Culture

People On TikTok Are Getting Scammed By “Luxury” Advent Calendars

TikTok is dragging Chanel for its $1,150 advent calendar full of stickers, magnets, and plastic bracelets.

by Michelle Rennex  8 December 2021
Chanel Advent Calendar TikTok scandal

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Advent calendars are arguably the most important part of Christmas when you’re a kid. I mean, what could be better than getting a lil’ chocolate treat in the 24-day lead up to the big day?

So, it’s no surprise that most of us continue the tradition as we get older with more expensive, adult advent calendars — and thankfully they have one for just about everything these days.

For example, Glasshouse sells a $250 calendar for the candle lovers of the world, while Clinique has a $175 one that has everything for skincare aficionados. But the calendar everyone’s currently talking about is Chanel’s hefty $825USD ($1,150AUD) ‘Chanel No. 5 Advent Calendar’ that’s far from what the luxury the price tag promises.

Exposed by influencer Elise Harmon on TikTok, Harmon decided to unbox the advent calendar for her followers on December 3.

While initially excited by the luxury advent calendar — an item that was released to celebrate the 100th birthday of Chanel No. 5 — Harmon quickly realised that the contents of the calendar were far from what she imagined.

Instead of being full of makeup or other products actually sold by the brand, Harmon was met with Chanel-branded stickers, a magnet and bookmark, a wax stamp bracelet, key chains, a plastic snow globe, an empty dust bag, and a random flip book.

“Not them putting free samples in an advent calendar,” one person commented. “The stickers would’ve been my 13th reason.”

“Fyre Festival of advent calendars,” another added. “BESTIE THIS HAS TO BE STUFF THEY AROUND THE WAREHOUSE.”

“After you open them all, you need to lay everything out and find the price and see what it adds up to because it’s giving $26.”

Trying to look on the bright side of things, Harmon shared that the packaging of the calendar did deserve a “10 out of 10” and added that the hand cream, nail polish, mini lipstick, and perfume in the calendar were nice.

But the packaging and the few nice items included in the box did not outweigh the sheer amount of useless junk that made up most of the advent calendar. This junk genuinely looked like the freebies that would be thrown into an order when a real Chanel item is actually bought, which is something that Diet Prada confirmed was the case for certain items like the black wax stamp keychain and No. 5 charm string bracelet.

However, it should be said that Chanel does list all the contents of the advent calendar on their site. So, even if Harmon purchased the calendar in-store as she said she did, the influencer could’ve researched what she was getting before forking over her money.

The website also notes that the calendar contains “a full-size fragrance or makeup product, miniature, or other surprise marked with Gabrielle Chanel’s lucky number”.

Regardless, people couldn’t fathom how Chanel could get away with charging hundreds of dollars for what’s basically a bunch of samples and freebies like this — including YouTuber A Heated Mess and influencer Snowwhitewhite, who also both reviewed the calendar.

But Harmon’s unboxing was the most popular and as her original video gained popularity, the influencer continued to unveil the rest of the advent calendar for the confused and curious people following the “Advent Calendar TikTok” drama.

And as Harmon released more and more videos, the influencer eventually revealed that she had allegedly been “blocked” by Chanel while others keeping up with the saga implied the luxury brand even went so far as deleting their account to avoid backlash. However, Chanel has finally spoken out and denied the claims that Harmon had been blocked by the brand.

Gregoire Audidier, the international communication and client experience strategy director at Chanel Fragrance and Beauty, said that Chanel’s TikTok was never active, so there’s no way that access had been blocked for anyone.

“The recent claim of a person being blocked by Chanel on TikTok is inaccurate,” said Audidier. “We have never blocked access to the Chanel TikTok page to anyone, because it is not an active account and no content has ever been published.”

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“When Ms. Harmon visited our page, she naturally found the usual message that she could not access this account, just like anyone else on the network.”

‘We are committed to sharing our creations with our followers on all social networks we are active on,” he continued. “Our pages are open to everyone, and our followers are free to express their feelings and opinions, whether they are enthusiastic or critical.”

The fashion house also noted that the calendar actually serves as more of a “true collector’s item whose value cannot be summed up by the products it contains alone”.

Bruno Pavlovsky, the brand’s president of fashion, added that the controversy was “a shame” but disappointing customers was never Chanel’s intention.

“This controversy is a bit of a shame because it was not what Chanel intended,” Pavlovsky told WWD. “Chanel thought it would please some of its customers by offering this type of product.”

“Evidently, we see that you have to be careful and therefore, in future, we will certainly be much more cautious.”

Luckily for Harmon, the 70-million views she garnered in the last few days from her ‘Advent Calendar TikTok’ saga will likely earn the influencer back the $825 USD she spent on the Chanel calendar.

But let this be a lesson to everyone playing at home: it’s probably never going to be a good idea to spend so much on an advent calendar without doing research first, especially when it comes from Chanel.