Reborn dolls – These aren’t just ordinary dolls that kids play with. A reborn doll is there for a very good reason. Reborn dolls are made for mothers who have recently suffered from maternal trauma and are dealing with complications like the loss of a child during birth, and miscarriage.
We understand this adds a significant amount of anxiety and depression to your life and may also affect your day-to-day life. At this point, a reborn doll is usually suggested by your therapist as a means of dealing with this pain in a better way.
These life-like dolls are therapeutic and can help you cope with the anxiety attacks, and lower your depression and stress levels. However, when it comes to finding a reborn doll, there are hundreds of different products available on the internet.
Unfortunately, not all of the products you see listed on the internet marketplace are real. Scammers are exploiting this and they may trick you into buying a reborn doll that does not even exist. Here’s everything that you need to know about reborn doll scams in 2022.
How To Identify The Reborn Doll Scams – Key Identifiers:
Before we get into how to avoid reborn doll scams, you first need to know how to identify fake reborn dolls and online scams. There are certain red flags that you need to consider when going through an online listing to help avoid being scammed and losing money.
These include:
1. Attractive Prices
The first thing that we notice in an online listing is the price of a product, right? Scammers know this as well and to get you hooked on the listing, they will offer a price that will be lower than the actual price of the reborn doll.
This may trick you into believing that they have lowered the price out of sympathy for mothers dealing with anxiety. So, do not fall into their trap.
An excellent quality reborn doll, with features like handcrafted vinyl will always cost you more than $250. Finding one below this price range is a big red alert. There are two reasons why you will find a reborn doll that costs less than $250. One, either the seller is new and has significant flaws in the quality of the doll, or two, either the seller is trying to scam you.
Ideally, a good quality reborn doll that has life-like features will cost you a significant chunk of money, ranging from $600 to $5,000 and more.
So, if you see a reborn doll that quotes $99.99 or $149.99, stop right there. You need to let this product go because this is the biggest giveaway of a scam product. Additionally, these scammers may also have posted big covers screaming “Buy one get one free, or buy one and get a 20% off”. Do not fall for this!
2. Stolen Pictures Or Repetitive Pictures On The Listing
Scammers are smart enough to drop the prices to get you hooked, but most of them are not smart enough to get actual pictures of the reborn dolls. Most pictures that you find on a scam listing are stolen and have no actual link to the seller (scammer in this case).
If you’re wondering how to spot this, we have got your back! There are several ways to see if the pictures in the listing are real or fake.
The scammers usually go through pictures of actual products and edit them by simply cropping them and changing the colors. If you find a picture that is zoomed in and has poor borders, you should take the hint!
Apart from this, you may even find pictures of actual babies in their listing –which is another major giveaway of being a scam.
3. Location – A Dead Giveaway!
Reborn dolls are crafted and sold all over the world. You may find a reborn doll in the United States, that says made in China. It can be from any part of the world. However, at the same time, most of the scammers and their websites are based in Asia.
Most of the scam listings you find on the web are usually from Asia. So if you see any Asian seller on your internet marketplace, you need to carefully examine the product and look for reviews to see if the product is genuine.
3 Effective Ways To Avoid Reborn Doll Scams
Here are three of the most effective ways to avoid reborn scams.
Reach out to the seller
The best way to see if the product you’re seeing is real or fake is to contact the seller and ask for details of the product. Not only will this confirm the legitimacy of the reborn doll you’re inquiring about, but will also help you figure out if the seller is a scammer.
All you need to do is reach out to the seller and request a photo or multiple photos of the reborn doll. Make sure you ask them to send you pictures of the product, other than the ones uploaded on the listing.
As a safety measure, you can ask them to write the name of the doll on a piece of paper and hold it with the Reborn Doll while taking the picture. If the seller is real, he or she will do precisely this. Whereas if you’re being scammed, the seller will simply ignore this and shy away.
Find Out The Sources Of The Listing
A trick to see whether the listing is real or fake, you need to examine its sources. To do this you need to find out where the pictures of the listing are coming from.
Here’s a trick to see the actual source of the image, right from your browser.
In your browser (Google Chrome works better for this step), find a listing, press and hold the CTRL or Control key on your keyboard and click on the image. A pop-up menu will appear on the screen and click on the “Search Image on Google.”
If you find the same image, and the listing on multiple websites, you should take the hint! It most probably is a fake listing and the seller is simply trying to scam you.
Go Through The Details Of The Listing
Simply reading the details of the listing can give away whether the reborn doll is real or fake. What you can do is, read the details, and look for errors in grammar and spelling.
Similarly, you can also go through the about section, the FAQs section, and the shipping and delivery information. If you spot an Asian country in the shipping section, you may be better off steering away from this product.
As mentioned earlier, scammers would usually have mentioned an Asian country in their listing, which is why you need to be extra careful.
In the same way, you can see the delivery information of the product and see the number of days the product will take to arrive. For instance, in the US, any product should not take more than 7 – 9 days to ship.
How To Spot A Reborn Doll Scam Shop?
Looking for ways to spot a reborn doll scam shop? Unfortunately, there is no reborn scammer list or database that specifies whether a seller is actually selling the products or is just trying to scam you.
What Are Reborn Doll Scam Websites?
Reborn Doll Scam websites are specifically designed to trick you into buying their products. They simply do this by offering you prices unlike any real product, and will offer you benefits that are hard to believe, for example, “buy one and get two free.”
In such cases, you’re better off just closing the scam websites.
If you feel suspicious about a reborn doll website and want to see if it is an actual site or simply one of the many reborn doll scam websites, you can look for customer experiences. Yes, you read it correctly! There’s a tool named Trust Pilot, it will help share the experiences of other people with the site.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, there are plenty of reborn doll scams out there and they will get you hooked to their scams if you’re not careful about it. A reborn doll scam will most probably have fake images, poor listing details, and may offer you unrealistic prices and other benefits.
If you spot any of these red flags, you should simply turn down the product and look for better alternatives. A simple rule of thumb is to avoid any products that cost less than $250.
