This is, of course, the most common scam. As you may know, China copies everything, including competitors within its own country.
On one hand, you have legitimate and ethical companies investing in engineers, artists, and development teams to create new products, new models, and continuously improve their offerings.
You also have teams of professional photographers producing high quality promotional material to market these dolls. Among these legitimate brands, some offer good customer service while others do not, hence the need to go through an established and reputable third party vendor. But that is another topic.
On the other hand, you have counterfeiters. These are low-ethics businesses that specialize in copying other people’s work. They reproduce dolls from other companies using cheaper materials, often low-quality, sometimes recycled TPE with a strong odor. They use inferior skeletons, steal promotional images, and sell their products for half the price, or sometimes even less.
To justify these low prices, they claim that you are skipping the middleman and dealing directly with the factory. This is a blatant lie. Most of these vendors simply source from a small number of low grade copycat factories and sell imitation products.
In the screenshot below, you can see an example of a website performing two scams at the same time. This is a fake “expert” recommending the purchase of counterfeit dolls. There is no such thing as cutting out the middleman in this industry, legit Chinese factories won’t sell to you at a lower price. If they would, vendors would rightfully drop them. You are simply about to buy a cheap counterfeit product.
It happened to me, it has happened to thousands of people before you, and it will happen to you as well if you are not careful.
They know exactly what they are doing, yet they will lie without hesitation. In my reviews, I have identified several of these vendors. They are easy to recognize: if the prices are significantly lower than those of other vendors, they are most likely selling cheap counterfeit dolls.
Unfortunately, some “legitimate” vendors also sell counterfeit dolls. They sell the doll at full price, then order a cheaper version from a low-grade factory and have it shipped directly to the customer. Some of these counterfeits closely resemble the authentic models, so unaware consumers do not notice the difference. They end up paying full price for a cheap imitation.
I have caught several of these vendors. Some have also been exposed on specialized sex doll forums and on Reddit. Sadly, they continue to operate and sell to unsuspecting customers who have no idea what is happening in the industry or who they are dealing with. Even worse, if they pay to be listed on certain forums, some admins will turn a blind eye and label them as “verified vendors.”
Check here to see what counterfeit dolls actually look like: Example1 – Example2 – Example3 – Example4
