Dec
30
Buy watches From Replica Watch Sites?
It seems that online fake watch merchants have decided to spread their wings and expand their wares to include Seiko, Citizen and Casio watches. This subject actually surfaced in the Seiko & Citizen Watch Forum several times this year.
Personally, I couldn’t care less about replica Swiss watches. There’s a healthy market for them and people buy them as gifts, to try them out before deciding to buy the real thing, for safety reasons (they don’t want to wear their genuine Rolex Daytona going to unsafe places or events) or just for pure fun. Heck, someday I might get myself a replica Omega Speedmaster automatic just for kicks!
I discovered that there are several replica watch sites have been advertising replica Seiko, Citizen and Casio products at prices that are similar or higher than genuine watches. They made it clear that the watches they’re selling are replicas (they’d prefer to avoid the word “fake” for obvious reasons) and have no qualms about it.
If you have already read my past article on spotting fake Seiko watches, you probably know a thing or two about differentiating bogus Seiko watches from authentic ones.
That’s not it. My actual concern is the fact that these sites are actually using stock catalog photos of genuine Seiko, Citizen and Casio timepieces. How do you know that these sites are selling authentic or knock-off Seiko watches? You don’t.
You won’t know until you’ve parted with your money, ordered the item, receive the package and open it up. Then it hits you like the proverbial brick wall and you get that sinking, stinking and sickly feeling deep in your guts. You scream bloody murder. “It’s a bloody toy watch!”
At least someone who replied to the thread mentioned that he ordered a Hamilton and a Citizen watch from one of these replica sellers. What he received was vastly different than what was depicted on the website. When he complained to the merchant, they replied something like “What you have ordered is similar to your request”.
Um, yeah…that’s a very professional sounding reply indeed. Right.
He was pretty mad about it and I could imagine that he wrote his post in sheer anger. I felt sympathy for this poor bloke who was taken for a ride. He judged the products from the photos that were shown, not their description.