Fake TPE Dolls, Copies & How to Avoid Scams

LOW COST TPE COMPOSITION

Low cost thermoplastic elastomers do not qualify for medical or food application and therefore neither sex toys. This is what the cheapest TPE Dolls are made of. The composition include the following materials so you might want to think twice before getting a cheap TPE doll copy:

• POLYVINYL CHLORIDE (PVC): Containing dangerous chemical additives including phthalates, lead, cadmium and/or organotins.
• STYRENE ACRYLONITRILE (SAN): Classified as a Class 2B carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
• POLYSTYRENE (PS): Containing Styrene and Benzene, suspected carcinogens and neurotoxins that are hazardous to humans.
• POLY METHYL METHACRYLATE (PMMA): Suspected to be carcinogen, causing allergic reactions, immunotoxicity and organ system toxicity.
• ACRYLONITRILE BUTADIENE STYRENE (ABS): A petroleum based plastic, the only non-toxic one of this list.
• STYRENE MALEIC ANHYDRIDE (SMA): Known irritant to humans. Severe skin burns and itching have been reported following dermal contact. Can cause conjunctivitis, inflammation and swelling of eyelids, severe lacrimation and photophobia.

Having doubts? Simply make a Google research with the name of the component above + “toxicity”

MEDIUM COST THERMOPLASTIC ELASTOMERS

Although much less toxic than low cost TPE, medium cost thermoplastic Elastomers remain hazardous and do not qualify either for sex toys. Known to cause irritations their toxicity depends on the type of ingredients used.

Just like low cost TPE medium cost thermoplastic elastomers do contain PVC, Bisphenol A, Latex and phthalates. Let’s break down their product composition below:

• POLYPHENYLENE OXIDE (PPO): No toxicity observed
• POLYCARBONATE (PC): Certain types of polycarbonates could be hazardous in oral contact situations due to the release of bisphenol A (BPA) during hydrolysis (degradation due to material contact with water). Although being under scrutiny, this material is considered relatively safe, but it depends on the type of polycarbonate being used, making it hazardous for sex toys application.
• POLYPROPYLENE CARBONATE (PPC): Causes moderated skin irritation, as well as irritations to eyes and respiratory system.
• POLYTETRAFLUOROETHYLENE (PFTE): Dangerous when heated, but relatively safe otherwise, although linked to Alzheimer disease as it contains aluminum.

Having doubts? Simply make a Google research with the name of the component above + “toxicity”

HIGH COST THERMOPLASTIC ELASTOMERS

High cost TPE also known as food grade or medical grade thermoplastic elastomers are the safest kind, and are free of PVC, phthalate plasticizers, Bisphenol A or latex. Let’s break down their product composition below:

• POLYARYLATE (PAR): No toxicity observed
• POLYETHERSULFONE (PES): No toxicity observed
• POLYETHER IMIDE (PEI): No toxicity observed, flame, smoke & fully toxicity compliant material
• POLYPHENYLSULFONE (PPSU): No toxicity observed (used to make baby bottles)
• THERMOPLASTIC POLYIMIDE (TPI): No toxicity, doesn’t contain any reactive chemicals
• POLYAMIDE IMIDE (PAI): No toxicity observed

Having doubts? Simply make a Google research with the name of the component above + “toxicity”

LOW COST TPE DISADVANTAGES

Aside from the poor realism in comparison to real models, as well as the toxicity of the components being used, fake TPE has properties nowhere near what high quality TPE brings you:

• Durability: Your doll skin will very quickly tear open, with a very poor abrasion resistance and a low thickness
• Resilience: Inferior quality TPE will not have a high resilience. Meaning that your doll will lose her shape quickly (for example sacking breasts or flatten butt)
• Heat resistance: Bad TPE do not support heat well and will melt if the temperature gets too hot (for example during summer) thus also increasing its already high toxicity.
• Elasticity: Low cost TPE has a bad elasticity and does not come back to its initial shape like as well as higher grade TPE do.

BAD QUALITY SKELETONS

TPE Dolls copies or low cost brands have a cheaper version of what authentic TPE doll brands use, with limited movement ranges.

These low quality skeletons are prompt to corrosion (adding more to toxicity, like if it wasn’t enough already), will rust very quickly and are made of cheap metals that will break in no time during manipulation.

