Scammer Dice Shops

^{Updated 21 Feb 2023}

Since late 2020 we’ve seen a significant amount of scammer shops pop up on Facebook and other social media. These accounts and stores advertise dice that aren’t theirs, and will not deliver what they promise.

There are certain tells how you can spot whether an online store is a scam or not, and I would strongly advise not to buy from such sources. Below is a list of some of those tells:

• Low product costs: Incredibly low (“too good to be true”) prices for high end or unusual dice
• High shipping costs: Very high shipping costs, usually increasing, the more products you add to your cart
• Marketing ploys: Frequently used marketing ploys in ads such as “We are sad that we have to close our store, your last chance to buy at low price” or “We are giving away 200 dice sets”
• Glamour shots: Advertising unique dice sets with “glamour shot” type photos
• Inconsistent photography styles or quality because photos are stolen from different sources and not their own
• Strange names: Store or brand names that don’t make sense or sound odd, sometimes with extra random letters at the end, lately often first names with “dice” or “dragon” added (list of names below)
• Odd wording: English texts that sound awkward, like they were written by non-native speakers or automatically translated
• Emphasis on customer satisfaction: Texts that stress how special their dice are and that they cater to the individuality of customers with high quality product, sometimes odd wording for a dice store, e.g. “Our core vision is to help you express yourself”
• Uncustomised template text from a ready-made online store system, e.g. “This area is used to describe your product’s details. Tell customers about the look, feel, and style of your product.”
• Unprofessional looking e-mail addresses in the Contact Us section, e.g. margaretehomenickwrvht68@gmail.com
• Homepage setup: Often using a “Featured Collection” on the landing page, frequently use emojis in their navigation menus or product titles, often simple dark text on white background website design without any graphic elements
• Shop or social media page creation date: The shop or the attached social media page was only created recently, usually within weeks or a few months of the ad being shown — should tell you right there that a store that has existed for only three months and is now doing a “closing down sale” is a bit fishy
• Fake reviews: Several similar comments under Facebook ad posts that are fake reviews (e.g. “I ordered these dice, and they are great quality,” or “I bought form this store and I received the product very fast.”)

In 2020, many of these ads and stores used unique handmade dice (such as large d20 with unique embedded objects) and dice from unfulfilled Kickstarters (such as the MDG liquid core dice, Dicebound, Uncharted Trilogy-Aurora, Pixels Dice).

Since late 2021, a more frequently used theme has been “We are sad to be closing our dice store, you have one last chance to buy for super low price” or a suggestion of a giveaway but then very high shipping costs. Dice often depicted are unique handmade dice or high-end gemstone sets. There have also been posts that used language such as “grand opening sale”.

The dice are always offered at price points that are considerably lower than the Kickstarter, the handmaker’s or the original brand’s prices (e.g. offering $80 Kickstarter dice for $15, full polysets at special reduced price of $0.01 or gemstone dice sets for $1.99). Suggested manufacturer’s retail price listed is often inflated by 2x or more the actual MSRP so that the reduced prices in comparison to the listed MSRPs look like real bargains (which they are not).

These stores advertise under different names, and they’re often some kind of strange or nonsensical fantasy name or a first name with the word “dice” or “dragon” or “dnd” added (e.g. Jackiednd, Donniedice). Store names so far seen include the following:

Mike Saltzman from Viridian Gaming has made a YouTube video explaining these kinds of scams as well. Interestingly, he explains that even if you use PayPal for these stores and you get scammed by being sent a vastly inferior item, PayPal may not necessarily refund you, they will encourage you to work it out with the seller for a return and refund. And since the seller is only there to scam people, they will make it incredibly difficult to get a refund, which is why most customers then don’t bother going that route.

If you see ads like this that use Kickstarter dice or other very unique dice, especially if the prices seem very low, caution is advised. What happens very often is that, if you order there, they do send you dice, but they will be cheap pearl or other mass-produced generic dice that look nothing like what you thought you ordered. Worst case, you never receive any product at all.

Recently stores and Facebook ads have sprung up that list commercially available product at incredibly low prices, e.g. reducing sets from $19.99 to $0.01. No reputable dice retailer will sell dice for 1 cent. These stores also often inflate the MSRP to make it appear their price reductions are massive. One example was a store listing the Q-Workshop Dice Macabre at $99.99 suggested retail price (reduced to $0.08), when actual retail price is somewhere around $20.

Whenever you see such an ad or post on Facebook, Instagram or other social media, you’re encouraged to report it as a scam. There may be other ways to report fake shops as well, for instance if they use URL shorteners like bit.ly that have spam reporting forms.

Dark Elf Dice Scam Shop

Some time in 2022, a Chinese scammer started imitating the well known and legitimate dice shop Dark Elf Dice by making a shop website that looks very similar to the real Dark Elf Dice but has a different URL. The real Dark Elf Dice shop has the URL darkelfdice.com, the scam shop goes by darkelfshop.com.

On the surface, the scam shop seems legitimate, but if you look a little more closely, you can see that the fake shop shows clear signs of not being a valid dice store. For instance, the “About Us” section sounds very strange for a dice shop since it talks about women’s fashion, and it calls themselves “Cheap Dark Elf Dice Store”.

ABOUT US
Cheap Dark Elf Dice Store is the ultimate style destination for feel-good fashion to make every woman look good & feel great! With all the latest trends, wardrobe essentials & accessories, plus style tips, body shape & outfitting advice –Cheap Dark Elf Dice Store is the one stop shop for flattering, fashionable & affordable style solutions.

You can always rely on Cheap Dark Elf Dice Store to make you look fabulous!

Before you buy from Dark Elf Dice, always make sure that you’ve got the shop with the darkelfdice.com URL before you purchase anything!

Kickstarter Scam Warning

There have been a number of dice Kickstarters in the past that turned out to be scams. In a post in Dice Maniacs’ Club, a DMC member kindly shared that these Kickstarters often follow the same pattern (info from 2021):

• Creator: Someone working for a company from Hong Kong or Singapore, usually first creator but has backed a few projects, Kickstarter profile is private and you can’t see the backed projects, has no Facebook page at all or a very recent one, very little to no information about the company available online
• Currency: Always Hong Kong dollars
• Reward: Always a 7-die RPG set
• Video: Always good quality video with music, no people in the video, usually a spinning camera or light effect and a black background
• Pictures: Very similar style, with the company logo watermarked on it (usually in the corner)
• Communication style: The texts all have the same style of phrasing and wording, often uses “I” instead of “we”, often starting with a story about how the unique idea for the dice was conceived as a collaborative effort
• Delivery time: usually 2-3 months after end of the campaign
• Timing: Next scam campaign is usually launched roughly 2 weeks after the previous one reached its goal (about the time the creator receives the funds)
• Outcome: Roughly 2 weeks after the project gets funded, communication from the creator stops, around the time the funds have been received, with many comments from backers afterwards on Kickstarter who never received their reward