Hi all. I thought it might be worth sharing a buyer's experience of the eBay Watch Authenticity Guarantee service.
To be frank, I was very wary of buying an expensive watch on eBay, as I am sure are many people. There are lots of Chinese fakes out there, some are remarkably difficult to spot, and historically eBay has been a great place for unscrupulous sellers to defraud unsuspecting buyers, as has been widely reported in the past. To their credit, eBay have introduced the Authenticity Guarantee service, which on paper (as well as in reviews) sounds like an excellent approach to stamping out watch fraud on the platform. So, here is my first time buyer’s review of the process.
I bought a beautiful and fairly rare Omega Chronograph. It was not cheap by any means, but it was listed with lots of evidence to corroborate its authenticity, had been serviced and restored by Omega themselves, and was in nearly as good as new condition. So, I was happy to hand over the significant amount of money I had saved up for just such a watch, particularly with the eBay authenticity guarantee to provide me with complete reassurance. The watch came with the original box, paperwork, manual etc, and I was very much looking forward to receiving it!
The seller duly sent the watch to Stoll in Ruislip (eBay's UK authenticator), where it was inspected for authenticity and accuracy of the listing. This took a little while, but the watch passed this stage just fine, and I received a notification to state this. All very reassuring! A short while later, I received an email notification from PackLink (the company eBay use to arrange deliveries) to say that the watch would be with me the following day, using DPD. Then the DPD app on my phone pinged a notification that delivery was the next day. So, I took the day off work to make sure I was here and waited. At 8:30, as promised, DPD sent me a message to confirm my delivery slot (10:30 - 11:30) and driver's name etc. Then, just over an hour later, DPD sent me another notification, this time to say that the consignor (PackLink) had requested that the watch be returned to them. There was no explanation, nor is there any way to contact PackLink to find out what is going on (believe me, I tried for quite some time). I did manage to speak with DPD, who simply said that their contract is with PackLink and that as PackLink had requested the package back, DPD are returning it to PackLink.
After lots more wasted time (well, at least I had taken the day off work....) I managed to get through to eBay. They said this was "very unusual" and could not figure out what was going on, but that they would look into it and get back to me. To be fair, a few hours later they did just this. They said that after speaking to DPD, PackLink and Stoll that it transpired that Stoll had sent the watch but forgotten to include the original box. At some point this had been spotted by Stoll, presumably someone saw it still lying on a desk / the floor / whatever, and so Stoll asked for the package back so they could reunite the watch with its box. That return was requested at 09:34, and DPD were in the process of returning it. The eBay representative said that the likely outcome was that Stoll would receive it either later on that Thursday or Friday, so I would hopefully get the watch on Friday or Saturday (I checked and DPD do deliver on Saturdays here).
However, it is now nearly 4pm on the following Monday, over 4 days and 6 hours since the watch was requested to be returned to Stoll to simply have the box added to the package and resent out to me. Checking eBay order progress and for any delivery updates in the DPP app, there is no sign of the package, nor is there any information to state what is happening or when I might finally receive my watch (which is supposed to be a birthday present this week). The DPD app shows that the watch arrived back at the DPD distribution centre, local to Stoll, scanned in on Thursday afternoon, but there the trail ends, with no recorded movements since then. I contacted eBay once more today. They see the same thing as me and also thought it was unusual that the watch had not yet got to me, let alone arrived back at Stoll for the box to be added. eBay have said that this could either be that Stoll may have actually received the watch back but have failed to update the system, or that DPD had been unable to deliver the watch back to Stoll for some reason. Either way, eBay are looking into this and will get back to me.
I am becoming increasingly concerned (as is the seller) that the negligence of Stoll (who, let’s remember, verified / signed off that the original box was present, but then failed to package it up with the watch) have not only delayed the delivery process, but this watch might even be lost as a result. I will update here as and when I hear more, but so far, it has been 11 days since I paid a lot of money for this watch, and at this point I have no idea where it is or when (if ever) I will receive it.
