Chinese Counterfeit P90X and Insanity Copies on Amazon, Ebay, and the Internet

As most readers probably know, I love Beachbody fitness products. I made a mistake thinking I could save money using Amazon.com rather than order directly from Beachbody. There is no different in prices, unless you are using Amazon to purchase used copies. Beachbody's excellent service allows you to break up payments over three months. I have ordered Tony Horton's 10-Minute Trainer, P90X2, and Beast Body directly from Beachbody.

Having borrowed P90X from a friend, I wanted a copy for myself. I looked on Amazon for used copies where I stumbled upon a used copy from DGHallBiz. Had I done an internet search I would have known these copies were coming from China and not the United States and were part of China's counterfeit operations of American products. This of course is costing American businesses billions a year as China steal our intellectual property.

So how do you tell if your Beachbody product is a counterfeit? 

After I placed my order through Amazon, it took a month for my product to arrive. I had to sign a customs form and began to question the order.

It showed up in a similar Beachbody box like my other products. Maybe I got lucky. The box was sealed. 

When I opened it, I knew I had been had.

The quality of the packaging wasn't the quality of my other Beachbody products. While the printing wasn't bad, you could see the text on the back of the package along with the pictures were dirty prints. 

The next thing that concerned me was the size of the books. With the exception of Ten Minute Trainer, all my other Beachbody products have come with magazine sized manuals and nutrition guides. The guides that came from China were smaller in size and printed on cheap paper over the glossy, high-quality paper Beachbody uses.

The ad on Amazon shows the manuals being magazine sized.

Looking at all of my legit Beachbody products, they are manufactured and printed in Mexico. The version I received from Amazon was manufactured and printed in China. 

There is one sure way to know if your Beachbody P90X, Insanity, Beast Body, or P90X copies are counterfeit. Both a Beachbody coach and Ebay note that if your Beachbody DVDs were shipped in plastic sleeves, you got a counterfeit. 

This was another difference I noticed in my Beachbody products I purchased direct compared to the copy of P90X I purchased used for half the cost.

The following is Ebay's guide to determine if your P90X or Insanity copy is a Chinese counterfeit. 

1. This is the easiest way to tell if dvd set you purchased is real or fake. If you are purchasing a Brand New set which most fake copies are.            Are the dvds in a plastic sleeve?

If so then you have just bought yourself a counterfiet copy. BeachBody puts out a very high quality product and would never ship you an item with all of the dvds wrapped in plastic, it just doesnt look good. The people who make these fakes have boxes and boxes of these dvds and put them in plastic so they wont get scratched and are too lazy to take them out of plastic before shipping.

2. The size of the retail box that these come can determine if these are real or fake. P90x retail boxes should be about the size of a regular sheet of notebook paper, many of the p90x white boxes that are fake are much smaller than that, but they also have a larger fake box as well, which is alot closer to the real thing. Insanity boxes are about same size, I will go into more detail of how to spot a fake insanity below.

3. Read the guides that come with your dvd set and look for mis-spelled words. I don't believe there are any mis-spelled words in an authentic guide from Beachbody for any of their fitness sets, but nobodys perfect and you may find 1 but the fakes are loaded with mis-spelled words. Its amazing that they can make a replica so close to the real thing and can't even use spell check. I have heard of them even mis-spelling Tony Horton's name on the actual dvd itself.

4. For P90x only, the small flip binder that the dvds come in is not made big enough and dvds are hard to get in and out of sleeves, and often come apart due to using cheap glue to hold them together.

5. For Insanity only, the book that the dvds come in (2 per side per page) is not big enough and the dvds overlap a little, and the little round thing that holds the dvds in the book often just falls out or comes out with the dvd. Beachbody would never put out such a low quality product that would just fall apart like that. Also last I checked they had not fixed this but 2 of the dvds in the set, they are the bonus dvds which come crammed in the back of the book in a plastic sleeve do not work or skip around alot. I know one was Insane Abs and I cannot remember which was the other, there are three bonus discs, Insane Abs, Upper Body Weight Training and another, the another is the other one that skips alot.    

6. Look at where this item is coming from. If it is not from the USA and the seller has multiple listings for them or has several for sell, chances are they are fake. Beachbody does not need to wholesale these products, they are popular enough that they sell themselves and they are made in the USA.

7. Lastly, just look at the price, If you are looking at a Buy it Now for a brand new verision of P90x or Insanity for $35-$75 bucks with free shipping then you are probably looking at a fake. The sellers who sell these fakes normally do Buy It Nows and price them to move quickly, they want their money fast before ebay finds their listings and closes them. I have seen guys have as many as 10-20 listings with 99 copies in each listing and sell them for as low as $38 free shipping and sell everyone in less than a day. Sure their auction gets closed or removed but not before they are able to sell hundreds of copies.

In regards to 7, the counterfeiters are getting smart and listing the items as like new, and then when your package arrives a month later, it's sealed. You begin to think you are getting a good deal until you realize it's a counterfeit.