BUYING A WATCH ON INTERNET
Buying a watch on Internet is not something very easy. You don’t just go into a shop, make a check and leave with the product. I cannot resume this part in some lines, thus I will separate it into chapters.
The Internet rip off
Internet is a good tool for buying something which is not of a great value but becomes more dangerous regarding expensive merchandises. Let us take the Ebay example, which is the main emarket providing the most products you can find.
The Ebay know-how:
If you wish to buy a product on Ebay, you must first register. To register, you must give your full name, address, email address, telephone number and any other information they will ask you during the filing of the form. Useless to say that you can put whatever information you want, true or not.
If you wish to sell a product, you must also register. But it is slightly different. It depends of the country you register from but some will ask you a real address to send you the last registration codes by mail, and some will ask you your bank references (or credit card number and date of validity), so then they can ensure there percentage being paid after the end of the auction. There are several ways to cheat such registration but this point is too technical to be explained in few lines and I am not here to deliver such “pirate” technologies.
Now let us see some rip off examples over Ebay.
First example.
You notice a Submariner Rolex for sale, for an amount of 1350$ (retail price for a new one: 4500$). Pictures are good and the watch looks good, provided with box and papers (this is what you see on the pictures). You bid on the watch, you win the auction and last price is now 1700$. You are now in contact with the seller who asks you to pay for the watch using registered mail payment, Paypal or Western Union. You send the money and one week later, you receive the watch. It still looks good, as seen on pictures and you have the box and papers, just as stated in the ad. You bring the watch to a Rolex dealer for servicing, i.e. waterproofness before holidays, and one week later, he calls you back and tells you that your watch has been destroyed by Rolex as it was a counterfeit. End of transaction… You do not have any means to sue the seller whatsoever, you don’t know who it is.
Yet, you previously communicated with him and everything seemed to be all right and honest.
Second example.
Let us take the same auction as above with the difference that one week later, you still have not received the watch. You paid for it, but no product. End of transaction, you cannot find the seller.
Third example.
You don’t win the auction. Somebody overbidded your last price for 2500$. You first receive an e-mail from Ebay saying that you lost the auction and that you are only the second bidder. Then you receive an e-mail from a person saying that he noticed that you have bidded on a Submariner Rolex and that he is selling such watch at a very interesting price. The watch is brand new and unworn. You set up everything with the buyer, send the money and… same thing as above, counterfeit or no watch at all.
This scheme shows a person who succeeded in getting your e-mail address (which is normally not mentioned on Ebay) using a pirate tool and then directly communicates with you, without using Ebay communication rules. Never deal with a person who is not an Ebay seller and who directly sends an e-mail to you, using its own e-mail address.
Fourth Example.
You do not win the auction but three days after the closing, you receive a message
from the seller (message using Ebay rules). The seller says that the deal did not succeed and as you
are the second bidder, you can get the watch for the amount of your last bid. You proceed with the
payment and same situation, no watch. This scheme falls into what we call an “account theft”. You
are not dealing with the original seller but with a person using hacker (pirate) tools that can steel the real seller account, check who was the second bidder and then contact you.
There are several other examples but those are similar. Scary but true. Here you see that it is worth
mastering Internet tools to avoid a rip off. There are many of those so called sellers on Ebay. Most
of them are located in Italy, Romania, UK or United States. They will tell you that they live in your
country but then you will notice that their e-mail address is something like sdlfkj@yahoo.es (Spain),
ldsgfsdf@yahoo.it (Italy), thus lying.
You must be careful when you buy something expensive on Internet and there are ways to avoid e-screw.
AN EXAMPLE OF HOW TO AVOID RIP OFF
Unless you master computing tools enabling to detect false addresses and how to geographically locate the seller, it is very difficult to investigate such seller.
Yet, there are several ways to avoid rip off. First of all, you must ensure to use reliable payment means, as you must ensure that the seller is a reliable person.
Now I will give you an example of how I bought my first Submariner Rolex. I had bided on a watch which starting bid price was 1650$. It was a no-date Submariner of September 2000 with box and papers. The seller had not positive or negative feedback. She was based in Scotland and there was no picture on the ad. I proposed 1750$ and three days later, I won the auction. Nobody else but me had bided on the auction.
Probably the reason was that the seller had never sold nor bought anything before. The day after, I received an e-mail from the seller saying that her name was Sylvia XXXXXX and that she was living in Scotland. She told me that the watch belonged to her deceased husband and that she wanted to get rid of it because it reminded her of him every time she saw the watch. At this point, this sounded like a potential rip off. But being too suspicious, you don’t buy anything and the price was very interesting.
When you buy something, the best way is of course a hand to hand deal but I didn’t have time to go to Scotland. I sent her an e-mail asking how she wants to proceed with the deal and I told her that I was willing to finish the deal at the condition that we use an escrow service (a bank which is in fact a third payer. The buyer sends the money to the bank. The bank notices that they received the money. The seller sends the product.
Upon arrival of the product, you check it and you notice the bank if you are OK. Only then they pay the seller.) Such service costs about 60$ and I asked her to share this fee with me. Then I asked for some details regarding the watch, i.e. diameter of the watch, serial number, date of purchase and country code of the jeweller (all on the certificate). I indicate that any detail not provided will be considered as an attempt to rip me off and in such case, transaction would have been cancelled.
