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How Top Prom Websites began: the knock-off prom dress list

Before this site helped anyone find a boutique, it spent five years telling prom shoppers which websites to stay away from.

The problem we started with

In 2012, shopping for a prom dress online was a gamble. Hundreds of websites were selling copies of designer gowns. They used the designers' own photos, so the listing looked exactly like the real Sherri Hill or La Femme dress. What showed up in the mail was something else.

The stories shoppers told us were the same every season:

• The dress did not look like the picture.
• The fabric was cheaper than the original.
• Zippers and straps broke while the dress was being worn.
• The beading pattern or the color did not match.
• Sizing was all over the place.
• The order shipped from overseas, arrived late, or never shipped at all.

Top Prom Websites launched to sort the legitimate prom dress retailers from the sites selling counterfeits.

How the knock-off list worked

The list ran on submissions. A shopper who suspected a site would send it in, and we would go to work.

First we looked at the product photos and worked out which national prom designer each one belonged to. Then we checked with that manufacturer. If the designer did not know the retailer, and the retailer was not on the designer's store locator, it was not authorized to sell that dress. The site went on the knock-off list. Where other scam alert sites had already flagged it, we linked to them as extra proof.

Most investigations took one to two weeks. Over time the list grew into thousands of individual site reports, each one written so that a shopper searching a site's name before buying would find the warning first.

The same process ran in reverse for the good guys. Retailers on our approved list had to sell only original designer dresses, and we researched their physical address before adding them.

The Site Seal

Alongside the list we offered a free seal for legitimate retailers to put on their own websites. To qualify, a store had to be an authorized retailer for every dress it sold online, use a secure checkout, follow good business practices and have been in business for at least three years. Our line for shoppers was simple: no seal, no deal.

The seal program has since been retired. If you clicked a seal on a retailer's site and landed here, that is why.

What actually worked: getting fakes out of Google

We also wrote a guide for prom manufacturers, because the usual tactics were failing. Complaints to web hosts stopped working once the factories moved their servers overseas. Legal letters, blocked shipping accounts, payment processor claims and customs actions all cost time and money, and a counterfeiter could undo any of them with a new account. A new domain cost about eight dollars.

Our argument was that the fix had to be digital. Google's DMCA takedown process let a copyright owner ask Google to drop an infringing site from its search results. We urged every manufacturer to train one employee to file those requests every week, at roughly five minutes per site. A knock-off site that cannot be found on Google loses most of its customers.

Sherri Hill was one of the labels already doing it. In April 2012 we watched six counterfeit sites disappear from the results for a single Sherri Hill style after the company filed takedowns.

Where it ended up

By 2018, more than 2,500 knock-off sites had been removed from Google, taken down by their hosts, put out of business, or some combination of the three.

Around then, Google began removing these sites on its own. The shoppers kept coming, though, so we pointed them somewhere better: the local prom boutiques that carry the real dresses. That is what Top Prom Websites is today, a guide to the stores you can walk into and try a dress on.

The individual site reports from those years have been retired. Their old links now lead to this page.

How to spot a knock-off prom dress site today

The counterfeiters never went away entirely. The warning signs have not changed much since 2012.

• The price is far below every other store. Authorized retailers sell a current designer style for roughly the same price, so a dress at half that price is a copy.
• The site cannot tell you where it is. Look for a real street address on the About or Contact page. No address is a bad sign.
• The site sells dozens of designers' dresses at the same discount, often with every photo from a different label's catalog.
• The store is not on the designer's own store locator. Most major prom labels publish one. This is the single best check.
• The dress ships from overseas, even though the label is based in the United States.

Our designer pages list the stores that carry each label, and we cross-check many of those against the designers' locators. Start at prom dress designers to see who carries a label near you.

If you already ordered from one

Don't panic. Here is what worked for the shoppers who came to us:

1. Contact the seller first. Tell them you ordered the dress in the picture, not a copy of it. Ask for a full refund and a prepaid return label.
2. Do not ship the dress back without talking to them. Many sites refuse returns that arrive without an authorization number, and you pay the postage both ways.
3. If they will not work with you, call the number on the back of your card and dispute the charge. Explain that you bought a dress online, it is not what was pictured, and the seller refused to take it back.
4. Do not settle for a partial refund when the dress is plainly not what you paid for.

Where to shop instead

If you want to buy online, start with our guide to prom dress websites you can trust. Every store on it was on our approved list in the knock-off years and still sells online today.

If you would rather try the dress on first, browse prom dress shops by state. There is probably a boutique closer than you think.