Some Wish customers say makeup gave them pink eye, other issues

The Wish application is displayed on an Apple Inc. iPhone in an arranged photograph taken in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. Wish, reportedly valued at more than $8 billion, has built one of the fastest-growing e-commerce businesses today by offering a dizzying range of products that sometimes sell for as much as 90 percent off regular prices. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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 eye shadows had to be chiselled to get any of the product out. The powders smelled vaguely sulphuric, 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.”