Discount Hair Removal Cream Burns Customer’s Skin
99p Stores Ltd., a chain of discount retailers from Daventry, England, pleased guilty at Kingston Magistrates Court in October, to selling a tube of Veet hair removal cream which burnt a customers face so badly she could not leave her house for two weeks. The cream had no instructions in English and later tests showed the product was not even Veet, produced by company Reckitt Benckiser, but one which had a pH level of 14.9 per cent. The skin’s ideal pH level, which shows its balance between alkaline and acid is between 5.5 and six. The company was fined Two Thousand Five Hundred Pounds plus costs of Five Hundred Pounds ($5,400 US).
The Court was told that Mrs. Chatfield from Chessington purchased a pack of hair removal cream from 99p Stores’s store in Kingston last year. The product had no instructions in English, but as she had used that brand before she assumed she could use it in the same way. Shortly after application it started to burn her skin.
The court heard that the company had also agreed to compensation with Chatfield and had introduced procedures to ensure that such instances could not occur again.
Mrs Chatfield said: “I had used the product before so just thought I could use in the same way. I put the cream on and immediately I got a horrible burning sensation.”
When interviewed by Kingston Trading Standards the company, which has its headquarters in Daventry, admitted its suppliers had advised that English instructions were needed and that they had recently been prosecuted for a similar offence.
“I was old enough to know better but if it had been used by a teenager with much younger skin, the result could have been much worse.”
I would never buy any skincare products from there again."