So wish I could give a less than 1 star rating. Let me see... where do I start to tell about my extreme frustration with this company. Be advised this is going to be an extremely long rant as I am more than ticked at this SCAM!
My experience began with Matt Mason in the Atlanta office. I met him with I attempted to sell my Chopard watch. He was very nice and extremely convincing when talking me into allowing them to sell my piece. He assured me that they could sell it for at least $7000 but probably closer to $9000. I happily agreed to allow them to sell it. BIG MISTAKE!
After Matt received my timepiece (August 2011), I went several weeks without hearing anything. Then all of the sudden I started getting calls from Eric Toso. Here is where I should insert that I am business owner and a HUGE stickler for customer service. If there is ever a situation where I am working with a client and they will be passed over to another individual in my company, they are informed about that transition! I was never, not one time, introduced to, or told about Eric Toso until he just started calling me one day.
Now, a personal note to Eric -- you need to learn to speak clearly! I could hardly understand your calls and messages. Also, if a client tells you that the best form on communication for them is e-mail, you should email them.
Back to my complaint... after several months (3-4) of my watch not selling, I began to express interest in getting it back. Suddenly, miraculously, my watch "sold on December 20,2011." I hesitate to say "sold" because I'm not convinced the watch was ever sold. Now get this, the selling price was only $4500! After all the commission and CRAP is taken out, I'm going to end up with a little over $3000 for a $15,000 watch.
Fast forward to now (March 2012) and I have still not received a check for my watch. I am so extremely frustrated that I began calling them and leaving messages every 15 minutes during my hour and a half commute.
I am telling you all this to warn you DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, trust this company. They are a scam and a fraud and should be shut down! I am a firm believer in karma and I believe these awful individuals that assist this company in scamming people will pay for their evil work.
I am also telling you this because I want to know how many of you ever got your checks? I wish there was some way to just shut these people down. I am so mad at myself for falling this SCAM!
Ok, so here's my story. Back in October of 2011 I contacted Watchbrokers.com to sell a couple of watches to help me get back on my feet after my divorce. After some hesitancy and great anxiety I decided "hey, they look pretty legit" and "wow, their retail offices are located in my city, Atlanta" so what did I have to lose. I called in spoke with one of their sales agents and decided that the cash would greatly benefit me in my time of transition. Went in, met with a guy named Al and he turned me over to Eric Toso. After limited correspondence I get a message that my watches (yes watches plural. Which have an apporximate retail value of $15k) have an offer to which I take at Eric's insistance. Per Eric, "this is a great offer for your watches, I'd take it" So with that I accepted the offer. A bit of time passes and I hear nothing from ANYONE at watchbrokers, even after I make numerous calls into the company to find out where in the h#! Is my money. (Going through a divorce mind you and cash is king these days). After many attempts, I get a call back from Eric when he informs me that "it's a 30 to 45 day processing period". Well the "processing period" has passed and now I get nothing in response to my many numerous attempts ADFTE the timepieces have been sold. What kind of watches, you ask? A 44mm Panerai Luminor and a Jaeger LeCoutre Reverso Squadra. NOT CHEAP WATCHES AT ALL...
In closing, if you're looking to sell your watches, go else where. These guys are either A.) Lying thieves or B.) Disorganized lying thieves. If anyone would like to reach out to me directly with your stories, please do so at *******@gmail.com
One more thing, I have contacted the Atlanta City police department to file a report and I'm submitting a filing with the BBB. I have been advised by my attorney that I can also file with the FBI fraud division.
We'll see what happens. I will up date this site if I ever get paid.
Nick
Given all these terrible experiences, we MUST resort to legal actions against Watchbrokers.com!
I am summarizing here the various ways you can file a criminal record on these guys. I urge everyone who has fallen victim to contact the listed people/organizations immediately. Various members have made serious effort to make contacts and have provided these information. They've got a lot of positive answers. Let's move this forward!
*********
1. File charges with Atlanta District Attorney
Eric H. And several others have contacted the District Attorney for Atlanta to file charges against the individuals who are engaged in this fraud. Contact: *******@fultoncountyga.gov This is one of the people they spoke with and she can answer your questions.
Other info:
Paul Howard, Jr.
District Attorney
136 Pryor St.
Third Floor
Atlanta, GA *******-3406
Tel: *******981
Fax: *******769
***
2. Georgia Governor's Office of Consumer Affairs
You can submit your complaint by downloading, completing and mailing/faxing the complaint form to them.
The Form and detailed info:
http://consumer.georgia.gov/consumer-services/filing-a-complaint
Fax: *******018
Tel: *******790
*Online submission is also available, but they DO NOT elect to pursue the issue unless a large number of complaints have been filed.
