FEATURE: The Problem with Grey Market Sellers

 

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The other day I was looking on the internet and somehow ended up looking very closely at a 'brand new' WAY208A Aquaracer that was being sold on a grey market website. I'm not going to name them here, but it's one that's being very aggressively marketed and you've probably had pop up ads on your computer recently. I've even seen ads for them in a game app I use on my phone!

Anyway, perusing the TAG Heuer stock they had just gave me chills since it was basically every watch that everyone comes to the THF Forum 'Is My Watch Authentic' thread with... but on the other hand it seemed that the website is an official partner with some brands, but not, essentially TAG Heuer. This doesn't really help since just because a website partners with one brand to sell official product doesn't mean their other products are automatically authentic.

The thing is the WAY208A is about six/seven years old at this point so finding a brand new one is a long shot. Not to say it's impossible, but at the same time it does raise a question mark if nothing else. So I decided to contact them and ask how confident they were that the watch was genuine. I started a chat with them but clearly started off with a bot that just fed me a standard paragraph about how 'All our watches are genuine and come either with manufacturer's warranty or our own warranty'.

This wasn't what I wanted to hear so I kept at it and after the bot got confused by my line of questioning and told me how easy it was to pay in instalments by Klarna I eventually got hold of a real life actual person. I explained that I really liked the look of the WAY208A but was concerned about authenticity. I mentioned that TAG Heuer offer a free authentication service and asked if they would take the watch back if TAG Heuer gave it the thumbs down.

I was told that yes they would but... that watch companies 'don't like the grey market' so the answer you will get is very hit and miss. It's okay on newer models, but not so much on the older ones. Can't really imagine TAG lying to me and telling me I had a fake watch just because I bought it from the grey market, so again this was not a satisfactory answer and I expanded on my previous question asking, 'If I buy this and send it to TAG Heuer (which may take several weeks) will you take the watch back even if it is outside the 'return window'.

I was expecting a confident yes from this person, because after all if it's found to be fake then they absolutely should refund me no matter what, but what I actually heard was not just surprising but downright alarming (and a neat side step to my question into the bargain). They said; "Which watch is it that you are interested in, we can take it to the TAG Heuer boutique down the road for verification and save you the bother."

First of all, why would I trust someone selling grey market watches to verify the authenticity of said watch and how were they going to do this? Verbally? No TAG Heuer boutique is going to give them a written guarantee of authenticity. TAG Heuer boutique employees are experienced handling recent watches and might be able to spot a bad fake, but they are not qualified (nor authorised) to state categorically that a watch is genuine and there is no way they could offer any kind of 'certificate'. And rightly so, I have been selling tools for over thirty years but I wouldn't consider myself capable of telling a real DeWalt drill from a fake one (and yes there are fake ones).

The reason watches have to go back to TAG Heuer is so that they can do tests on them, including metallurgy tests; store employees aren't trained to do these things and the very fact that this 'watch trader' even suggested this tells me everything I need to know about their business. Sure, I cannot categorically state that they sell fake watches, for all I know they may have 100% legit stock through and through, but this was more than enough of a red flag for me to know that they wouldn't know a fake watch if it slapped them in the face.

But mostly it makes me sad and annoyed to think of all those new TAG Heuer enthusiasts out there who gravitate to these kinds of places because they want a TAG Heuer watch but they want to save a few quid. The kind of people who won't know what questions to ask when they're told that everything is 100% genuine and sourced from 'official channels'.

Is it a coincidence that the watch was removed from the site the next day? Maybe; it's a cool watch so it probably got sold. But this isn't the first time I've contacted this company and the last time it was over the green dial WAY2015 Aquaracers they supposedly had in stock. When I rang them about that they got very defensive and said they weren't sure about that one and they would take it down from the website. 

I'm sure there are some genuine 'grey market' sellers out there that can save you a few bucks, I'm told nothing but good things about Jura Watches for example (though I can't vouch for them one way or the other). But all I can say is if you're new to the watch game or you're not 100% confident then please just go to a TAG Heuer boutique or an authorised dealer with a bricks and mortar store and pay the extra then you won't ever have to worry about it. Yes that extra cash hurts at the time, but not as much as being told the watch you bought three years ago is garbage when you take it in for a service or a battery.