Catawiki

J'ai stoppé toute transaction avec Catawiki à partir du moment où j'ai remarqué qu'ils effaçaient ou édulcoraient mes évaluations négatives autour des fausses antiquités vendues par la boutique londonienne PAX ROMANA.
Catawiki bénéficie probablement de belles retombées financières suite à un patrenariat avec cette boutique de faussaires.
J'assume la stupidité dont j'ai fait preuve en me laissant harnaquer, heureusement pour un montant raisonnable!...

It's up to you deciding...
After having demonstrated with an official CISGEM expertise that lot ******* No reserve price - 18 kt. Yellow gold - Earrings Blood Coral is made of PLASTIC and TIN and not 18kt gold and coral, after countless emails with Catawiki assistance etc, finally Catawiki replies to me "Dear Mrs. Gilda,
Thank you for sending back the lot to the seller, I remind you that the refund will be made by Catawiki after receiving confirmation that the lot has been returned to the seller in the same condition as it was received.
It will be my concern to get in touch with you again as soon as there are updates. "

Well, DHL tried the delivery of the package yesterday but... the Catawiki seller,
LARAGM = Lara García Rodríguez
Vintage Lara's Jewels SL
Avenida Diagonal 304 AT3
******* Barcelona
DID NOT COLLECT the returning package... and... Catawiki does not return me the 460 euros spent for the fake jewel
I ALSO WARN YOU that all lots of so-called
"vintage jewelry" of this seller report the following statement "It has been verified using several tests, including an acid test, that this piece is made of 18 kt gold. 750 hallmark stamp".
Which means. The 18 kt stamp is not there. But we have tested the vintage jewel and we assure you that it is gold...
Nevertheless Catawiki DOES NOTHING TO STOP IT.
There are currently more than 100 lots on sale of completely fake "vintage jewelry", no reserve price, no 18 KT stamp and with identical repeated coral and turquoise stone drops in multiple lots, identical patterns in both coral and turquoise etc etc
Just looking at the photos of LARAGM lots together, it is clear that this is a bad and coarse printed costume jewelry which, despite numerous appeals, Catawiki allows to be put up for sale as true vintage jewelry.
A colossal deal for LARAGM! Maybe for Catawiki too.
Catawiki DID NOT ACTIVATE even having signaled that it 's quite unbelievable that no one of the 100 lots on sale is marked 18 kt since "vintage jewelry" it's commonly collected from private market and it looks unpossible that all the so called "vintage jewels" do not have the 18kt stamp

Waiting for my reimbursement and the effect of the police report that I am going to file. Evaluate on your own. And give a look to the so called... jewelry...

I got item with damaged sticker and that case decrease the value of the purchase. They claim it is what it is. They don't support me at all. Poor quality of service. Never use because you can get not what you paid for. Bad choice of action.

We offered an object in catawiki. Based on the winning bid of an earlier lot in catawiki with the same object in a lesser condition, we ask for a minimum price. The expert told us that the value was not up to the proposed minimum price. After checking the site again, we notice the winning bid was a third of what was reported earlier that day. Smells like price manipulation or scam

I am talking about Antiques, in particular to Chinese Art. The main claim made by Katawiki is that they have a team of experts who revise all the items being listed. In other words, "buy with confidence" because all items have been approved by our experts.
Watching at some of the listings, that claim sound ridiculous at first glance, due to the many bad attributions. But after looking more accurately, it is much worse than ridiculous.
Look for example at ancient Chinese ceramics, in particular at the pottery figures of the Tang and Ming periods, for example. A great quantity of blatant fakes, most on sale by the British shop Pax Romana, a real shame. Horses statues of size and quality that, if genuine, would be the proudly exhibited in specialized Museums, sold at tons for ridiculous prices.
Of course, many apparently validated by a TL test; pity that they are released by a German Lab which is well known for being not reliable.
In conclusion, it is suggested to be cautious while buying on Catawiki, the same way when buying on eBay.

From aukcion I bought a watch from German seller but the watch which was describet as new and unworn was faulty,do not work.I wrote to seller and Catawiki too, more times,NO ANSWER!

Avoid this site!

Like with many online businesses, when things are going smoothly, there is little by way of problems and Catawiki performs well. But the moment problems appear, it becomes virtually impossible to get hold of Catawiki's Customer Service (assuming it even exists). I rang today at 4:15 CET – 45 minutes before they were meant to shut (according to their voicemail). What did I get but a recorded message saying that their offices are closed and, of course, suggesting that I fill in the form, which I suspect will result in a similar Nada. I can understand that they're trying to cut cost in order to raise their profits, but sacrificing customer service is not the way to do it. I hope that other disruptive online platforms will come up and complete aggressively against Catawiki. Indeed, there are already at least 1 other platform that I use which does a similar job (and arguably better in terms of Customer Service) but charges less. For what it does, Catawiki is certainly not cheap. I have bought 27 watches through Catawiki, but shall not be doing so again.
PS: Catawiki should really show the selling price or highest bid on items that have been sold or for which bidding has closed. It currently fails to do so as if the selling price or closing bid were secret. Being open (like its competitors) would help bidders & watchers better understand the market better, which can only help Catawiki.

