Being the novice I am, stumbled upon the Chron24 website. Claim all watches are authenticated, therefore a dope like me won’t be suckered.......right.......
Any opinions on the sight? Prices too high? Has the ability to offer a lower price. Waste a time or worth looking at?

 

All watches are not authenticated. There are lots of dealers there, but the authenticity and prices are all over the place. Any watch, regardless of the seller/dealer, always do your research to make sure you know what you're getting. You can always nicely ask the many experts here for help as well.

 

For that kind of site, I prefer eBay. More photos, better descriptions, vastly easier to get your money back if something goes awry.

 

I was just wondering about the same thing earlier.

 

I've bought a couple of watches off that site. My initial contact with the dealer each time was "I am interest in the XXXXX you have listed. Please send me some more pictures." After I reviewed the pics my second email was "I am a buyer of the watch at $X,XXX. " The $X,XXX was a number that was about 75% of their listed price. Some dealers effectively told me to get lost. But, one dealer accepted my offer on his watch and another dealer didn't take my number, but came back with a counter offer. My experience is that the Asian dealers seem to be more agreeable to negotiating than the European dealers.

To me the key seems to be to know what you're willing to pay and don't be afraid to walk if the dealer isn't flexible.

 

Unfortunately, I have never identified any site, store, or forum where all the watches are legit. There's no short-cut for due diligence.

Chrono24 is a place to find watches and sellers, which can be useful as a hunting ground. Unfortunately, normal market forces don't seem to be operative there, and prices vary wildly in a logic-free manner. Occasionally you will find a seller that is only modestly overpriced, but other sellers have asking prices that are two to three times the fair market value. And those watches are not necessarily better or more legit than the others.

 

Bought a watch there. Was from a decent dealer with no issue.

Watch came as mentioned, freshly serviced and paperwork for it.
Deal was struck and no issue at all.

As said this is a platform for sales for jewellers, dealers, private sellers and shonkster's

 

I’ve bought two watches there and tried to buy another two.

Things are very uneven. Some sellers will try to avoid using the site’s escrow account, which is an important protection, to me least. One even tried to mislead me into making the wire transfer directly into his bank account, at first pretending it was the escrow account. Another never responded to a single contact from me, even though I was willing to pay his ask; I guess he didn’t want to send me additional photos.

I got one really good deal out of a shop in Switzerland and paid too much for another out of the Netherlands. I’ve tried to stay away from the individuals selling watches and stick with dealers and stores.

In my anecdotal experience, chrono24 has a much more interesting selection than eBay but eBay, ironically, is probably safer on average.

 

I had a great experience there, used the escrow service. I only released the funds after receiving the watch and confirming the serial with Omega as well as bringing it into one of their satellite service centers to run quick QA on it to verify everything checked out. Crown and Cailber is a good spot with semi decent pricing and there pieces are all authenticated. Same with StockX.

 

I've purchased 2 watches from there. Perfectly fine and no issues but its really the seller over the site. I haggled with the sellers in both cases and was very pleased with the outcome.

But as always buy the seller

 

100% agree. Also, I found out after I bought from a private seller that I was no where near as protected as I thought other than the escrow service. Buying from a dealer you are way more covered.

 

I've bought watches from pretty much everywhere - bricks and mortar stores/auctions, online stores/auctions, various forums and private sellers, but never from C24. The high prices, lack of real security and often crappy pictures mean I've never been tempted.

 

I think that you need to be careful with C24 as with any purchase. Ask for better pictures if needed and do all,the checks that you would usually do. The advertised prices are often high but the couple I’ve bought through C24 I haggled the price down to what I was happy with.

 

I've bought one watch from C24 and the whole transaction went smoothly via the escrow service. Not sure if they still do it, but I believe they insisted private sellers included a picture of the watch set to a time (and date where applicable) of C24's choosing.

 

I bought a vintage chronograph from a German dealer through there. Did all the usual scrutiny of the dial and movement, made sure the dealer actually existed in Germany, and used the escrow option. I was able to negotiate the price down about 20% and the watch arrived better than described within the promised shipping window. I say better that described because I took it to my watch maker after receiving it and he said he didn't need to touch it after putting it on the timegrapher because it had recently been serviced (no mention of that in the listing).

If you see the watch you want from a highly rated dealer for about the price you want, I'd definitely take a run at it.

 

How many ratings do you guys consider 'acceptable' (knowing this is subjective)? I'm looking at buying new from a dealer in Italy with 507 reviews, and a 4.9/5.0 rating. Hard to see how 507 people could be wrong unless there is some way to game the system.

 

From my experience the dealers usually have higher prices and it's more easy to negotiate with the private seller. I only bought once on chrono24 but everything was OK.

 

From my experience it is always better to go to the shop and see the watch in real.
The extra money on the travel there can save you a lot of problems and in the end save you also more money than buying it via the net.
Personally I also think that it is simply more pleasant and easier to negotiate in person about prices than via the net.
Internet deals are always a gamble especially with so many easy apps to tweak pictures or out the watches in a better light.

Of course if the dealer is too far away from you to see the watch in person, I would always check their real Internet site apart from the chrono page and see how it looks and feels. Then try to Google on reviews. And of course check here or ask the experts here on OF.
Phone the dealer personally and request pictures or videos of the watch as a start.
The communication (especially on the phone) between the dealer and you tells a lot about their business behaviour and whether they have sometime to hide or nothing.

Chrono will not be a big help to you if you have any problems with the dealer after the purchase.
You can read about this on the net.

And to me trusted sellers do not mean much.
You see so many fake reviews on EBay, Amazon, trip advisor, etc. nowadays that it is no guarantee about them being authentic.

 

I bought from a swedish dealer on C24, got a good deal. But a lot of C24 watches are fantasy priced.

 

If they've maintained a 4.8+ rating over at least 10-15 rated transactions, I'm willing to call them solid.