Be careful with a broken skeleton. Metal poles can then easily pierce through the skin and hurt you. You do not want to be stabbed by your sex doll, kinda lame isn’t it?

POOR LEVEL OF DETAILS

Keep in mind that pictures advertising these low cost sex doll copies are heavily processed with photo editing softwares (such as photoshop). When scammers aren’t stealing original pictures to sell fake sex doll models that is.

Models will hardly look like pictures, and also have a poor level of finishings (such as mould bleedings not removed, poor makeup). Additionally the TPE quality of the blend lacking structure and therefore density will have a translucent aspect (which usually helps to easily spot a low quality TPE doll).

HEAVY TOXIC SMELL

Low cost TPE used to make counterfeit copies or entry level TPE sex dolls has a very strong unpleasant chemical smell that is not going away by the time the doll will break or tear (due to its poor quality material).

RED FLAG #1: THE PRICE

The cost of the doll, although not always the only way to tell, is usually one of the main giveaway. As we stated above and as per the old adage, you get what you paid for. The TPE Dolls market lacks of regulations but that does not mean that distribution is not organized correctly.

Don’t think you can outsmart distribution especially as a new buyer, you won’t. As a matter of fact, this is the easiest way to get scammed: Looking for the cheapest price possible thinking you are getting yourself a hell of a deal.

Different quality of TPE come with different price ranges. Some vendors selling authentic models have been around for years and there is a reason for these prices to all be pretty close to one another (including us). The non-exhaustive list below shows you some of the main vendors in this industry:

• Fine Love Dolls (That’s us!)
• Real Love Sex Dolls
• Sexy Real Sex Dolls
• Sexy Sex Dolls
• Silver Doll
• Silicone Wives
• Dolls France

Whoever is cheaper than these main sellers by several hundreds of dollars must leave you skeptical. Especially when the price is half of what we propose. That can only mean one thing: It is either a scam or a cheap copy model.

A good way to make sure who you are buying from is to make a quick search on the main sex dolls community websites, Dollsbook, Our Doll Community, DollForum. Search for the vendor’s name in the search bar and what people are saying about them. If no one mentions a given shop, do not buy from it.

RED FLAG #2 MARKETPLACES

We will never stress this one enough: Do not ever buy a sex doll from a marketplace such as:

• AliExpress
• Ebay
• Amazon
• Other B2B or B2C marketplaces

The reason is quite simple. Marketplaces make it so easy for scammers to get away with it and start again an infinite number of times. Countless histories of people trying to buy a doll and having been scammed are available online.

There are several scamming techniques done on these platforms. Some will simply and purely take your money and run away, other will send a product different from what is being advertised (using real product pictures to sell copies or blowup dolls).

Generally these scammers either hide between implicit store terms & conditions, or exploit a given marketplace dispute system to get away with it. These marketplaces are too big to enforce the authenticity of every single of their vendors.

What we often hear of is the merchant proposing a partial refund in best case scenarios. At the end of the day you are still being scammed and haven’t received the product you were expecting to receive.

Additionally, these marketplaces have a strict policy on adult products too and it isn’t that easy to get a refund once you have been scammed.

RED FLAG #3: POOR ENGLISH

And we aren’t talking about typing mistakes here which can happen to the best of us. We are talking about Chinglish, poorly written English content with a lot of mistakes which is generally typical of scammers.

Let us be clear that you may find a genuine vendor selling authentic dolls that isn’t proficient in a language that isn’t his mother tongue. That being said, and for the sake of communication, we recommend that you shy away from these, to make sure that your order isn’t being heard through the grapevine.

This will avoid your order being forwarded to production without any misunderstanding(s) or bad surprises (This given vendor sells copies for example, he told you so!)

RED FLAG #4: NO SSL CERTIFICATE OR HTTP SECURITY HEADERS

You probably heard this one before, but let us repeat it. Not everyone being tech savvy. Regardless if you are buying a sex doll or any other product online, one should NEVER buy from a website that does not have a valid SSL certificate.

A SSL certificate is the little lock icon that you see in your browser search bar when navigating on a given website. You can click on this icon to see the details of the certificate. Additionally, all URLs you are accessing should start with “HTTPS” and never with just “HTTP”. This ensures your data are secured.

