{"id":43388,"date":"2018-09-10T10:00:07","date_gmt":"2018-09-10T09:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/?p=43388"},"modified":"2018-09-10T11:03:18","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T10:03:18","slug":"pre-owned-watch-specialists-pour-cold-water-on-ebays-authentication-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/pre-owned-watch-specialists-pour-cold-water-on-ebays-authentication-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Pre-owned watch specialists pour cold water on eBay’s authentication plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

eBay’s announcement this week that it has authenticated 7,000 luxury watches for its marketplace has been met, broadly, with indifference by major pre-owned specialists.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Philipp Mann, CEO of Germany’s Chronext, which claims to be the world’s largest fully transactional marketplace, says the eBay announcement changes nothing. “It is just PR,” he suggests.<\/p>\n

“The only way to have 100% trust would be for eBay itself to authenticate everything. That is not what is happening because they are giving a stamp based on a retailer’s own authentication,” he continues. “We do this authentication for eBay in Germany so we know how it works.”<\/p>\n

Chronext sells luxury watches in two ways: 65-70% of sales are for authenticated watch retailers that sell to consumers via the site. The remaining 30-35% are watches that Chronext buys, services and repairs, then sells with its own warranty.<\/p>\n

Danny Govberg, who runs Govberg Jewelers in Philadelphia and the global Watchbox pre-owned platform, is marginally more positive about eBay’s plan. “eBay is beginning to realize that they have a huge opportunity in the pre-owned space.\u00a0Many do not realize they are the biggest already in the world by far; a billion a year in sales of lux watches.\u00a0I think this is only the beginning of them getting more aggressive to maintain their leadership position. Starting with authenticity guarantee is a good first move,” he suggests.<\/p>\n

Paul Altieri, CEO of Bob’s Watches, thinks the eBay authentication announcement is insufficient. “I applaud them for taking steps to help clean up the massive integrity\/counterfeit problems that have with sellers offering non-authentic goods.\u00a0 But I really feel this comes up too short.\u00a0 You need a 3rd<\/sup> party independent party to verify and authenticate. “Certified\u201d is a much stronger word but I notice they don\u2019t use it.\u00a0 But given the size of their platform, I am guessing the logistics prevent it,” he says.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s an acknowledgement \u2014 finally \u2014 that this massive platform has an integrity problem; they always have. I would never recommend buying a Rolex watch from eBay knowing what I know about its sellers, past experience, and the quality of fake watches today. The fakes have gotten too good for the average customer \u2014 even a dealer \u2014 to identify. We don\u2019t buy from eBay because we cannot trust their sellers and the products they sell,” Mr Altieri adds.<\/p>\n

*eBay has responded to a request for an interview with\u00a0WatchPro <\/em>and we are working on setting a date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“It\u2019s an acknowledgement \u2014 finally \u2014 that this massive platform has an integrity problem; they always have.” says one pre-owned specialist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":43389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false},"categories":[7039,4,2,5],"tags":[6522,315,10430],"newspack_lstngs_evt":[],"newspack_lstngs_gen":[],"newspack_lstngs_mkt":[],"newspack_lstngs_plc":[],"acf":[],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"WATCHPRO","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43388"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_evt","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_evt?post=43388"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_gen","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_gen?post=43388"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_mkt","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_mkt?post=43388"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_plc","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_plc?post=43388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}