CBK221B.FC6479
Some of you may remember that last year I purchased a Carrera Heuer 01 at a 50% discount from Bicester Village and shipped it all the way to Sweden for my good friend Jim Dollares. At the time it seemed like a pretty stressful endeavour, but ultimately (and in hindsight) it didn't work out too badly.
Jim got a CAR208Z Carrera at a very good price, even with the shipping/insurance charges and so when he approached me to do the same thing again I was hesitant and wary but not unduly so. If we'd have both known what we were getting ourselves into we definitely would have thought twice!
27th November 2020 // Message from Jim Dollares
Hey man. Let me tell you a secret. I have been desperately looking to buy the silver 160th Carrera for two weeks now but no one in the grey market seems to be able to source one for me. The Swedish AD price for one is 78 950 SEK (£6950) which is just insane. I am negotiating a price with a Swedish dealer right now.
BUT, would you perhaps be open to me wiring you the money and you ordering it from the TAG Heuer UK website and then shipping it to me?
It didn't sound like such a crazy idea, but we didn't have all the time in the world. Brexit was scheduled for the 31st December and after that who knew what the import taxes Jim might be liable for. But still, it was only the 27th of November after all, so factor in a couple of days delivery to me, then 3-5 days delivery to Sweden... worst case scenario Jim should easily have the watch by the middle of December.
So remembering last time I said of course I would do it, but we need to find a way to send the watch - and I wasn't going to order the watch until we had that locked down. Last time, you may remember, I went and asked in the Post Office and they were all like 'yeah, no problem' and then when I went back having actually bought the watch then all of a sudden it was 'oh no, you can't send a luxury watch'.
Back then I went through several carriers until I found that DHL would accept timepieces up to a value of £4000. That was fine for the Heuer 01, but the silver Carrera 160th Anniversary cost over £5000, so that wasn't going to cut it. And, as it happens, in the meantime they'd decided to change their terms and conditions so that they no longer accepted watches, period. In fact the only carrier that did seem willing to take watches was UPS, although they had a maximum value of £500, which wasn't an awful lot of use to us... and besides, UPS would be in our bad books soon enough!
Later that day Jim came back to me with a different plan.
He'd found a company called Secursus who specialise in insuring parcels, and who offer very competitive insurance rates. Almost too good to be true actually… last time DHL had charged us £120 to ship and insure the Heuer 01 worth £2500, but Secursus were willing to insure a parcel sent with a ‘known’ carrier for £5300 for £38. Of course we still had to send the parcel as well, but that wasn’t a big expense since Secursus told us to send it ‘uninsured’.
One thing I didn’t like about this whole thing was that you have to send the parcel first and then insure it. So we decided to switch to Royal Mail because there you can pay for the service on line, and get your tracking number, which enables you to set up the insurance with Secursus BEFORE you take the parcel to the Post Office.
I’m not going to lie, I had very mixed feelings about all of this, but Jim thought it sounded fine and two days later the money appeared in my bank account… meanwhile I set up an account with Secursus, ready for the delivery.
30th November 2020
So finally it was time to stop talking and set the ball in motion. I went to the TAG Heuer website with credit card in hand and put the watch in the basket. So far, so good. Then I tried to pay and… it wouldn’t go through. Time and again I got the same error message…
One time it changed to a different error message telling me to try a different payment method, I thought about maybe doing a bank transfer, but then I wanted the protection of buying by credit card so I kept at it. Then the next time it reverted to the original message....
I knew my card had plenty of credit on it, so I really couldn't understand what the problem was, I just assumed it was an issue with the TAG Heuer website and decided to leave it and try again tomorrow.
1st December 2020
But again, the same problem... argh! Then I remembered that I had problems with the TAG Heuer website last year when I ordered my wife's green dial Aquaracer. That time it just hung when you tried to pay so you didn't know for sure whether the order had gone through or not. I guess at least this time you weren't left in any doubt and that meant that I could try elsewhere.
So that's what I did, although I wasn't at all sure the watch was available elsewhere... so I Googled it and the only place that came up was Beaverbrooks (a large, well known jeweller in the UK). They had the watch in stock and if I ordered it before 8pm that night it would arrive the next day. Result!
But again the payment wouldn't go through.
This time though, the message was a little more helpful. Instead of telling me to try again later or ring customer services, it gave me an error code and told me to ring Barclaycard. So that's what I did and after a fifteen minute wait I got to speak to someone, who transferred me to someone else, who transferred me to someone else (who turned out to work for Barclays rather than Barclaycard and couldn't help me) who transferred me to someone else.