Catawiki has got a sketchy, unreliable, unresponsive support and a failing website that is often missing important functional parts that are necessary to contact the support and to view account features etc.

My relationship with this company came to an end this year when I was blocked for asking a question of an auctioneer and following up a week later asking why I'd not been replied to.

THEY THEN BLOCKED ME AND HELD MONEY OWNED TO ME FOR ONE MONTH AS PUNISHMENT!

They didn't even tell me they were doing this and refused to reply to my emails during this time. I am only just being paid for auctions that ended TWO MONTHS AGO!

My advice, with over 20 years of experience buying and selling online, AVOID CATAWIKI. You are seen as a cash cow, nothing more. They make 21.5% commission from your sale. If you are outside the EU you also have to accept the extremely poor conversation rate they use when sending you YOUR MONEY. Money, but the way, which can also held for weeks on end after the auction ends.

Catawiki manipulates seller's price to make it as LOW as possible. They will NOT allow a seller to sell their item(s) for a reasonable price, but only for a LOW price, to guarantee a sale and a profit for Catawiki. And they take many weeks to approve an item or a lot submitted for auction by their so-called "experts" who quite often allow ridiculous listings with misspelled and wrong descriptions and items shown hiding behind other items etc. Then there are all the bugs, shortcomings and errors of their website as well as all kinds of tricks their sellers do such as early delivery marking as "Delivered" early in the shipping process so they can get their money quickly and then others ship an empty box, a "robbed" package or only part items enclosed, while others ship it to themselves and call it a day!

And a final nail in the coffin is the fact that Catawiki marks some orders as "DELIVERED" very early in the shipping process while they are far from being delivered. As we all know marking a shipment as DELIVERED while it has not been even delivered to the country of the recipient constitutes FRAUD.

Horrible service. Won a beautiful mineral specimen. Paid the seller a lot of money. Item supposedly shipped September 7, the seller sends me a message a few weeks later saying item is lost in the mail and how would I like to handle this. I said refund me in full please. They say that they have issued refund supposedly and that it is up to the auction site to handle it from that point. I have waited an additional 2 weeks for the refund to show up and it hasn't. Catawiki or the seller closed the message box for the listing so I cannot even contact the seller anymore. I appear to be out a bunch of money and what I purchased is lost. This is my first experience with this website, I cannot afford to flush money down the toilet but that is exactly what happened here. I am extremely sad and frustrated.

Awful experience - I am still trying to get money back from them, when products are advertised as sealed on their site and yet they are not.
The fact that they are advertising products as sealed when they are not is against the Trade Descriptions Act 1968 which prohibits false trade descriptions.

I have been in prolonged correspondence with Catawiki regarding paintings which I believe have been copied from original works and attributed to other artists to increase their apparent value. (Unfortunately I bought one myself). The experts at Catawiki insist that because a painting has been copied, this does not mean that the copy is a fake.
Anyway, here's Quiz No. 2.
Instructions:
1. Do a Google search for "Mrs. Adeline M. Noble by François Flameng". You will see a very good portrait of an elderly, but dignified lady decked out in all her finery.
2. Do another Google search for "Catawiki Portrait of Contessa Erica by A. A. Alciati" (Our old friend from the previous quiz). You will see a very similar portrait:
Same dress, same pearl pendant, same lace collar and sleeves, same folded hands holding the same book (is the sitters' finger marking the same page, I wonder?).
But there is ONE very important difference!
Spoiler alert!...

Yes! It's the silly doll's head stuck on Mrs. Noble's shoulders in the Catawiki painting!
Well done!
Seriously, we should ask ourselves a few questions.
Why would Mr. Alciati want to copy a portrait of another sitter by another artist and replace the face with another?
Did Mrs Noble lend her dress, jewelry and book to the Contessa Erica for her portrait?
(BTW "Contessa Erica" is an Italian comic book character.)
Is it not more likely that the Catawiki seller of the Contessa Erica portrait 'found Mrs Noble' in the public domain, had her copied by an in-house artist and added the signature of A. A. Alciati to increase the painting's apparent worth? (Alciati's paintings sell at auction for prices in the low thousands)
If the answer to this last question is yes, then the buyer has been duped.
As I was duped in exactly the same way.
I repeat that Catawiki experts will not accept that this scam exists. Even though I have sent them thirty nine similar examples. I hope you, the reader of this review, feel as confounded as I do.
New quiz soon!

Still waiting for a refund from early September 18! "The seller is not helping got to get their legal team!