fakes + counterfeit dolls and how to avoid them

Main rules to avoid purchasing a counterfeit sex doll

Firstly, we just want to let you know that we are not advertising Tenderdolls or want you to choose a doll exclusively from us. We want you to avoid having a sub-par counterfeit sex doll and for you to be happy with your genuine one. To do that, please choose a reputable vendor, which will sell you a genuine doll and will not support bad business practices of counterfeit sex doll sellers.

You can find a lot of horror stories on the internet about how people have purchased their favorite doll from “legitimate” vendors to only receive a sub-par counterfeit doll from a different factory in China. Often these factories copy the original designs and use lower quality materials or sometimes even make their dolls with harmful TPE and silicone blends to reduce the manufacturing costs. Unfortunately, this business practice became rampant and is hurting the sex doll industry and especially the sex doll buyers.

Because we do not want you to fall into the hands of counterfeit sellers, we wrote this guide, with our experience in this industry, on how to choose a reputable vendor and spot red flags before purchasing your sex doll.

1st Red flag. Fake Reviews

Avoid built-in review systems like Yotpo

The best way to know if a vendor is “legitimate”, is to look at their reviews. As a general rule, if a store uses a “built-in” review system, it’s a high chance that the reviews are faked, especially if the reviews are overly positive. If the website uses “yotpo” reviews or any similar third party system, be careful. It is very easy for the store owners to write non-genuine reviews. To do that, the store only needs to create many “ghost” emails and assign them to these orders. The review also might show a worthless status of “verified purchase” or “verified buyer” as well. Please keep in mind, that this can easily be faked and manipulated by a non-ethical vendor to make their reviews look genuine.

Try to search for reviews that include images of the dolls purchased that were photographed by the customer himself. These reviews are hard to fake, because it is very hard to find images of dolls in the homes of customers that match the dolls on the website. If the images are present, it is a good sign as the company most likely asked to include images while the customer left a review.

More reviews are not always better

Also another red flag are hundreds of reviews. You know that if there is a company no one ever heard of and has so many reviews the reviews are fake. The only system that is very hard to fake, in our opinion, is Trustpilot, as they have staff checking the reviews. If a sex doll store has reviews that upon investigation are considered fake, the store is removed from this platform forever. No wonder you see only a small amount of vendors using the Trustpilot system even though it is the most popular third party review system out there.

Look for reviews that at least mildly criticize the experience

Please also check the contents of the reviews. They have to talk about the product or service in detail. A non genuine review will sound like this: “Product is amazing, the customer support is great!” or “5 stars for the service. I would recommend.” Keep in mind, that genuine people definitely leave these kinds of simple feedback messages, however, try to look at the reviews in context and see if they make any sense.  Usually, a genuine review would go in detail about the customer’s experience with the store and the product. A real customer would talk about the issues that he and the store faced and how they have managed to solve them. Try to look for reviews where the customer has experienced some difficulties with the service or the product and try to look for those reviews that at least mildly criticize some aspect of the experience. When you read a genuine review you will, most likely, instantly feel it. So please check the reviews carefully!

2nd Red Flag. Alibaba and Aliexpress pricing

Avoid suspiciously low prices

We really want to save you huge amount of time from doing careful investigations. Another golden rule is to avoid the aliexpress and alibaba offers for cheap sex dolls. We completely understand that sex dolls are not cheap and if you want a deal these websites are very attractive, but please understand that those markets do not sell genuine dolls as they sell it below the price of whole-sale.

Buying a fake doll and not receiving after sale customer support

The problem when purchasing from these markets is that the seller does not take any responsibility for his product. If there are any issues with shipping or product itself, you would not receive any reimbursement or refund if your doll would arrive not as advertised, damaged or does not arrive at all. A common reply that a customer receives is “ship the doll back, we will give you a refund”. But the underlying issue is that shipping the doll back would cost just as much as the doll itself.

Some vendors that do sell counterfeit dolls advertise the prices to be in the 600-800 USD range. This price range is probably the biggest red flag. The only way a manufacturer can offer these prices, if they would sell sub-par dolls from recycled materials, there is no free meal here, sadly. If you want to have a higher quality product, currently and unfortunately, it’s expensive.

