We return to the subject of online shopping by reproposing an article edited by Paolo Gobbi for the column 'Experts we become' and published in L'OROLOGIO no. 169 (July 2008).
The statistics that periodically appear in the newspapers always highlight, without a shadow of a doubt, the lack of trust that Italian shoppers place in Internet purchases. It is a distrust that stems from a long time ago, from mail-order sales that have never managed to become a mass phenomenon in our country, and perhaps also from our bad conscience caused by years of petty violations of the law that we more or less endorse even in our daily lives. The blatant distrust of a legal system that never fully penalises those who steal or cheat has meant that it is now almost taken for granted that behind every purchase there must be a small or large catch. The many incidents in the news, the scams we witness on a daily basis, the use of other people's trust for one's own narrow profit, are then there to remind us, day after day, that caution is never enough and must always be taken.
When we then look at our watchmaking world, it is impossible not to glimpse the myriad pitfalls that arise when one chooses to buy a timepiece outside the traditional sales canons, or if the purchase concerns a second-hand or vintage piece. In this case, trust in the seller and, conversely, in the buyer, become absolutely essential elements for a good end result. All the more so since the traditional figure of the dealer is increasingly undervalued and put in the background. This happens almost always in the name of the search for the lowest price and the cheapest deal, of the cunning, which leads the buyer not to 'use' the merchant who has been on the market for decades and therefore has the best guarantees, favouring instead extra-continental sales, often procured via the Internet and spurred on by the mirage, at the very least, of customs evasion.
The result of so much approximation, of believing in bogus credentials or quickly fabricated ones, are those scams of which many people often complain, but which are nothing more than the result of a lack of shrewdness and correctness when selling or buying. How, then, to denounce a fraudster when the buyer was first using it to avoid paying VAT, or to smuggle an item into Italy that was essentially contraband? How can one take the seller of a stolen timepiece to court when the buyer not only had not demanded formal guarantees, but had not even inquired about the origin of the object itself? Ultimately, sometimes the impression is that fraudsters find their best targets precisely in those who want to be swindled.
Pictured is a classic Rolex DateJust Ref. 16220 in steel.
Rolex, Audemars Piguet and Omega are among the most traded brands on the second-hand and vintage market. Be careful, however, not only not to fall for scams, but also not to go looking for them.
