I do not own any of the mac skunk brushes, but i wanted one like it cause they can be useful, i got mine from sephora. It is a sephora proffesional brand brush (back from when the professional ones had silver handles aka before the platinum collection.)
i looked on the site they only make ones in the silver handles, and they run about 35 dollars. I honestly dont know if that is more or less than mac, but i am going to assume it is less because most of the other brushes are slightly less than there mac counterparts.
Any way i have not had any of the issues with the brush bristles bleeding there color on the white (i know this was a common problem for one of the special eddition versions from mac), also i have not had any hair's fall out yet (idk if i am more gentile with it or if it is just made well, but as for cleaning i have had it over 6 months and have not cleaned it once, i know gross and it still works fine) a few of the bristles have started to point in wonky direcions, however they are only the black bristles, and if it is truley an issue just running your fingers up the bristles pressed them back into place.
as for if you can return the brush you bought or not. that proboably depends on how long you have had it and how much you have used it. If it is a situation where you just bought it like a week ago and only used it once or twice, than i would deffinately see ifthey would do an exchange or a return. However if it is several months old, and you use it everday, proboably not going to be able to return it