I received an e-mail with all my answers, all of them satisfying. I answer this later saying that I am ok to proceed with the deal, that I will pay escrow.com soon, that she will be noticed of such payment within three days, that she shall send me the watch upon notice and that once I received the watch and checked it, I will notice the bank so they can pay her (IMPORTANT: never use any other escrow service than escrow.com, which is the Fargo Bank, a reliable US bank. Never ever use another one). She told me that she agrees with the deal.
That’s it. I can start preceding the transaction. But there is still a doubt in my mind (there is always one…). So I decide to send an e-mail to check a last thing. I just tell her that a friend of mine, a UK national, proposed me to call his brother who is living in Scotland and ask him to meet her at her place and proceed a hand to hand deal. I tell her that his brother knows the product and that this will enable us to save the UPS or FedEx fees.
This is a good thing to check if the seller is reliable, if she is really living where she says, that she really owns the watch and if the address is ok. She answers me positively stating that it is a really good idea as she agrees to save money too. At this point, I know that the transaction was reliable at 95%. The only risk is now to be shot in the street by three thieves in the middle of Scotland. But this latter is rather rare. Then I call her one more time and explain that the person is not available before 15 days and that I don’t want to wait that long. Then I sent the money to the escrow bank.
I sent the money, received the watch, went to Rolex for expertise and sent the acknowledgment e-mail to escrow.com, saying that I was happy with the product. I cleaned the watch and it was brand new, as if it was never worn. It took three weeks to end the cycle but frankly, I prefer to wait such time than be ripped off of 1750$ in one day.
This example gives an idea of what is really necessary to avoid a rip off and what are the real risks of such deal. As an example, here is the kind of e-mail that you can receive when you EBay e-mail account has been hacked and when a person knows exactly what you are looking for. Avoid such ads and never communicate with a person who send you e-mails out of the authorized EBay’s scope (seller name that you can check on the EBay site).
You can note that those emails come from Asia (Asian font on the right) and that the pages have been changed, mentioning the Ebay logo, as on real Ebay members e mails. The two persons had Italian names, but dumb as they are, they just forgot to launch the email from an Italian provider. Moreover, these emails didn’t featured any official Ebay’s seller’s name, which means that those two emails were sent directly from a personnel mailbox, not from Ebay’s email system. When dealing with an Ebay seller, please check his feedback, if such seller really exist...
CONCLUSION ON THE INTERNET
When you decide to buy any product on Internet, there are security rules you must follow. The payment rule is firm. Either you have the possibility to meet the buyer and in such case, proceed a hand to hand deal, thus you will be able to identify the product, or you use an escrow service (escrow.com and not any other one!). Regarding this latter, the transaction is not applicable the other way. If you are the seller, do not use such service, the buyer can send you back a replica watch (very similar to yours), just telling that the watch you sent him does not fit his demand. Even though you notice the change of watch, it will take months to resolve the dispute and get your money back if you win (which is not sure). Use this escrow service when you are the buyer. Ask the seller for good pictures of the watch (shot at the same moment with the same camera to avoid the seller to pick up other photos from another person). Ask a lot of questions. Surf on e-bay and check similar auctions, take your time to look at the pictures closely. If you are looking for a Daytona Rolex, type Rolex Daytona in the search frame and look at all the pictures you can find. You will be amazed to see that sometimes, you will find the same pictures on two different auctions with a different seller. Behave just as a professional investigator. Ask the person his name, his work, his address, information about the city he lives in and the possible ways to meet him at his place, search on Internet if you can find information about him, also check yellow pages, call him, make him a friend, get his telephone number and call him to ask more questions about the watch. Do not hesitate, you are not dealing with a Swatch, you are dealing with at least 2000$ of your capital. All the information you can obtain will be worth it to avoid any rip off because in some way or another, the person will make a mistake. Not 100% of the sellers are trying to e-screw on Internet, this is a small percentage and you will see that most people are nice and good sellers.
Another important point is to check the notes of the seller. On e-bay, you can check how many products the sellers have sold and get the buyers feedback. Regarding this point, you also have to check the products he sold before. If the person is selling a 9000$ Daytona with 60 positive feedbacks and upon checking the products, you notice that he only sold 2$ t-shirts and toys, this person is probably not reliable. Also don’t trust the persons with feedback from confidential buyers - there name and product are hidden and cannot be verified. Some persons are using this trick these days.
Once I received an e-mail from a person saying that his transaction had been cancelled by the buyer and that as being the second bidder, he agreed to sell me the watch at the amount of my last bid. It was a 65’ “5512” Submariner Rolex which was for sale on Internet from a big dealer (more than 10.000 positive feedback). I asked the seller to communicate his phone number, address and photos. The person made the mistake to give me a wrong international phone code. Then I called the company and they told me that the deal already occurred and that they sold the watch to the first bidder. Then I put the seller in relation with the Electronic Frauds Investigations Services, which probably ended the deal with the so called seller… Usually, the persons who are trying to e-screw are not that intelligent. They know some tricks but they make mistakes, most of them misspell words, have bad English… Now, you can always fall into the scheme of a professional one, so be careful.
I sincerely hope that articles will have answered your questions on the subject. All the data delivered in this website are two years of investigation. It took a lot of work, particularly in English to obtain most of data I could find. But I didn’t want to keep this knowledge for myself and I just wanted to share it with Rolex and other brands passionate people.
As stated in the introduction of the website, I love Rolex watches and it is a great pity that such business be overwhelmed by counterfeit dealers. It will probably exist for many years but if every single person works actively on eradicating this curse, then maybe one day it will become an insignificant business.
Fabrice Guéroux
