even over the course of a few months, that number is entirely unbelievable.

As a side note, I actually found one of the people on Facebook who was listed on this graphic and sent them a Facebook message mentioning that I was writing an article about the product and wanted to hear their thoughts. I never got a reply.

It’s worth noting that other companies have been taken to task by the FTC for very similar things. The FTC had a case against Devumi, LLC, in 2019 for selling fake followers, views, and likes to social media personalities to increase their appeal, boost credibility with potential clients, and deceive potential clients about their social media influence.

“Dishonesty in the online marketplace harms shoppers, as well as firms that play fair and square,” said Andrew Smith, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Posting fake reviews on shopping websites or buying and selling fake followers is illegal. It undermines the marketplace, and the FTC will not tolerate it.”

FTC press release on claims against Devumi, LLC, and Sunday Riley

Also in 2019, the FTC brought a case against Sunday Riley Modern Skincare for deceptive online marketing tactics that included fake product reviews by their employees on Sephora’s website at the direction of the Sunday Riley CEO. They used fake accounts to hide their identities, but after Sephora removed some of their reviews, they resorted to using a VPN to hide their identity online to continue posting fake reviews.

Doing this on your own website would be very similar to doing this one a retailer’s website.

The FTC suggests that companies bake FTC compliance into all employee trainings to keep everyone above board.

Buying followers, views, and likes has been a problem for years online. One study suggests that 1 in 4 influencers engages in purchasing followers or even higher. I’m not sure how accurate that study is and their numbers, but I believe it does happen more than people think. I’ve seen it firsthand and I have gotten quite a few messages and emails from people selling their follower purchasing services. There are quite a few companies out there that sell followers, reviews, likes, views, etc. across all social platforms.

There are actually Facebook groups out there for buying and selling fake reviews even though Facebook had removed over 16K fake review groups a couple years ago, and I’m sure fake review groups exist on other platforms, like Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.

Bottom line: use a heavy dose of skepticism when it comes to reading online product reviews, and if you’re a company or influencer, KNOW THE FTC RULES AND PLAY BY THEM.

False advertising on sale prices and former price comparisons

There are federal laws and California state laws that guide how a company prices their items and advertises sale prices. If a company advertises their sale price next to the full price, the item has to actually have genuinely once sold at the full price for a period of time before the sale price was advertised.

If the product was never sold at the original price or was only sold at the original price for a very brief time, this is considered a fictitious original price and is false advertising (eCRF, Code of Federal Regulations). Specifically in California, the product must have been available for sale at the original listed price for at least 90 days prior to marking down the price for sale (source, Lexology).

One of the most commonly used forms of bargain advertising is to offer a reduction from the advertiser’s own former price for an article. If the former price is the actual, bona fide price at which the article was offered to the public on a regular basis for a reasonably substantial period of time, it provides a legitimate basis for the advertising of a price comparison. Where the former price is genuine, the bargain being advertised is a true one. If, on the other hand, the former price being advertised is not bona fide but fictitious—for example, where an artificial, inflated price was established for the purpose of enabling the subsequent offer of a large reduction—the “bargain” being advertised is a false one; the purchaser is not receiving the unusual value he expects. In such a case, the “reduced” price is, in reality, probably just the seller’s regular price.

eCFR, Code of Federal Regulations, § 233.1 Former price comparisons.

Bleame offers these “sale” and markdown prices on every one of their products, I remember seeing it on their hair eraser when I first purchased it, which at the time was the only product they sold back in October and November of 2022. Not only are they listing a fictitious bargain on their products, but they almost always offer a 30% off discount code as well, giving you a hint that the real value of their products is very low. I mention farther down in this article that the crystal hair eraser can be purchases online for dropshipping or wholesale for less than $1.

Since their Booty Boost Mask is brand new and only released for sale on April 15 (less than 2 weeks ago), we can prove that this product was never available for sale at the “original” price of $59 for 1 jar. That original price is legally considered fictitious federally and particularly in the state of California (remember in California, the item had to have been for sale at the original price for at least 90 days).

