I normally don’t do these type of posts but since I am 99% certain I am seeing a scam in plain view, I thought I would speak out.

You might have seen the ads for ScaleX Models online on Facebook or Instagram. The ads show model (diecast?) Formula 1 cars in what seems to be an art gallery. They mention that they have a 80% sale and offer free shipping. I looked them up and was quite interested as I had been looking to get a 2019 Red Bull diecast since the Montreal F1 back in June and couldn’t find any 2019 models anywhere. Also the price seems very good. Actually too good to be true and that’s when my spidey senses kicked in. So here is why I think this company is a pure scam and will just take your money:

1. The price is too good to be true. Normally you pay about $60 to $70 for a 1/43 model and well over $150 for a 1/18 model. They offer a 1/8 model for $49.97. So that’s cheaper than anything out there by a long shot for something way bigger.
2. Shipping is free internationally and guaranteed within 5 to 8 days. According to their scale, the model is about 60cm long (24 inches). With a normal F1 car being about 180cm wide, a 1/8 model would be 22.5cm wide. The box for that would be huge. Shipping this in Canada would be minimum $20 CDN and $14.32 USD. I used 1kg for shipping weight to come up with the rates here and this comes with a glass case. Think how heavy that would be.
3. The date of the end of the sale is always extending 1 day every day. Today (September 6th) the sales ends tomorrow (September 7th). Check again tomorrow and it will have extended by one day.
4. They have no physical address that I can find and no phone number.
5. They use a gmail address for their email. Say what?
6. If you look carefully, the photos of their model looked photoshopped. There is some blurriness on the floor in front of the models.
7. The photos show a model that’s seems way longer than 60cm. Looks like 120cm long (1/4) based on the bar of lights at the top.
8. The site is ripped with “Running out of stock”, “Place orders while supplies last”. All to make you do an impulse buy.
9. They claim to have 2000 orders sold but I cannot find a single review online anywhere. Normally with anything that geeks like me would buy, you are bound to find a review online as a blog post or YouTube video these days. Nothing. Nada.
10. The last time I saw the ad on Facebook, a whole bunch of people were commenting that it looked like a scam so I also commented as well and put my concerns (similar to the ones here). Next thing you know, all those comments were removed from Facebook. The only ones left were the positive comments.

So there you have it. Note I have not purchased them and I know I titled this article as a review but that’s just to make sure that if others are trying to find reviews of them, they see my warning. If you have bought from them and you can prove to me (comment below to start) that you received what was promised, I will remove this post immediately and line up to buy some myself but until then, you have been warned.

UPDATE: As of 2019-09-11, the site is now down. The shop is unavailable is what is said on their website.

UPDATE 2021-07-08: Still getting comments from people who unfortunately got tricked. One thing I read is that if you do get tricked, contact your credit card and see if you can get your money back via a chargeback. Credit cards usually have protections for those type of things. If enough people do it, their account will be shutdown.