This person could help me, at least to some extent, although she then had to conference call me with someone else and then pass me to someone else (IIRC) to finally convince them that, yes I am the owner of the card and yes I really do want to spend £5295 on a silver dial, 39mm Carrera with fauxtina!
I mean, honestly... I wouldn't have believed it either!
So after an hour, they decided that they would indeed let me buy the watch and if I tried again everything should be okay.
And at this point I did something that I would come to regret for days to come. Instead of just ordering it from the Beaverbrooks website, I went back to the TAG Heuer website instead. In my defence it seemed like the better option since Beaverbrooks doesn't exist in Sweden, so it would surely be better for Jim if the watch had come direct from TAG Heuer in case of any warranty claim.
I don't suppose it really makes a lot of difference, but still...
3rd December 2020
I didn't really expect the watch to come the next day, so I wasn't concerned when it didn't. But it didn't turn up on the 3rd either, so that evening I went on the TAG Heuer website and followed the link to the UPS website to track the parcel.
'We missed you' it said, which was more than a little surprising since my wife had been at home all day and there was no card through the door. The website said they would try again on the next business day (Friday) so I thought 'Okay, we'll see'.
4th December 2020
Nothing arrived on the 4th either, but by the time I got home it was too late to do anything. I noticed though that they accepted calls on Saturday morning, so I made a point of ringing them first thing and spoke to a lady in America (quite why it's necessary for me to speak to someone in America about a parcel travelling within the UK I have no idea) who said she would send an email to the local depot for me.
6th December 2020
My wife received a phone call from the local UPS depot, basically telling her that they didn't have an answer for us, but that they would check with the driver and come back to us.
Needless to say, they didn't ring us back and in fact we never heard from UPS again.
7th December 2020
On Tuesday morning I rang TAG Heuer and spoke to customer services, they said they would chase it up and come back to me.
8th December 2020
On Wednesday morning I rang TAG Heuer and spoke to customer services, they said they would chase it up and come back to me - and this time they actually did, to ask if I had asked for a 'rescheduled delivery'. I said no, the UPS website had changed to show that after I had spoken to TAG Heuer and I had assumed it was because they had asked them to reschedule it. Apparently not.
Also, I decided it would be worth posting a book to Jim and insuring it with Secursus, just so that I could test how everything worked with an unimportant parcel before sending the watch itself. So during the day I paid for postage on the Royal Mail website, then ran it through the Secursus website and posted it on my way home after work, fully expecting it to arrive with Jim by early the following week.
Since this parcel was just a book, it was a lot less problematic and I filled out the customs form even though technically one wasn't required, but partially hid it under the address label to see if the people in the Post Office caused a fuss.
9th December 2020
On Thursday morning I rang TAG Heuer and spoke to customer services, they said they would chase it up and come back to me.
I was getting a little bit annoyed by now, it had been nine days since I had placed the order and I had zero confidence that UPS were ever going to deliver the parcel. Which wouldn't have mattered too much had it not been for the looming Brexit deadline. After all, this was supposed to be the simple part of the whole process, it was only supposed to get stressful once the parcel was on it's way to Jim in Sweden!
10th December 2020
Jim mentioned that he was getting concerned that we were running out of time to get this done before the end of the year, so we made the decision to forget it and send his money back.
I would be lying if I said this wasn't something of a relief (albeit I still had £5295 on my credit card and a missing/stolen parcel to deal with!) but unfortunately when I tried to send Jim's cash back, my bank wanted to syphon off £210 in fees, so we had second thoughts about that! It really did feel like every move we made we were getting screwed over, so instead I made the decision to pay off the watch from my Barclaycard using Jim's money (my credit card limit was only £7000 so I had no choice) and bought the watch again, this time from the Beaverbrooks' website (who were still promising next day delivery if I ordered before 8pm).
That night I went on the TAG Heuer website and filled in a contact form quoting my order number and telling them that I had had to purchase the watch elsewhere and would appreciate it if they could retrieve the parcel from UPS and credit my card. Of course, despite several attempts the contact form would not post and so I ended up sending an email to a generic email address instead.
11th December 2020
I received an email from customer services the next morning telling me that my email had been passed on to customer services. Then I received another email from customer services telling me that they needed to chase it up and would come back to me.
Sure...!!!
I again asked them to please retrieve the parcel and credit my card as I no longer required the watch as I had already purchased it from Beaverbrooks.
