Is Your Drillbrush Real or Really Fake? - How to Spot a Genuine Drillbrush Power Scrubber

For our service team, it’s not uncommon to get calls from customers. Occasionally the wrong brush was shipped or someone has a question about the product and we remedy the situation immediately.

However, sometimes we receive a message about a broken brush and after asking for more details or receiving pictures of the brushes, we find that the defective items are not Drillbrush brand brushes, but imitation products that tricked the customer with stolen pictures and fraudulent listings.

Counterfeit products and listing fraud hurts everybody. It reduces sales for our products, hurts the legitimacy of drill-powered scrub brushes, and tricks consumers into spending their hard-earned money on a subpar product.

If you want to avoid the headache and make sure the brush you're buying is a legitimate Drillbrush Power Scrubber, we’ve got a bunch of strategies you can use to identify and avoid scam listings before you even check out.

Spotting a Counterfeit

As it says on the tin!

The easiest way to spot a genuine Drillbrush product is to look at the box! Drillbrush products are shipped out in full-color branded boxes featuring our logos, color charts, and in most cases, a picture of the kit on the front. Most counterfeit products ship in an unmarked cardboard box, a labeless plastic bag, or occasionally in a box with different branding

As Drillbrush products are mostly sold online, there isn’t a lot of incentive to spoof our packaging, so our boxes are a safe way to know it’s legit. Do note, however, that in some retail settings, we sell single brushes in plastic blister packs or bags with a card seal, though both of these packages are properly branded with Drillbrush iconography.

Etched in stone (well, technically polypropylene)

Another great way to determine if your brush is a real Drillbrush is to look at the block. Drillbrush is sold by Useful Products LLC, so every modern Drillbrush product has “Useful Products'' molded onto the block. As most counterfeits just have blank molds, whenever you see “Useful Products” on a brush, you know you’re in good shape! We also mold ANSI and maximum RPM safety info onto the blocks. Larger brushes, such as the 4 inch, 5 inch, 7 inch or Edge brush have more verbose text on them, while brushes with a smaller block the the 2 inch and Original have less info.

That shouldn't be there!

There are several other smaller details you can check for as well. Many counterfeits lack the same molding and construction standards to save cost, meaning inclusions, imperfections, and chips in the block are common. Drill-powered brushes need to be hearty to withstand the forces a drill puts upon them, so if you see structural issues in the block, we recommend not using it.

Knock-off bristles (left) vs Drillbrush bristles(right.)

Many knock-off brushes also arrange their bristles differently. Drillbrush products have mildly crimped bristles organized in clusters, whereas the not-quite products have straight or excessively crimped bristles that are haphazardly distributed and unevenly trimmed.

On rare occasions, we’ve even seen brushes come with a dusting of white powder on top. Perhaps they were just stored near some baked goods or something.

Transparency

Just scan it to verify!

Another way to verify that your Drillbrush is legitimate is through Transparency.

Transparency is an Amazon program that allows customers to scan their purchases to get in-depth information about the product, as well as verify its authenticity.

Products that use Transparency have special labels on them with a barcode that can be scanned using the Transparency app or the Amazon mobile app. Scanning the code will direct you to a page that displays information on the product.

Each Transparency code is unique, so there’s no risk of a code being forged by a counterfeit seller, making this a great way to know if your brush is a true Drillbrush.

Check the Site

Home sweet Home!

Online shopping can be a minefield to navigate. For every great deal, there are two that are too good to be true. If you're shopping for Drillbrush products, how can you be sure that you’re buying the right one?

The easiest way to make sure your brush is official is to shop on our website, drillbrush.com! By using our site, you can guarantee you're getting a Drillbrush product because Drillbrush products are all we sell!

Website orders are fulfilled through our warehouse or through Amazon fulfillment and are priced identically to our stock on other websites, just with some shipping and handling fees.

Our website contains no third-party advertising and is well optimized for Google search results, so it’s an easy experience that’s easy to find. In fact, if you’re reading this, you’re on the website right now! Just click “Catalog” on the top bar to start browsing our brushes!

The official Drillbrush Amazon store!

For Amazon Prime members, or people who prefer to use Amazon as their primary online shopping tool, you can view our entire line of products on our Amazon Store at amazon.com/drillbrush.

