Buying a car seat should be one of the more straightforward parts of preparing for a new baby. You pick one, you install it, you feel mildly accomplished, and you move on to the next item on an overwhelming list. But a troubling pattern emerging out of Tucson, Arizona suggests that for a growing number of new parents, that process is going sideways before the baby even comes home.
Staff at Tucson Medical Center are reporting a noticeable uptick in counterfeit car seats showing up at the hospital, brought in by new parents who genuinely believe they purchased a legitimate product. The seats look the part. Some even come with chest clips now, which used to be one of the easier giveaways that something was off. But looking official and being safe are two very different things, and these seats fail on the second count entirely.
TikTok Shop Is Where the Problem Starts
As you can see above, selling counterfeit car seats is not a new scam. However, the social media platform has changed.
The counterfeit seats are almost always purchased through third-party online sellers, with TikTok Shop emerging as a particularly active marketplace for this stuff. Creators run sponsored posts, collect a cut of each sale, and move on. The parents who buy these seats often have no idea they just handed over money for a product that has never passed a single crash test and does not meet U.S. federal safety standards. Not one. Zero.
Many of the fakes are designed to imitate the Doona, a well-known car seat and stroller combo that retails legitimately somewhere between $450 and $600. Spotting a “Doona” listed for $80 should raise a red flag the size of a billboard, but when a smiling influencer is telling you it is just as good and you are sleep-deprived and trying to stay under budget, the math can feel different in the moment.
Baylee Dorsey, a child passenger safety technician and community outreach specialist at TMC Health, has been tracking how these products are evolving. “Counterfeit car seats have changed exponentially over the past year,” she noted, explaining that they are harder to spot and easier to buy than they used to be. Counterfeiters have been closing the visual gaps, which means the old trick of looking for a missing chest clip no longer works reliably. The fakes have those now too.
For car enthusiasts who spend serious money making sure their vehicles are safe and properly spec’d, this might hit differently: imagine someone selling knock-off brake pads that look identical to the real thing, list all the same certifications, and then crumble under pressure. That is essentially what is happening here, except the passengers are infants.
If you already own one of these seats, the advice from TMC staff is direct: cut the straps and throw it away. Do not donate it, do not pass it along, do not leave it on a curb with a “free” sign. Cut the straps. The seat also does not meet federal stroller safety standards, so the stroller function is not salvageable either.
The safest place to buy a car seat is directly from the manufacturer’s website or from a physical retail store where you can verify what you are holding. If you want to make sure the seat you already have is legitimate, TMC and other Tucson organizations offer free and low-cost car seat checks. You can find a certified technician near you or call TMC directly at 520-324-4475 to schedule an in-person evaluation.
A baby’s safety is one area where finding a deal should immediately make you more suspicious, not less.