Counterfeit Watchers Discussion Forum

Thank you for a wonderfully detailed and insightful posting!

: My colleagues and I found our workload
: unmanageable after a while and have since
: had to relinquish these duties in favour of

While I hate to see people ripped off on eBay, I also look at it from the other perspective, too.

These buyers are people who are making risky purchases buying from sellers they don't know. The world is a big place and there is only so much that those of us in the know on watches -- or even eBay themselves -- can do to help protect the millions of uninformed, incautious and downright stupid people out there from their own bad decisions.

Certainly, I would like to see these sellers shut down. But the reality is they are like cockroaches. You stomp one and two more appear. As you experienced, it becomes an endless amount of work with no rewards other than personal gratification and an occasional thank you from someone you saved from their own folly.

I myself greatly appreciate a good deal when I buy a watch. But the lengths some buyers will go to in time, effort and risk trying to be an ultra-cheap buyer of an expensive luxury item are astounding. So I have a limited amount of sympathy and pity for those that went to so much effort, only to have outsmarted themselves into a bad purchase by ignoring sensibility and safety in favor of an incredibly low price.

I will gladly help anyone who asks. But I gave up long ago expending effort on trying to be a guardian angel protecting the masses of people who are making foolish purchases or a superhero trying to shut down the criminals taking advantage of others.