Additionally, every product on our website has a button that links directly to the Amazon listing for that product, allowing you to browse and buy without seeing unrelated products.

Forget the search bar. Go directly to the good stuff!

Some storefronts have a low barrier for entry, thus, many Drillbrush clones and knock-offs can easily mingle their way into the search results. This is why we also have a page on our site dedicated to linking directly to our products on other online marketplaces. It’s available under “Where to Buy” from the top bar above.

Swiper no swiping!

In particularly devious cases, we’ve seen scammers steal Drillbrush pictures and assets and either edit out our logo for use on their own products, or keep the logo in and pretend to be us. There are several things to look out for in these fraudulent listings

Those familiar with digital media or Photoshop may have an easier time with this, but looking at the quality of the images will give a good clue as to their legitimacy. Many knock-off sellers will either screengrab or save Drillbrush images directly from Amazon. However, Amazon automatically adds some compression to photos that are uploaded to their store, so these reuploaded pictures will often be of even lower fidelity with a hefty amount of pixelation and JPEG artifacting. You may also find sloppy edits, odd cropping, image stretching or squashing, color-shifts, and other anomalies. We always use high quality images and we run an audit on our images every year to improve out-of-date pictures and correct errors, so a good picture is a good sign that it’s real.

Be sure to also check that the seller name is correct. Drillbrush, one word, is the primary seller name we go by on other storefronts. Sometimes our parent company, Useful Products LLC, is the listed seller instead. On international Amazon sites, a suffix is added to our Drillbrush name with the country abbreviation for that particular storefront. For Amazon United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Poland, and France, our seller name is “Drillbrush EU.” For Amazon United Arab Emirates, Australia, and Japan, it’s “Drillbrush UAE”, “Drillbrush AU”, and “Drillbrush JP” respectively. The only exception is Ebay, where our name is listed as “drill-brush.”

Lastly, a sign that the listing may not be legit is if the listing is riddled with typos. Many scam listings are done in a rush or by individuals who lack a familiarity with English, resulting in spelling mistakes and mistranslations. We won’t claim to be perfect Spelling Bee champions, but at least we never referred to “gray” as “Gary.”

Benefits of Owning a Legitimate Drillbrush

The fate of most counterfeit brushes.

Some may come across a copycat Drillbrush, see the reduced price, and think it’s a better deal than the name-brand Drillbrush. However, the value of owning a genuine Drillbrush far outweighs the couple of bucks you may save in the short run.

Illegitimate Drillbrush products and some competitor brand products have a very common issue with the shaft spinning out of the brush when put under stress. The shaft receives the most strain during scrubbing, so it needs to be sturdy enough to withstand the forces placed on it. If the shaft comes out, the brush is effectively useless (unless you want to go back to hand scrubbing.) It can also be dangerous, as a loose flying hunk of plastic can cause injury in the event of a failure.

We’ve tested dozens of knock-off brushes over the years and have found that nearly all of them cannot handle snags or catches when they clean. We’ve even had some shafts spin out after a few seconds of normal use.

Another knock-off for the bin.

Drillbrush shafts have been tried and tested over the better part of a decade to achieve maximum durability. The forces required to spin it out of the block far exceed any consumer-grade power tool and we have not received a single complaint of the shaft spinning out. You can see a shaft durability comparison between our brush and a competitor in our Dr. Brush comparison blog.

Durability saves you money in the long run. With a knock-off product, you will have to keep replacing broken brushes every month or so. However, most Drillbrush customers can go years before needing a brush with fresh bristles, and some can go even longer if they follow the tips in our Drillbrush care and maintenance guide.

Not only do you get a quality product by sticking with Drillbrush products, but you also get helpful guides, cleaning advice, and support from our staff; something that most counterfeit sellers can’t provide.

The Real Deal

If you’re looking for a drill-powered brush to make cleaning fast and easy, be sure to use the tips above to confirm that the product you’re looking at is a genuine Drillbrush Power Scrubber. It could mean the difference between quickly cleaning your kitchen and seeing the shaft snap off on a simple scrub.

If you’re concerned about a brush you purchased, feel free to contact us at info@drillbrush.com and an associate can assist you.