Why is this a big deal? Here’s a quote from recent court documents for a case involving similar fictitious prices: “an artificial price disparity that misleads consumers into believing that the product they are buying has a higher value than has been established by the market and induces them into making a purchase.” (source, Williams v Udemy case documents).

Udemy, an online teaching platform similar to Teachable, was recently sued in a class action lawsuit (Williams v Udemy, Inc.) for false advertising through ficitious original prices and has agreed to pay out $4 million.

Here’s a link for a case summary from UniCourt of the Williams v. Udemy case if you want to get an overview of the case. They specifically point out the strikethrough of the original price on Udemy’s advertising when courses were never sold at the original price (similar to what Bleame is and has been doing).

Here’s a couple screenshots of the Williams v Udemy case documents. Interestingly this case also references a case Hinojos vs. Kohl’s Corp. where Kohl’s had done something similar.

Note from the case doc: “False reference pricing occurs when a seller fabricates a false ‘original’ price for a product, then offers that product at a substantially lower price under the guise of a sale.”

Bleame has been doing this for quite a while, but since I caught their brand new product almost right out of the gate, I can prove that they are doing this without ever having sold this Booty Boost Mask product at the original price.

Coming back to add that another company just settled a huge class action lawsuit for faking original prices. Boohoo/Nasty Gal settled a lawsuit for $197 million (paid out in gift cards and free shipping) for doing the same thing.

Product performance claims made by Bleame about their booty mask

In the screenshot of the “reviews” above, I underlined one of the claims that the mask “filled out” their bum. The other “reviewer” claimed “growth”. So apparently in addition to firming, this cream somehow adds actual mass to your cheeks. Creams can’t do that to your butt.

Since I highly suspect that these reviews were not written by actual customers, these appear to be indirect claims by Bleame themselves. But let’s look at some direct claims they make.

This illustration is shown on the Bleame shop page for their booty mask, and they use the words “reshape” and volumize.

Their Facebook post from April 19, 2023, also claims that their cream will add volume.

Firming creams can reduce the appearance of cellulite and add some plumping to upper layers of skin, but creams can’t make your butt actually grow or add mass or volume to it. Plumping and firming you see from creams will not likely be more than deeper than the top few layers of your skin.

Creams cannot actually “reshape” and “add volume” to your butt.

You’d have to use retinol for 6 months before seeing any benefits. Good quality creams are slow working, and fast working creams containing sodium silicate can be harmful after long term use.

Unfortunately we don’t know the full ingredients in the Bleame booty cream up front before purchasing because they do not list the ingredients on their website as of the writing of this portion of the post (April 25, 2023). They only list some of the active ingredients on their webpage but not the full ingredients.

The best way to add volume to your bum and reshape it is to change your body composition (fat loss + muscle gain) by consistent strength training and a diet with adequate bioavailable protein. Creams will not completely reshape your booty or cause growth, but they can firm skin and reduce the appearance of cellulite.

We also see that Bleame has again repeated the same claim that their product has clinical studies. They make this claim on several of their products, but I have yet to come across any actual clinical studies done on the Bleame products.

Notice the underlined portion in the image says “for more information, refer to each product page.” However this was on the product page and there is no additional information about clinical studies on the product page. They make consumer study claims on one of their slide images for the product, but consumer studies are not the same thing as clinical studies. I personally doubt they have actually carried out their own consumer studies too, however I can’t prove that beyond lack of actual documentation.

There have been studies done on other brands of firming creams, but the exact Bleame product formulation does not appear to have the clinical studies that they claim.

The FTC outlines in their guidelines for businesses that businesses must have sufficient evidence to support express and implied claims and material claims about products or it’s considered false advertising (source, FTC Advertising FAQs).

Material claims are defined as “representations about a product’s performance, features, safety, price, or effectiveness” (source, FTC Advertising FAQs).

Also, they don’t actually tell you how much you actually get when you buy this firming cream because one image on their page shows the jar is 80 grams, and another image shows the jar is 100 grams. 100 grams is only about 3.5 ounces or so, which isn’t much at all for their price.

The new Bleame Skin Sonic hair remover

Well folks we’re back at it again! After I wrote updates about the Booty Boost Mask in May I thought I’d be hanging up my investigator hat and not adding anymore Bleame updates to my site or YouTube.