SSL certificates are small data files that encrypt and protect sensitive information sent across the internet, so that only the intended reciption can access it. (For example your credit card information)

As a result, if you see a vendor that does not have one, this is a major reason to close the page and find a more secure merchant. Nowadays most browsers will enforce SSL and send you a warning if the page that you are trying to access is not secure (for example Google Chrome), but not all browser do so always pay attention to that detail before buying anything online.

However in 2022, a SSL certificate alone is not enough to protect your data and credit card information anymore, as hackers have numerous methods to hi-jack these. In addition to making sure the sex doll vendor you are buying from has a valid SSL certificate, we also recommend that you scan their website here, to make sure that they have implemented proper security header to protect your data from being stolen.

RED FLAG #5: LACK OF INFORMATION

Scammers aren’t only operating on marketplaces. Building a website nowadays can be done quite quickly especially if you are just copying content from a template.

A good giveaway is usually websites that are built hastily without much content or pages available. Another quick way to find out is the domain age, or when a given website address was registered, if it is recent this should leave you skeptical. To find how long a website has been operating, you can enter its URL in this tool.

Why longevity matters? Scammers usually won’t be able to operate for a long period of times. This is because the payment platforms that they connect to their websites (for example PayPal or Stripe) will shut them down if to many chargebacks on orders are to occur and if they are spotted as alleged scammers.

Fine Love Dolls uses these 2 payment gateway systems, which are the main ones. If a vendor do not use PayPal and only propose a small payment gateway, this should leave you skeptical as he might be switching to different payment gateway providers on a regular basis (there are a lot of smaller ones).

RED FLAG #6: PREVIOUS ORDER PICTURES

This is an easy one if you know what to look for, but be careful: Scammers use real previous orders pictures too.

The sneakiest ones will display a mix of both real and fake sex doll order pictures so a good way to tell if you aren’t sure what a given doll looks like once produced is to look at the background of that picture.

WM Doll, YL Doll & OR Doll for example, are all produced by the same factory. The background is always the same: White walls, large premises and a GREEN FLOOR. Just like on our pictures down below. Notice how authentic models always have the same floor on pictures.

This is not true for all copies, but the most notorious factory making fake sex dolls always use the same brown wood bench with a white wall right behind. This is a major giveaway that means you are seeing a copy of an original model, as per below:

Some of these copies look quite realistic or close to the authentic models sometimes, but don’t get fooled. These are made of inferior quality and harmful materials.

A common technique that we are seeing more and more often from scammers is a mix of real and fake order pictures so that some buyers don’t even realized that they have been fooled into buying a fake sex doll. Scammers will post both on their social media accounts or website to have you believe this is what authentic dolls actually look like. Quite smart ain’t it?

Another technique consists of posting photoshopped photoshootings of these fake sex dolls alongside authentic pictures, let us give you an example below:

The naked model on the left (at least the head) is actually a copy of the original model lying on the bed on the right. Both look pretty close right? But don’t get fooled we are talking about 2 totally different levels of TPE quality.

BUT HOW DO I KNOW WHICH MODEL IS AUTHENTIC THEN?

Check on the main vendors list above. If a given photo shooting such as the one above is not listed on the main vendors websites, you can be sure that it is a copy. Not only WM Doll is being copied, so is JY Doll and a lot of other top quality brands leading the market. If you are having a doubt never hesitate to ask us!

RED FLAG #7: CUSTOMER REVIEWS

Reviews are quite easy to fake so this alone isn’t enough to determine whether a vendor is or not legitimate. It is however a good indicator, especially off site of who you are dealing with.

Dollsbook, Our Doll Community, or Doll Forum are good ways to find out about previous customers of a given seller. You can also check whether a given website has a review page available, but take the time to actually read to reviews to see if they seem legit or not.

Let’s face it, unless incentivize most customers won’t bother leaving one. Only the one truly looking to share their experiences will and will generally do so in a rigorous and informative manner. With that in mind you should easily be able to spot generic or fake reviews.

A counter example is that a lot of legit vendors from the above have the bad habit to boost their number of reviews by writing fake ones, a practice that we do not agree with.

Fine Love Dolls does not have a lot of reviews, yet we count among the main distributor of the TPE Doll industry, achieving large volumes. You can be sure that every single one of our reviews is 100% real, from thoughtful customers who kindly took the time to write about their experience.

