Is Lushdoll Bella Worth It? I Don't Know Yet.

[tonyverhallen]

I bought the Lushdoll Bella from Silicone Lovers on 23 November because of the realistic labia in the advertisement photos. I wanted the skin tone not to be as tan as in the pictures, but not too white, so I ordered the honey skin tone, which seemed to be in between. First, I ordered it with the green movable eyes. Then I wanted them changed to blue, which Silicone Lovers acknowledged, and then, after seeing someone else’s review on The Doll Forum, I decided to switch back to the green eyes. Over the course of a week, I emailed Silicone Lovers a few times that I wanted the eyes changed back to green. They did not read my emails in time, and when the doll was finished, it had blue eyes. That was my fault, though. Silicone Lovers apologized that they had been slow to respond because many of their staff members were out due to COVID-19 illness. It took four weeks between the time of ordering to the point the doll was finished. In the factory photos, the doll’s skin was too white, the face looked different, and the labia looked undefined, like Play-Doh. It looked like a cheap doll I could have bought on eBay for one-third of what I paid. I was sorely disappointed. Louie offered to have the factory remake the doll the way I wanted if I paid a cancellation fee of approximately $150, and I told him I rather not pay any extra money, so I offered to keep the doll, as long as Lushdoll could salvage the face and the labia. Nick replied that the plain-looking face and unsightly labia were the result of the doll’s beautiful features not appearing very well in the lighting when the photos were taken, as well as the lower image quality of the camera used and the stain of the labia that had yet to settle in. I was not very impressed with his answer and showed him comparison photos to prove my point. Louie also claimed that the doll would look better if higher quality photos were taken, but acknowledged that the labia had not been heat treated properly. He offered to have Lushdoll remake the doll, but this time at no additional charge, so I accepted. A couple weeks later, the doll was finished, and the photos looked good.

The doll was shipped by UPS on 18 January, but for the first nine days, UPS tracking kept stating the doll was in transit in Shenzhen, China. I was annoyed as to what was going on, as it seemed like they were just driving it around in circles around the same city. The doll left China on day ten. UPS was supposed to deliver the package four days later, which was my day off from work. I was waiting all day at home for UPS to deliver it. First, tracking said it was supposed to be delivered 9:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., but that did not happen. Around 6 p.m., a UPS truck pulled up on the curb opposite my apartment building. I opened the door and waited there for twenty seconds and looked. Since the driver did not come out, I closed the door again and waited for her to come to my door and knock. She did not. Instead, she just drove off again without even leaving a note on my door. The UPS tracking website said that delivery was attempted, but “the receiver was not available for delivery” – complete bullshit – so they would try again the next day. I called UPS International Shipping customer service and explained the problem. The representative stated that since no one was required to sign for the package, the recipient did not need to be home at the time of delivery, so I asked for the driver to just leave the package at my door the next day, since I would be at work. The next morning, 3 February, a representative from a local UPS facility called me and told me she would talk to the driver, instructing her to follow protocol and make a real attempt at delivery this time. The package was dropped off that day, while I was at work. In all, it took UPS 16 days to get the package from China to California, U.S.A., but it took Fedex only 4 days to do the same with another doll I ordered, even during the busy holiday/Omicron-surge season.

I unboxed the doll that night. Lushdoll should have padded the doll better. There was insufficient padding for the neck and no padding for the upper arms and shoulders. Hence, the neck was bent as insanely forward as possible, the back was extremely arched backward, and there are dents in the upper shoulders. There are also many dirt marks in several places on the doll’s body. I was able to straighten out the neck and the back by applying force. The labia look like they did in the factory photos – not as well-defined as expected, despite customer service representatives telling me that the labia would look better in person than in the factory photos. I find the face to be unattractive, so I am trying to sell the head. Overall, the doll looks good, but not nearly as glamorous as in the advertisement photos. The doll I received is like a dirty reflection of the Bella in the advertisement, and it is very heavy. The advertisement says the doll weighs 70 pounds, which I can manage, but this thing weighs more like 90 pounds. I emailed Silicone Lovers about the shipping problems and damage to the doll, and Louie agreed that UPS is awful, but it is one of the few carriers still willing to ship the dolls. He said that they probably stored the box upside down, resulting in the bent neck. He suggested using a heat pack to fix the dents on the shoulders. Soon, I will start to play with the doll more, and hopefully, I will enjoy it.

From mid-December through even now in early February, it has taken Silicone Lovers, on average, a week to respond to each of my emails. It is true that I have sent them a lot of emails, but I only do so when necessary because I do not want it to become excessive. The various reasons (excuses) Silicone Lovers gave for their lagging response time and UPS’s delays included staff members getting sick with COVID-19, the high volume of orders, too many staff members at Silicone Lovers and Chinese love doll factories taking time off during the 10-day Christmas season in the U.K., and Chinese love doll factories closing down during Chinese New Year. This is the end of a long and stressful experience that I do not intend to repeat.