Vitamin C serums?

So my aunt have been using a diy "vitamin c" cream. She buys vitamin c supplement tablets and grinds them into fine powder and then mixes it in creams/gels, hense tablets are cheaper than serums. But one of her friends ( she's a doctor by the way) told my aunt that it won't work cuz vitamin c is water soluble, it won't work no matter how much of it you put on your skin. And it made me wonder, does that mean that vitamin c serums are a scam?
Vitamin C serums?
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