Friday, March 24, 2017

Is Hong Kong Still a Shopping Paradise for watch?


Is Hong Kong still a Shopping Paradise?
There has been saying HK is the shopping paradise.  In fact it was.
Nowadays still there are mostly honest watch sellers in Hong Kong.
You know why some of the dishonest people running for fast money as if they want only to have, what they have sold the whole say is not able to cover the daily rental fee of the shop, sad!
On the other hands, many of Rich buyers are tire kickers; they negotiate down two digit dollar for a $100K Rolex.
Back in 2013, It was Rado that holds a record high HK at Causeway Bay of monthly Rental of hefty $1.6M .. .
Imagine how many Rado watch they have to sell in order just to cover the rent?
In HK there is a lot places that they sell watches… there are about 80 outlet selling Rolex AD watches. There is so may boutique and AD agent selling other Swiss Branded watches not mentioning over 300 dealers working at Facebook and network sales.
The largest Rolex Boutique in Asia, say the HKIA Rolex shop, I guess that they have to pay $3M a month for rent. And guess how may watches they sell every day? No one will tell you but you can stop by and count, most of the time the number of Staff is more than the visiting client.
Any Risk in buying brand new watches in AD
I can say, there is zero risk at all as the shop are properly managed by larger company, mostly public listed, same for gray dealer who has good reputation.
What I am trying to say us these shops selling pre-owned watch … And sometimes they are looking for prey for buying their “Frankenwatches…”
I trust that they all know the situation of the watch… but there is still many cases reported by PWC members to me that there is some mis-operation on watch sales in HK…

Someone was buying a Rolex with Warranty card, but when the watch was submitted to Rolex Philippines after his return, it was rejected for reason of 1: the crystal is not Rolex Original, and 2, the bracket is not the matching model of the Rolex watch. The customer later called the shop and saying that bring the watch there will replace the bracelet with the original matching one… but how about the crystal? Problem is he won’t come to HK before August.
The Moral of the case is: =
 
1 . A Rolex watch with a warranty card does not guarantee that watch is not a FrakenWatch.
2. On the Invoice it was printed, once watch is sold is not returnable nor refundable, but how can you know beforehands?
3. Rolex service slip is also crap, as once after the watch is authenticated truly real good stuff at Rolex Service centre, you he she can also take out the bezel, hands and whatever… what can you do?
4. More Risk is the watch is selling at a “good price”!
So next time when you buy Rolex … check the comment of the shops first or go to a more reliable shops.
So I get back to the topics, is Hong Kong Still a Shopping Paradise for watch? I could say Yes.
HK Snob

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