***
3. File complaints on BBB
Online submission: https://odr.bbb.org/odrweb/public/getstarted.aspx
***
4. File a FTC (Federal Trade Commission) complaint
Details and Online submission:
https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/
Complaint Assistant:
https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/FTC_Wizard.aspx?Lang=en
*********
My own story is the same as everyone else's. They have held my Hermes watch since Feb. Refused to answer my phone call or emails ever since March. I'm sick of the answering machine that says "Ty is not available right now" or the operator who tells me that Ty is on another line EVERY SINGLE time I called.
Everyone should try at least the first two. Don't let these guys get you. You DON'T even need a lawyer to file these complaints, or make a few contacts and let the right people know that a serious scam is happening. Please spread the words and post this on other sites and forums. We need to act!
Let's keep in touch regarding our process!
This is a site review, not a service review, since I've never sent this business a luxury watch and if I had a luxury watch I probably wouldn't send it.
Why not? Aside from the legion of complaints about the service here? Well this is how I approach it. First off, you've got a watch which may have a market value of $5000, on average, but could be as low as $1000 or as high as $50,000.
Firstly, ask yourself whether you already know how much it's worth - in other words you have a contemporary written valuation from a recognized source. If so, you'll be looking at this site and considering whether it looks like the sort of place you want to send an extremely valuable item. I'll come back to that.
If you don't know, then you're going to want to know, and you're going to want to know a realistic, achievable market price that's been established by a trusted valuer. And that's probably your first consideration and the reason you arrived at the site. And I'll come back to that, too.
But let's go back a step. What are you doing with a watch worth thousands of dollars in the first place, and why do you want to sell it? If it's yours, then presumably you purchased it from a proper dealer, you know where to get it valued and you either know some of the places to advertize it or place it for sale, internationally, or you can afford to find out. Possibly, you belong to one of the many owners' groups or collectors groups that are occupied with high value luxury watches, and discuss them and trade them. If you don't, they aren't hard to find. Again, as an owner, you may know about them anyway.
Alternatively, it's an unwanted gift, or an heirloom, or you're selling it on behalf of the family or some elderly relative who now needs the money. In other words, you probably know nothing or next to nothing about luxury watches, where to value them and where to place them for sale.
OK. So let's look at this site from the view of an owner of a valuable luxury watch. Does it look like a professional, established business with hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock and thousands of customers? In which case, does it really need the dopey blonde on the front page (I think the idea is meant to be "sultry" but I prefer dopey myself)? And how about that jumble of bad images of watches, that have obviously been cut and pasted from other pages and then badly photoshopped together? With all that quality stock, could they not manage a professional photo of a few genuine watches all together in the one place, or at least in the same dimension? Now I hope I'm not slipping into establishing authenticity based on design quality - I've seen way, way too many cleverly designed sites that have nothing but cheap fraudsters hiding behind them. But in this case, as we're talking not just a mega-thousands of dollars business but "the world's largest watch broker", they couldn't try to look the part? Bad business practice, at the least, since looking cheap suggests no business.
And how about that "world's largest broker" bit? What does that mean? They have a big office? A big company? No, come to think of it the correct word there would be "brokerage" I believe. Anyway, how does one judge what "large" means, unless you use a much clearer term, such as "largest marketplace" or "most trade" or something that has some substance to it?
Just for comparison, and not because I have any experience of either site but just as a design matter, compare this site with another:
http://www.chrono24.com/en/home/index.htm
Now this one, Chrono 24, states that it's "the largest online luxury watch market". Now come on guys, there can be only one, you know. Who do we believe, here, if anyone?
So, back to watchbrokers.com, which has a vague slogan, a dumb blonde, and some cheap watch images that may or may not even have been photos, once. The big exciting thing, though, is on the top right of the page, where you can enter your watch details and get a "free appraisal". Well look. They can't appraise your watch because they can't see it. And even they have to admit, unless they can get their hands on the piece, they can't tell you much at all. A minor difference could be worth hundreds, maybe thousands. So let's ignore that bit, but we can still play with the form and enter the details of our watch as best we can. Not that it matters, because I can tell you now, to save you the trouble, that they have 993 buyers for a Rolex, regardless of whether it's the rarest vintage Rolex ever or the most commonplace modern one. Or even a rare and exclusive modern one. Same buyers for every model. Likely? Nope. As a second test, you can try entering "not sure" for every detail except the make. How many buyers? Yes, you guessed.
Still, let's pass on to the post-click page and see what happens next. A new page brings a new bit of terrible photoshopping, with an obviously faked up background, over which there's a stock image of eight happy call center people in front of their bank of monitors, and then the extra smiley call center girl with the partially unbuttoned blouse and bedroom eyes who's been flown in from an entirely different stock photo and pasted on top. It's a bit of a train wreck for a business claiming to be the biggest of its type in the world.
Next stage is to enter your name, phone number and email address, and then you're taken to a page which shows you a representative's name, phone number and email address. And what happens next? No idea. We've reached the "stage 3, what happens next?" page, and nothing happened.
