My experience of buying watches on the web

I am a middle school teach and a part-time web developer. A month ago I had almost bought, what I was convinced by the seller, was a swiss made cheap rolex 99.9% close to the original. With a swiss ETA movement, a sapphire crystal and all the “appropriate markings”, this was supposed to be the best swiss on the market. I was so convinced that I was going to pay 0 for it, the price seemed high but much lower compared with the sites that were offering the same watches for 00+. Their online store looked very convincing, with crystal clear high-resolution pictures and a description that seemed to cover all the details of a rolex watch. Being that I have bought cheap watches before from street shops in china-town I had a pretty good idea of how they can vary in quality. You can go anywhere from few miss-matches like engravings on the back, pins in the links, regular glass instead of sapphire, to the writing on the face being dull or chipped, the magnification of the date inaccurate and the movement completely junky making the second hand look more like a quartz watch then a 25 jewel sweeping movement, turning your few hundred dollar purchase into a rubbish.

So I did a lot of researching online. I wanted to consider all my options and compare all the prices to spend as little as possible and getting the best quality watch. I arrived at a few sites, some offering Japanese copies for around 9-250 and some selling what they claimed to be the highest quality, grade AAA+ swiss made cheap watches ranging from 0 to 0.

I found the model I was interested in, looked at the pictures and was pretty excited to have found a watch looking more like the real rolex than a cheap watches.

 

I was a little worried about the customs and shipping of the watch itself, so I went ahead and emailed the store asking how they ship the watch and if its possible to avoid paying customs or getting the watch seized. I got a pretty quick response from a lovely sales representative, who informed me that they have shipped to my country numerous times and never had a problem. She then went on to explain how the watch is packaged in as much of an inconspicuous way as possible so that the it doesn’t get seized..

I still had my doubts and called the number they provided on the site. No one picked up… I tried again and still no answer. This got me thinking. A web site charging an average of 600 dollars for their “top of the line” watches, offering 100% money back guarantee and yet can’t seem to afford a live customer service team? Strange. So I started doing some research. I wasn’t able to find much feedback on the web site until I came across a watch blog exposing it as a scam.

 

A friend in a forum later told me that it works as follows.

 

You buy what you think is a brand-new cheap swiss rolex and you pay for it. Less than a week you get your watch, some better looking than others, but in any case none last longer than a few weeks. When it finally breaks you decide to use the money back guarantee and exchange the watch for a new one. You send your watch back to an address provided, usually somewhere in Brooklyn, and wait. You get no response. You call and the lady on the phone tells you there is nothing she can do. You try canceling you’re credit card purchase and it turns out that it was sent to a unknown merchant in Russia and there is nothing that can be done… So you’re sitting at home without your Rolex and 0 poorer…

Lucky I didn’t make any rash decisions. Funny story, I later bought a 0 cheap watch from yewatch, it was not complete satisfying, a few faults, but I guess I could live with it. Buying staff online should always be careful, always check in google to see if the website is qualified .

Related Buy Watches Online Articles