I’ve seen these scenarios before, otherwise trustworthy people in the community suddenly taking money for watches they don’t have from multiple people (who stay quiet) with resolution occurring after months and/or drastic measures have been taken. Sometimes they have money and mental health issues, maybe they have a self image issue and don’t want to be perceived as poor or struggling. Sometimes these people have problems and need help. Sometimes this happens with high dollar dealers or flippers. Actual policing in an international community like this is tenuous at best. So if you get scammed, or someone tries to scam you, or if someone takes your money and feeds you nonsense for 3 to 6 months on why they can’t repay you, you need to let the world know.
#Horology watch free#
The truth is, every time someone lets a scammer get away scot free (that’s a little tax joke for ya), they have free reign to select another victim and try again. For at least some of them he sent them little consolation gifts or asked them on a phone call not to disclose the embarrassing/fraudulent nature of their transaction. So why didn’t these first few people burned by HH come forward? Not sure. Without it, there would be chaos, or at least the industry would be reduced to the only transactions happening at boutiques and the only servicing at service centers (which, lets be real, that’s absolutely the goal of many of these huge corporate brands). This is why trust is a cornerstone of the watch industry. Nobody wants to lose their money, nobody wants the valuable components of their irreplaceable watch damaged by a bad watchmaker. Do you trust your dealer? Do you trust this shop? Trust is absolutely earned, and with watches, we’re often trusting people with large sums of money or trusting people to repair a watch worth large sums of money. Trust is a huge factor in this community. False information can be damaging to a small community and arming ourselves with correct information can be challenging but it is paramount.
I often find myself (sometimes much to my chagrin) policing false information in regards to horology (actual horology, like watchmaker stuff) in the online space. The combination of beautiful photography, cinematography, fast social media growth and a relatable personage on a YouTube channel - you soon have an entity whose popularity is more based on properly feeding algorithms instead of reputable transactions.Īs a community, there needs to be some degree of policing ourselves. In the age where social media numbers can be inflated, agencies can be paid to accelerate growth, it’s not hard to imagine the inverse happening - a new entity pops up in a niche, cash flush, industry. Since, you know, you wouldn’t have been able to build such a following burning people. Why is that? I know many people like to give the benefit of the doubt and think in the case of having a huge following and a reputable brand, this could be more leverage to maintain that people stay quiet. Chris asked these people not to talk about the situation. In the used community, the golden rule is, “Buy the seller, not the watch.” There are a handful of accounts where HH took people’s money, provided non-functional tracking numbers, and absconded with their thousands of dollars for months on end - only to slowly pay it back, sometimes over the course of 6 or more months.īut nobody knew this. This isn’t a post designed to bash someone for scamming someone, but one where we can hopefully suss out some ways to make this community safer and better for all of us. The collector industry, while slightly larger, is also small.
0 kommentar(er)