Well I decided to do another update since I was able to see the newest Bleame product (the Skin Sonic) the same day it launched and caught them false advertising again.

I waffled a little as to whether or not I wanted to do more on Bleame, and I caved to my inner voice telling me to not drop the issue just yet.

So here it is, more shady stuff! Let’s dive in.

Fictitious original prices/fake discounts

As we saw with the Booty Boost Mask, Bleame is advertising this new Skin Sonic as discounted right out of the gate, the very same day that the product was released for sale on their Shopify store.

As we showed earlier, this is considered a form of false advertising when a company creates a fictitious original price and sells something on “sale” when they never actually sold the product at the supposed original price.

Let’s first establish the date that this new product was launched: August 1, 2023.

This reel was posted on July 31 and marked August 1st as the launch date.

Their Facebook post confirms that the product launch and first day of sale was August 1, 2023.

I jumped on their website the very same day that the Skin Sonic launched, and they were already advertising this product as being “discounted”. Also notice the number of reviews, we’ll talk about that more below.

So we know that this new Bleame product has never actually sold on their website for the “original” price listed in on the sale page indicated by the strikethrough numbers.

Just as a recap from what I shared with the Booty Boost Mask, companies should not advertise a product on sale if it has not been sold at the original price for a substantial amount of time (in the State of California, it’s specifically at least 3 months).

You can read this article and a list of some of the major retailers (such as Khols and JCPenney) that have have been named as defendants in comparison price lawsuits.

While we’re on the topic of pricing, here are some similar products you can buy from AliExpress or Alibaba, often with color and style customizations for resellers. Check out the prices:

As we have seen with the other Bleame products, they frequently over-inflate the prices of their products, then create a strikethrough “discount”, which is still vastly overpriced in my opinion.

Review manipulation, review reuse, and review hijacking

With their brand new product launch of the Skin Sonic on August 1st, Bleame dispensed with the tedious task of copy/pasting fake reviews and found a different (though not quite new) way to add tons of reviews to their brand new product page: review hijacking.

Review hijacking is a type of review manipulation where a company reuses or repurposes reviews from a completely different product to make it look like a new product has a lot of reviews.

I discovered that the “reviews” for the Skin Sonic product were actually reviews for the crystal hair eraser, they just tied the existing reviews for the crystal hair eraser into their new product page for the Skin Sonic.

If you noticed the earlier screenshot I shared, on the very first day of their Skin Sonic launch (August 1, 2023), there were supposedly 1178 reviews on this product.

Upon closer inspection, all the reviews on this new product actually belong to the crystal hair eraser product. These following screenshots were taken on August 7, 2023, notice the increase in the number of “reviews” from 1178 to 1212 in 6 days.

Here’s a close up look at those reviews:

The repurposing of reviews from one product to a completely different product (not just a simple color or style variation of a product) is considered review hijacking, review manipulation, and false advertising since it aims to make brand new products look more well-reviewed than they really are.

Here’s one more screenshot showing that the number of reviews are identical and the reviews are identical between both product pages for Skin Sonic and the crystal hair eraser.

They seem to have their product reviews tied to the same pages because anytime I’ve seen that number change, it changes on both pages. Perhaps it’s connected by just adding it as a store variation of the crystal hair eraser (similar to what Bountiful did) or they have the 2 product pages tied together since they are giving away crystal hair erasers to the first 300 orders of the Skin Sonic.

Either way, this is considered review hijacking, reusing reviews, or repurposing reviews.

You can read the Fenwick article on review hijacking for yourself.

Review hijacking is something that the FTC is taking more notice of and starting to crack down on. They recently brought a case against The Bountiful Company for review hijacking on Amazon. This is the first FTC case brought against a company for review hijacking.

The case against Bountiful marks the FTC’s first law enforcement challenging “review hijacking,” in which a marketer steals or repurposes reviews of another product. Bountiful carried out this deceptive tactic by merging its new products on Amazon with different well-established products that had more ratings, reviews, and badges, the FTC said.

“Boosting your products by hijacking another product’s ratings or reviews is a relatively new tactic, but is still plain old false advertising,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The Bountiful Company is paying back $600,000 for manipulating product pages and deceiving consumers.”