3rd Red Flag. Hidden Original Brands & Removed Watermarks

From as far as we started selling sex dolls, we noticed a trend. A vendor, which does not manufacture his own dolls, advertise them to be made by him, even though the pictures used are of genuine WM or other maker’s photoshoots. When this takes place, such reputable manufacturers dolls as WM, Sino, Piper and others dolls are supposedly made by the vendor himself.

Vendor has photos without genuine watermarks/logo

Watermarks can be removed from a photo and it is not that difficult to do. Why would a vendor hide the real manufacturer of the dolls? Maybe he wants you not to find a cheaper option from other vendor, or maybe he does not even have a contact with the genuine factory and orders a doll from other factories in China.

When purchasing a doll please make sure that the vendor advertises the original manufacturer of the doll.

4th Red Flag. No Contact Information

Please be sure before buying your doll that the company has their company’s name and address listed, also check if they have a phone number you can call. Even if you don’t want to speak with a representative, it is a good practice to call the phone number just to check if there is a sales person that is responsible for answering the calls (most of the times, no one answers and the number leads nowhere).

A reputable company will have a their address and phone number on display whether in the homepage, or other highly visited/seen area.

5th Red Flag. Payment plans

A company that sells counterfeit or sub-par products does not want to have any responsibility after they make a sale. There will be no reimbursement or refund for a doll that arrives damaged or does not arrive at all. The less responsibility for them, the better.

PayPal is currently the safest payment option to use

Please make sure that the company uses PayPal payment gateway and advertises PayPal’s buyer protection. This buyer’s protection is valid for 180 days after a sale is done. If the product arrives not as advertised, damaged or does not arrive, you have the right to ask for a refund. If the refund is not provided, you have the right to ask PayPal to step in.

Please note that you have to have a PayPal account to make use of the buyer’s protection!

PayPal is one of their payment options? It is a good sign

The fact that a vendor is using PayPal as one of the payment options is an indication that the business might be legitimate. However this is not a 100% guarantee.

Recently, PayPal has started banning vendors who sell smaller dolls, for example, 100cm/90cm/80cm Piper or Irokebijin models. That is what happened to us. Without any warning or notice, after working for 2+ years with PayPal and having not a single issue, PayPal has limited our account, saying that “Your products breech our User Agreement”. After many back and forth attempts trying to appeal and adjust our products to comply with their Terms of Service, it has become clear that PayPal will refuse to work with us, even if the small dolls are not present on the store anymore.

Lack of Dollforum Approval

A very sensible thing to do to test the legitimacy of a sex doll vendor would be to check if he is verified by Dollforum.com administrators. Unfortunately, the forum does not allow newer vendors like us to be verified as they have “enough” vendors verified already.

A lot of customers ask us why Tenderdolls is not verified on the Dollforum. That is the first thing we wanted to do when we established our sex doll store.

As we worked in this industry for over 2 years now, the verifications, sadly, were closed to new stores like ours. This means that if there is a new vendor that is selling genuine dolls with a great customer service and real reviews, he will no longer be able to receive verification from Dollforum.com owners.

If you want to check the legitimacy of a vendor, the lack of approval does no longer mean a vendor is non-genuine. Please check the reviews, try to find information about them on the forums. Follow other steps mentioned above in this guide.

In conclusion

Do a little bit of research before attempting a purchase. Check the reviews, online presence of the store. Go through all of their social media to make sure the links are not fake and that they have at least some sort of following. Also, always check the vendor against all the “red flags” mentioned in this article. If they pass, we guarantee, you’ll purchase your first genuine sex doll!

If you finally pull the trigger on your purchase, you can find more information on how to maintain your doll here: How to take care of a TPE sex doll?      How to take care of a Silicone sex doll?

If you have any questions or want our help in verifying a vendor’s legitimacy, please contact our customer support at [email protected] or message us via the live chat widget. You can also click the button below, to check out sex dolls on our store that are manufactured by genuine and most well known sex doll manufacturers. We truly hope that this information has helped!

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