RED FLAG #8: NO CERTIFICATION CODE

In 2020, WM Doll, YL Doll, OR Doll & SE Doll brands have setup an anti-fake certification system. If you purchase one of these brands model(s) from Fine Love Dolls, your package will include an authentication number.

If your doll is from one of the above brand, and does not have a valid certification code, it is a copy.

At reception of your doll, please visit WM Doll or SE Doll anti-fake page, and enter your code into the field to confirm your doll authenticity:

VERIFY A WM | YL | OR DOLL MODEL

VERIFY A SE DOLL MODEL

RED FLAG #9: DOLL BRANDS SOLD

Pay attention to the list of sex doll brands the vendor you suspect is selling. Some are well known low cost counterfeit copies. If a vendor sells authentic brands alongside these 2 or other low cost generic brands you haven’t heard of before, watch out.

Both of above listed brands have several copies of WM Doll moulds. Chances are that this vendor is selling authentic (or fake) heads with low cost body copies.

RED FLAG #10: BRAND NAMES NOT DISPLAYED

Sellers not listing a giving TPE or silicone sex doll brand anywhere should leave you suspicious. This detail on its own isn’t enough to verify whether or not a vendor is legit unfortunately but it should keep you aware of potential “legal loophole” that scammers are so fond of.

A seller not listing sex doll brand names coupled with the wrong options is a scam 100% of the time.

RED FLAG #11: PRICE CHARMING & OTHER MISLEADING SELLING TECHNIQUES

Another misleading selling technique among some sex doll shops, also known as “price charming” is to trick you into believing that the displayed price is for the model advertised on the pictures, when it is actually with either a torso, or another “similar” smaller and lighter body that has strictly nothing to do with the original.

This deceptive technique tricks you into having the first impression that the doll is actually cheaper than elsewhere, but once you select the same body as the pictures, as well as additional options, the price goes up by much more than elsewhere. That is assuming you even noticed you were getting the right body with your order in the first place (easy to make a mistake especially for new comers).

At Fine Love Dolls we frown upon these sketchy promotional practices designed to mislead and trick customers. We recommend to shy away from stores engaging in such selling methods. Why? Because there is a thin line between getting tricked and scammed and you should avoid playing with fire. A vendor-seller relationship starting on a lie is not the definition we have in mind of trustworthiness – If they lied to you once, why won’t they do it twice?

RED FLAG #12: MISLEADING OR WRONG CUSTOMIZATION OPTION PER BRAND

Each manufacturer has its own set of customization options and upgrade available with their models, you can see each option per brand here. Note that this is constantly changing, and commonly a lot of manufacturers won’t notify their distribution partners about novelties.

You need a stubborn team like ours to go squeeze the facts out on a regular basis, and keep customization forms for each sex doll brand/manufacturer, accurate and up-to-date. But what sex doll customers unfortunately tend to see is rather:

1) NOT ACCURATE OPTIONS: A lot of sex doll shops are either not aware or won’t bother adding all upgrades available for each brand. Look at male sex dolls for example, how many vendors actually bother setting the right customization options specific to that model? (for example beard style, body hair, etc…).

That being said, not all sex doll shops with wrong customization options are scammers, but most scammers will have the wrong customization options, as per below example:

2) OPTIONS COMPLETELY OFF: If options are global to every sex doll brand on the website you are looking at, this is a major red flag that the sex doll is a copy. A good example is when you only have 3-4 skin tones or eyes colors available, on product pages of brands such as WM Doll, which has much more (and different colors) from the ones listed.

3) OPTIONS MADE UP: Similar to the red flag #11’s deceptive practices listed above, some vendors like to invent options that do not actually exist, just to try to trick customers into buying from them instead, or even worst, to pump up the price. No, WM Doll does not do custom skin tone colors! No, WM Doll does not do lips coating! How do we know? Because we speak with them everyday in Chinese!

We work that extra mile. We make sure to stay well informed and notified about any sex doll option or upgrade innovation and detail including compatibilities restrictions (for example, the heating system will prevent shoulders from being able to shrug with WM Doll enhanced skeleton, etc…).

Whether a sex doll shop has the right customization details for any given brand is rather easy to check. Go on any of their products and compare it with Fine Love Dolls.