NOT BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Ladies Formula 1 Quartz Watch

 

365.508

One of the rarest of the original Formula 1 range is the 365.508 'Raspberry'. It's not impossible to find but more often than not when it does come up it's expensive and usually in less than ideal condition. So I thought I'd hit the jackpot the other day when I found a NOS piece in the original box on eBay for a 'Buy it Now' price of $300 (about £230), but obviously it was never going to be as simple as all that...

The first niggle was that although the seller has a 'shop' with 12 items on sale and a nice little logo, they have absolutely zero feedback. Now I realise that I had zero feedback once too and it didn't mean I wasn't trustworthy, but when the boot is on the other foot and it's your money at risk it doesn't fill you with confidence.

 

But I thought it over and being that I know from experience how biased towards the buyer eBay is, even when they are being unreasonable, I figured I would probably take the risk for the sake of securing this for my wife's Christmas present. 

But then I noticed another problem, that being carriage to the UK was priced at £112, which seemed unfeasibly high for something that weighs practically nothing. So I decided to contact the seller and ask if the postage was correct, dropping into the message that I had recently paid £21 carriage for a similar watch from Japan. 

To be fair, I got a fast, polite response from the seller but the answer was clear, postage to the UK is $180 and that's perfectly normal. Well, maybe it is if you use the most expensive service possible, but hundreds if not thousands of eBay listings suggest it is perfectly possible to send a watch of this value to the UK for less than £30.

But the final twist to this story came when I went back to the listing to write this post, because the seller had ended the listing and relisted it due to 'an error in the listing'. Intrigued, I opened the new listing and saw that postage to the UK was now listed at $22 (£16) but that the item was now an auction with a starting price of $335 (£256) and a Buy it Now price of $440 (£335), which meant if I could win it for the opening bid I would get it delivered for £272 (instead of the original £342), but if I did the 'Buy it Now' it would cost £351. And then of course there's the potential customs charges on top of that. Hmm....

So in the end I think we'll probably wait and see if another one comes along from a seller with a bit more experience, and hopefully a bit closer to home. It's a shame though because the watch itself looks fantastic and I'm sure pieces like this don't come along very often. 

The other thing I should probably do is find out if you can still get the replacement straps from TAG Heuer, because this watch was only available for a year and it would suck to get one and then find that you had to put it on a black strap...