You are being asked to send money to a shop you have not heard of, for an object that does not exist yet, and to wait a year or more for it. That is a lot to ask. This page sets out who we actually are, what happens to your money, and what protects you if we get it wrong — including the parts that are not flattering.
Who you are actually paying
Halidom is a trading name of Loaded Dice Ltd. There is no separate Halidom company, no holding structure and no third party in between: the card payment goes to the same company that has been filing accounts since 2020 and that runs the shop in Barry.
- Loaded Dice Ltd, company number 12429789, registered in Wales and incorporated on 28 January 2020. The Companies House record is public: directors, accounts, filing history, all of it.
- VAT registered, GB 342132248. A statue business that is not VAT registered cannot be paying import VAT on your behalf, whatever it says on the page.
- Registered office and trading address: Unit C4, Windmill Parc, Hayes Road, Sully, Vale of Glamorgan, CF64 5AD. Not a mail-forwarding address.
- A shop with a door. Loaded Dice has traded from a physical shop since 2023. The telephone below is answered there, by someone who can walk to the stock.
Halidom itself is new, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. What is not new is the company standing behind the reservation, and that is the part that matters when the piece is eighteen months out.
What actually happens to your money
Here is the part most pre-order shops leave vague. Your deposit is paid to Loaded Dice Ltd and used in the ordinary course of the business — placing the order with the distributor, paying for the allocation, paying duty and VAT when the piece lands. It is not held in a segregated client account or in escrow, because we do not operate one. Any retailer telling you a deposit is "held safely" for a year should be asked exactly where, and by whom.
What we do instead is keep your exposure small and short:
- Ten per cent, not the whole price. A reservation takes 10%. On a £2,000 piece that is £200 at risk rather than £2,000, for the entire wait.
- The balance is requested at the end, not the beginning. Not on an estimated date, not when the studio says it has shipped — when the piece is physically with us in the Vale of Glamorgan and has passed inspection. If it never arrives, you were never asked for the rest.
- Your card is not charged in the meantime. Nothing is taken between the deposit and the balance request, and nothing is charged without telling you first.
The real protection on the deposit is not our promise, it is your card. Pay the deposit with a credit card and Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act makes the card issuer jointly liable with us for the whole purchase, deposit and balance alike, on anything priced over £100. Debit cards have chargeback instead. We explain both, including where they do not apply, on how your deposit is protected — which is an odd page for a shop to write, since it tells you how to claim against us.
What we promise about dates, and what we do not
We do not promise dates. Studios miss them, licensors hold approvals, factories run late and freight is freight. Any statue retailer implying otherwise is new, or not being straight with you.
What we promise is that you find out before you have to ask. Every estimate on the site carries the date we last checked it against our distributor's schedule. When one moves, we update the product page, email everyone holding a reservation, and keep the old date struck through beside the new one rather than quietly overwriting it. Every change we have ever published is listed on the release tracker under "dates that have moved", with the date it changed — so you can see how often it happens here before you commit, and check afterwards that we did what this paragraph says.
A moved date does not change your reservation: the price you agreed is the price you pay, whatever happens to the exchange rate, the trade price or duty in the meantime.
Before it reaches you
Every piece is opened, inspected and photographed by us before the balance is requested, so the condition it left in is on record. It ships in the studio's own shipper, double-boxed where the packaging warrants it, tracked and signed-for with UPS, and the largest pieces travel palletised or by two-person courier with a delivery day arranged with you rather than left on a doorstep. Mainland UK delivery is included in the price, with duty and VAT already paid — there is nothing to settle with the courier and no customs paperwork in your name.
If something goes wrong
If the piece arrives damaged or faulty, we put it right at our cost — replacement parts from the studio where possible, collection and a full refund where not. That is the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and nothing on our site reduces it.
If we cannot supply what you reserved — the edition is cancelled, or an allocation we expected does not materialise — you get back everything you have paid, in full, within fourteen days, and we tell you why. Nothing is retained in that case.
If you change your mind, we retain 10% of the price: for a deposit reservation that is your deposit. We would rather write that in bold here than let you discover it in a policy page. A reservation is what puts the piece into production and we commit to the distributor on the strength of it. Where a statutory right to cancel applies, it is unaffected — the detail is in our refund policy and the plain-English version is on how reservations work.
What we will not do
- Invent scarcity. No countdown timers on editions that are not closing, no "3 people are viewing this", no stock numbers we cannot substantiate. When a page says an edition is closing, it is because the order window is closing.
- Publish a date we have not checked. If we have not verified an estimate, the tracker shows when we last did, and a stage we have not confirmed shows as not confirmed rather than as a guess.
- Claim protection we do not provide. No escrow, no "your money is safe with us", no insurance we have not bought.
- Quietly rewrite history. Old dates stay struck through. Changes stay logged.
How to check all of this
None of the above is worth much on our own word, so check it. The Companies House record confirms the company, its age and its filings. The VAT number can be verified on the government's VAT checker. Trustpilot carries several hundred reviews of Loaded Dice — the company, not this brand, because Halidom is too new to have its own and we are not going to pretend otherwise. And you can telephone 01446 502 374 and speak to someone in the shop, Tuesday to Saturday 10:30–16:30 and Sunday 11:00–15:00, or write to hello@halidom.uk. If you are about to reserve something in four figures, we would rather you rang first.
Questions
Is Halidom a real company?
Halidom is a trading name of Loaded Dice Ltd, company number 12429789, registered in Wales since January 2020 and VAT registered as GB 342132248. The company runs a physical shop in Barry, South Wales, and its filings are public at Companies House.
Is my deposit held in a protected account?
No. Deposits are paid to Loaded Dice Ltd and used to place and pay for your order; we do not operate an escrow or client account and we do not claim to. The protections that do apply are the 10% structure, Section 75 if you pay the deposit by credit card, and chargeback on a debit card.
What happens if the release date moves?
We update the product page, email everyone holding a reservation, and log the change on the release tracker with the old date struck through. The terms of your reservation do not change, and neither does the price.
What happens if Halidom stops trading before my piece arrives?
Deposits are not ring-fenced, so a credit-card payment is your strongest position: Section 75 makes the card issuer jointly liable for the purchase and you would claim from them. This is the honest answer, and it is the reason we suggest paying the deposit on a credit card even though it costs us more.
This page describes how Halidom operates and is not legal advice. The company details are matters of public record; the consumer rights referred to are set out in the Consumer Rights Act 2015, the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 and the Consumer Credit Act 1974.