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Trust, look who...

I came upon TrustedWatch by accident. A good friend and client of my firm is responsible. He, who had been made aware of valuable watches by a colleague, decided about four months ago to buy a rare IWC from the 70s through the platform Chrono24 from a Hamburg dealer. He transferred the purchase price (nearly 3000 EUR) and waited for the arrival of the watch. And waited and waited and waited ...

After three months, the suffering had reached a critical point and he called me. Through short Internet research, I found that both the said platform and the Hamburger dealer had certain, shall we say, "peculiarities" - objectively, TrustedWatch reported these, amongst others. The platform itself proclaimed the dealer as trustworthy and among other things, specifically pointed out that the dealer always paid the platform commission punctually. The dealer’s general management had changed several times. The Internet referred to numerous cases where customers were completely dissatisfied with the behaviour of the dealer.

I became active after not believing the flimsy excuse of the dealer that the watch had been at the watchmaker's the whole time (what is an overdue watch doing at an unknown watchmaker's for three months?). I demanded that he mail the watch within a short period and shortly thereafter I received an email, which offered the purchase price be transferred back to my client. Parallel to my first letter, I had filed a criminal complaint with the public prosecutor's office - the dealer also referred to this. As I made it clear, in no uncertain terms that our client wanted the watch, the dealer tried to take me for a fool and claimed that the email addressed to me, which exactly referred to the facts and the criminal charges, was accidentally sent to my office and was actually concerning another customer. I indicated to the dealer that he was not dealing with a idiot – as a result, although with a significant delay, he did actually send a watch to my client.

My client received his piece of "jewellery " and turned pale. The casing had been polished in a way that had nothing to do with the original state - the face had significant damages. This watch simply did not correspond to the dealer's praise - the purchase price that had come with it, was and is far too high. I explained to the dealer by phone (and once again also to their answering machine, just to be on the safe side) that the delivery of a faultless watch was still required - as expected, there was no reaction.

I now fear that the dealer (even though such watches, albeit it at higher prices, are available on the market) will not provide a substitute. Therefore, in the end an action for rescission will be filed (return payment of the purchase price upon return of the defective watch and damages payment to the price my client requires to purchase the same watch but from a serious dealer).

I will keep you updated regarding the proceedings as well as the outcome of the criminal complaint. Dear Reader, please wish my client (an enthusiast like yourself) good luck.