Some Wish Customers Say Cheap Makeup Gave Them Pink Eye and Other Ailments

When Kathleen Knight isn’t teaching belly dancing classes in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she’s often searching for bargain clothes, nail art and knickknacks from overseas merchants on Wish. But the one product Knight wishes she’d never bought from the e-commerce app is makeup.

The 41-year-old purchased cosmetics last year that she said were listed as Urban Decay and MAC products. The makeup took about two months to arrive, and when they did, she saw immediately something was off. The eyeliner fell out of its tubes, and some of the eyeshadows had to be chiseled to get any of the product out. The powders smelled vaguely sulfuric, she said, and when she applied them onto her right eye, her skin promptly broke out. “It looked like somebody had punched me in the face,” Knight said. “There was pus coming out of my eye.”