I was told that 'if you no longer require the watch, you can return it for credit when you receive it', which is about on par with ringing your internet provider to tell them you have no internet and them telling you to 'go on their website'... just not what you want to hear, in all honesty.
So with a heavy heart I asked them 'when that might be', since I needed to return it and get my card credited before I ended up having to pay off the second watch and ending up with my credit card £5000 in credit.
'We need to chase it with logistics and come back to you.'
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!
As if to add insult to injury, the TAG Heuer website was now running a banner add at the top of the screen assuring me that 'Order before the 22nd of December for guaranteed delivery by the 24th!'
Words.... they fail me.
By now I had zero confidence in anything working as it was supposed to, so I could have squealed with joy the next morning when the carrier arrived and deposited Jim's watch on the doorstep at 10:3AM.! I didn't, to be clear, but I could have...
To be honest, I didn't really even want to open the parcel, but I had to because the last thing I wanted to do was send Jim a damaged watch, or even the wrong watch!
Jim was keen for me to open the parcel as he thought being up close with the CBK221B might change my opinion of it (unlike most of the 'Council of Considered Opinion' who voted it the 'Watch of 2020', I was distinctly lukewarm with it), but in all honesty it didn't and I stand by my score of 3/5. While I had the watch out of the (very nice) box, I showed it to my wife (who scored it 2/5 for the COCO poll), she looked at it, shrugged, then wrinkled her nose at it and said 'it's quite boring isn't it'.
That made me chortle.
After checking it over to make sure there were no scratches, etc... I was straight onto the Royal Mail website to purchase postage for the parcel to Sweden. Then, once I had the tracking number it was straight to Secursus' website to insure it before taking it to the Post Office.
This didn't go quite to plan as this time Secursus' website didn't copy the tracking number over onto the invoice so I couldn't double check it. Thankfully after an email message to them and an hour's wait the problem was resolved and I hit the Post Office just before it closed for the night.
Technically, parcels between the UK and Sweden do not require customs labels, but we were told that if we had to use one we should either hide it under the address label or put something of very low value on it to avoid it being stolen. Not entirely sure how legal that advice is, but that's what they said.
However, when I went onto the Royal Mail site to purchase the postage, perhaps because it was a larger and heavier package than the book I had sent previously I had to list each item individually and with a separate weight. Terrific. Needless to say...
Well perhaps I shouldn't say too much about that here! Suffice to say, I did not attach the customs label and the Post Office didn't question it.
So, one problem was solved, Jim's watch was on the way... and the parcel was supposed to arrive within 3-5 days, although I didn't really believe that, especially not in December and with Covid and Brexit, it was just too easy.
14th December 2020
Nothing happened over the weekend, but on Monday I received an email from TAG Heuer telling me that UPS had finally admitted that they had lost the parcel and that they would be crediting my credit card the same day... albeit it would likely take three days to show on my statement. At this point I really didn't care about another three days, I was just happy that there was a credit coming.
By way of apology TAG Heuer offered me a discount off a future purchase or a free strap. Since I had just splurged all my watch fund on two watches I chose a spare textile strap for my WAY208C Aquaracer and that should (hopefully) be with me by the end of January as they didn't have one in stock and needed to order it from Switzerland.
I appreciate that there was a lot of money involved (believe me I was very aware of that!) and that a proper investigation had to be undertaken, but what I found frustrating and annoying was the lack of information coming from TAG Heuer prior to my email. After all, boutique or website, this is supposed to be a 'luxury shopping experience' and it certainly was not that. I'm just thankful that it wasn't a case of UPS claiming to have delivered the watch to me as that would have been even more stressful and worrisome.
To be fair to TAG Heuer though, my recent experiences of UPS (through my work) haven't been very good at all and if Beaverbrooks were using them and TAG Heuer were using DHL then it could have been a whole different story. I certainly had no problems last year when TAG Heuer were dispatching through Parcel Force. In future though, I wouldn't waste my time ringing UPS, and that's another thing...
When you follow the tracking from the TAG Heuer website to the UPS website they ask you to sign up to 'UPS My Choice' so that you can re-arrange parcel deliveries and get 'better' information from them. I did actually try to do that at one point, the problem with it is that when you try to put your address in it won't let you click on the drop down box which says 'United States', so unless you actually live in the United States it's absolutely bloody useless. I don't get why tracking for European parcels would be on a site that only caters to US citizens? Ridiculous...
And on top of that, several times I tried to visit the tracking page on the UPS website and it wasn't even working at all!