In my case I got Kelvin McQuilkin, in Atlanta, who appears to be this guy:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/igniteinc
http://www.facebook.com/people/Kelvin-McQuilkin/*******123
Presumably you're going to get a phone call and/or email from someone, maybe the energetic Kelvin, who wants to talk to you about your "unsure what it is" Rolex, but they could have just given you that information at the start and had done with it. You're not being offered anything else here. No chance to get that tempting "free appraisal", no examples of similar watches selling elsewhere, no market details for the brand, not a thing. It's pretty much the equivalent of putting some old gold into an envelope and sending off in the mail, with no idea what you just gave away and the hope that you'll get more than a couple of dollars for it.
Going a bit deeper - which obviously, you ought to do if you're messing about with tens of thousands of dollars' worth of luxury watches - the terms of use do make it very clear that you will get, at best, a telephone quote from the company. Nothing in writing, ever, and no certified valuations. Their valuation, which is only what some unseen person thinks it's worth, you can take or leave. If you leave it, though, it'll cost you to get the watch back because they're going to charge you for the return shipping and insurance. This is pretty paltry stuff for a business that's allegedly trading in hundreds of thousands of dollars of goods and could easily play nice just to maintain a solid reputation. The sense of the terms, to me at least, is that everything is down to you, and they're doing you a big favor.
Oh, and if it turns out that the watch you send them is counterfeit, they'll charge you at least an additional $200, to cover their legal defense for having fake goods on the premises. Or some such. But anyone who knows, will tell you that the best fakes are only identifiable by an expert in counterfeiting that particular brand and model, who has to have the piece right there, and be able to take the back off, too. Some fine Rolex fakes are so good that even then, it can be a challenge to verify the mechanism is genuine. It's always possible, but certainly you aren't going to be able to do it. And possibly, your local watch store or jeweler could make a mistake.
Also in the terms of use, just by using the site you're accepting that some unknown person, who has no known credentials as a valuer, is going to tell you how much he thinks your watch is worth. On the phone. And on the strength of this, you're going to let him sell it to one of the 993 customers who is panting to get hold of it right now.
I'm just saying, that's how all this reads to me, and if it is what it seems, then perhaps that's all that it is. Cheap corner cutting doesn't befit a business claiming to be as big and important as this, and if it were me I wouldn't start off by laying down a few pages of weasel terms and cop-out conditions to a potential customer with a $30,000 timepiece and an interest in doing business with me.
The design and implications of this one suggest, to me anyway, that it's aimed at people who probably don't know what they've got and aren't the original owners, and probably have little or no idea what it's worth or how or where to sell it. The sort of people who send off their gold engagement rings in brown envelopes to companies they've seen advertising on TV, in fact. My money is on the smart money going elsewhere.
Do not, do not send your watch to Watchbrokers.com. Based on my experience and in my opinion watchbrokers.com is an outright scam. My experience has been a nightmare and I have no expectation of being paid or receiving my watch back without resorting to a legal process. I firmly believe, based on my experience, that watchbrokers.com is entirely fraudulent.
My experience mirrors the other reviews on this site. Initial contact was fine and I had no trouble having phone calls and emails returned. Watchbrokers.com could not wait to get their hands on my Breitling watch, they were even willing to send FEDX to my residence to pick it up. I was initially told to expect a selling price of anywhere from $4,000 to $7,000. However, once I shipped the watch I was told it was not in very good shape (false, it was in excellent condition when I shipped it to them) and that I would be lucky to get $2,000 and might even have to drop down to $1,000. I have since conferred with an expert collector and the Breitling rep and learned that watchbrokers.com selling price estimates on the low end are not realistic.
Watchbrokers.com will not return emails or phone calls. I was told by Ty Gardener, a "Senior" watchbroker at watchbrokers.com that at my request they would remove it from auction and return it to me but he has since refused to contact me by phone or email. Again it appears their only interest is to secure your property and then sell it as cheaply as possible. Based on their refusal to contact me I have no expectation of ever being paid or having my property returned.
I have had to resort to legal counsel and have been informed that many legal issues are involved: fraud, breach of contract, bait and switch to name only three.
Since this is an internet issue there exists the possibility of involvement with the FTC. Given the value of the property I may also have to file criminal complaints against the people involved, notify the fraud unit of the Atlanta Police Department and the Atlanta District Attorney as well as the Attorney General for the state of Georgia. Let me repeat that watchbrokers.com refuses to contact me.
Please consider that my experience is essentially the same as the other reviews, 100% negative, and do not under any circumstances submit your timepiece to watchbrokers.com. This is absolutely the worst experience of my life and that based on my experience and in my opinion watchbrokers.com is a scam designed to secure the property of others without payment.
The office I have dealt with is in Atlanta, GA.