FTC Charges Supplement Marketer with Hijacking Ratings and Reviews on Amazon.com and Using Them to Deceive Consumers

While Bleame is doing this on their own website and not on Amazon, like Bountiful did, it’s still a type of review hijacking (which is considered false advertising) by reusing and repurposing reviews from a completely different product in order to make the new or unreviewed product appear well-reviewed when it is not.

Bleame potentially paying for fake social media comments and followers (October 2023)

I have been convinced for months that Bleame has been paying people to leave positive reviews on their own posts and on other people’s posts. But saw a few comments that appear to prove this.

Looking through some TikTok videos and comments today, I saw this interesting exchange implying that this person had copy and pasted their praise of the product onto a bunch of videos. Even more interesting this person completely changed their opinion and came back later to say the product was trash.

What’s odd is that she says she only used the product ONCE, not multiple times. It’s odd to use something once and say you loved it (enough to copy and paste comments), then do a complete 180 and say you hated it.

After I took the screenshot I went back to find the comment to look into the account and date, and I couldn’t remember which video it was on and I couldn’t find it again, and I couldn’t find the account. So I wasn’t able to check into the account more.

Oddly this very same thing happened on my Facebook video about Bleame. A woman commented that it was wonderful, then came back later to say it was awful. I blurred out the name since it was her actual name.

I’m not sure if she had been paid to leave a comment, or had just bought it and genuinely liked it at first until she was injured. The complete 180 shift seemed odd, but I’m glad she came back to the post to give us her real opinion about Bleame!

This following comment seemed suspicious, especially with the language, which is very similar to the type of girly BFF language that Bleame uses to attempt to endear itself to potential customers. And this is very similar to the messages and comments I and others have received from Bleame about our injuries.

When I looked at that commenter’s account, it looked an awful lot like a burner account.

I have no concrete proof on this one, but it’s suspicious.

To top it off, Bleame has actually messaged some people to take down their TikTok videos that had negative opinions about their product:

And one last look at Bleame’s really abysmal engagement rates on Instagram. Even though they have 145K followers on Instagram, they are only getting between 9 and 120 likes on each post, depending on the post type.

Reels are getting more (around 100-120 likes), and photo posts about 9-36 (the lowest one I saw was 9 likes). With very few comments (I was only seeing 0-4 comments on each recent post). Their advertising videos get tons of views and comments, but they are putting money behind it. We’re seeing that unless something is promoted with paid ad spend, it doesn’t look like it’s performing very well organically.

Accounts with super low engagement rates of less than 1% are often red flags for purchased followers.

For example, a Bleame post getting 100 likes and no comments is getting an engagement rate of 0.00069, which is 0.069%, not even close to a full 1% engagement rate.

What about 30 likes + 4 comments, as shown in the collage above? That’s 34 engagements generously since I think 2 of the comments are replies from Bleame. But we’ll count them anyway. 34 divided by 145,000 is 0.00023, which is 0.023%, still very far below a 1% engagement rate.

With 145K followers on Instagram, regular consistent posting with a variety of posts (photos, carousels, reels, and stories), we’d expect to see more engagement than this if the followers are real and engaged.

Again, it’s my theory, but I think I’m right about this hunch.

My final thoughts

I haven’t used the Booty Boost Mask product or the Skin Sonic products themselves, so I can’t speak to the functioning of the actual product. But I have used their crystal hair eraser and got injuries from it, and have personally experienced Bleame’s shady business practices (being blocked online, having my comments and reviews deleted, etc.).

Since the Bleame company has knowingly and repeatedly used false advertising tactics, I’d avoid anything they sell (as well as anything from their sister company, ForChics).

I’d really like to think that they released the Skin Sonic because they actually listened to people’s complaints about being injured, and I want to believe that maybe they are releasing this product to phase out their crystal hair eraser that causes injury because they don’t want to see people hurt.

But their claims of “we heard you” are overshadowed by the fact that they are STILL up to their shady false advertising tricks and they really care more about fast profits than doing the right thing by their customers. And I personally believe they are only switching gears (if they even are switching gears) because so many people have threatened to sue or file lawsuits.