15th December 2020
By now we were expecting Jim's first parcel to arrive, but despite the Royal Mail website assuring me that they had 'handed my parcel to their 'delivery partner' (in this case Postnord) and directing me to their tracking website, Postnord weren't acknowledging receipt of the parcel and would not do so for nine days after I posted it in the UK! Sure as hell it does not take 9 days to fly from the UK to Sweden!
At this point I am going to hand you over to Jim to tell his side of the story...
16th December 2020
I decided to try calling Postnord since they should have taken over the shipment, but no updates were showing in the tracking. On my first attempt I was told I was number 227 in line and that Postnord ’will answer your call as soon as possible’. After waiting a couple of hours I tried again, this time number 267 in line! After putting my phone on speaker and waiting for what felt like forever I finally was able to talk to someone. That someone had zero information and only told me ’not to worry, the tracking will update once the parcel arrives in Sweden’. That night I drank a lot of whisky.
17th December 2020
On this day we got the first tracking update about the first parcel Rob sent. Apparently the book had now ’arrived to destination country’. Who knows what happened during the five day flight time with zero updates!
19th December 2020
This just keeps getting better... apparently there are news reports today in Swedish newspapers saying that an unknown package contained a bomb which exploded in the Postnord central in Stockholm. Would this not have been just the perfect ending to this nerve wrecking story, the watch got destroyed by a bomb! Wonder if Secursus would have covered this?
21st December 2020
One final tracking update for the book. The book had been delivered and was available for pickup at my local supermarket. This meant that we could calculate how long the delivery of the watch would probably take. Delivery of the book was supposed to be 3-4 days according to Royal Mail. It actually took a total of 13 days!
23rd December 2020
After leaving the UK 10 days earlier, we finally got an update in the tracking saying that the watch has ’arrived to destination country’. This close to Christmas we had no hope left for it to be delivered before Christmas and so it transpired...
29 December 2020
The watch spent six days in the airport before finally being on its way again. Later the same day I finally received a notification saying that the package was available for pickup! I opened the package in my car and sent Rob a photo showing that the watch had been successfully delivered! What an incredible relief for both of us. This whole journey started more than one month ago and surely lead to many worrying days for both me and Rob.
So how do I feel about the watch now that I finally have it on wrist? First of all, photos and videos don't do this watch justice at all, it is ten times nicer in reality! The dial is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I am seriously considering becoming a 'silver dial only collector'. The size of the case wears perfectly, a good mix between dressy and sporty. I was not sure about the alligator strap but now I feel it suits the watch very well. There are some minor details I would like to change about the watch and I am not a huge fan of the Heuer02 movement or the clasp, but I will leave details about this for my full review which I hope Robert will publish on the blog once I finalize it during spring.
(Of course I will!)
I know this watch was voted watch of the year for 2020 by the Council Of Considered Opinion (COCO) but I feel pretty sure that history will teach us that this is in fact the watch of the century!
Oh, and by the way, during this ridiculous journey Rob and I exchanged a crazy total of 576 messages. One thing is for certain though, we have gotten to know each other even better!
--- --- ---
Thanks Jim, I am so pleased that you feel so strongly about the watch, it would have really sucked to go through all that and then for you to open the box and be like 'meh'.
In all the chaos, I didn't even really get much time to study the CBK221B. Although to be honest I didn't really even want to take it out of the box, I only did so because I had to check it over before sending it to Sweden - can you imagine if Jim opened the box and it had a big scratch on the back? Jim said he hoped seeing the watch in the flesh would change my mind about it, but it didn't really. I did quite like the back though and that rotor looks much better than I thought it would.
What did strike me about the watch was how small it looked for a 39mm, but Jim was actually pleased to hear this as he was intending for this to be his 'dress' watch.
I honestly don't think Jim or I have the nerves left to go through this again and once Brexit happens who knows what the customs situation will be between the UK and Sweden, but I'm glad I could help a fellow TAG Heuer enthusiast acquire their watch of choice (again), even if it does have a silver dial and the dreaded fauxtina!
Of course, after all this, there was one final kick in the teeth. After Christmas someone posted a link on the Calibre 11 forum showing the CBK221B on sale on the Ernest Jones website for just £3800. At first I thought it was totally bogus, but apparently it checked out and another recent interviewee 'Imagwai' managed to snag the final piece! Great for him, of course and Jim seemed fairly sanguine about it, but I was quite annoyed... especially after all we'd been through.
TRYING TO SEND A WATCH TO SWEDEN (December 2019)
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