Hello Thomas,

I'm very sorry to hear about this.

I had two bad experiences with shipping watches untill now. One was a Siffert that got "lost" in Germany...not insured, my own "fault".

My second bad experience was with a UPS package I sent out to the UK and was delivered to the neighbour from the actual buyer (the neighbour was an 80 year old lady...). When the buyer received the package from his friendly 80 years old lady neighbour in the evening...there was no watch anymore in the package. Buyer also immediately asked for PayPal refund which he received right away. Very strange story and I immediately contacted police department in UK. Ofcourse this is a longshot but necessary to be able to recover at least some money...package was insured by UPS and I got all my money back after spending a few hours of phonecalls and e-mails, very frustrating.

Italy is another story...there seem to be a lot of problems with the packages that enter and exit Italy. However I haven't had any trouble so far. There are indeed a lot of sellers on eBay that refuse to send to Italy...there must be a reason for this I guess.

Thomas...was it sent by DHL or registered airmail?? Any form of tracking? I know UPS measures the weight of the package at each arrival and depart in their logistic centres during it's way from seller to buyer...maybe something interesting to check...

Also there has to be a minimum insurance. At least I know with Belgian post...registered airmail is insured up to 500 euro automatically...but ofcourse not for watches, gold or jewelry.

At present I ship registered airmail at buyers risk...no Paypal with this ofcourse. When buyer wants UPS I automatically insure package seperately with ParcelPro...

I hope you can recover at least some of the money or track down the watch itself...and I keep my fingers crossed as I've also a rare bird flying with UPS to me from Italy right now...

Cheers,
Abel.