Is Catawiki a joke?

Catawiki has bad reputation. Avoid it and buy the seller.

I've found a few good deals over the years (the best being a 1940s 30 T2 in good condition that was incorrectly described as a 1960s watch). Mostly frankens and overpolished POS.

Here's a 2017 watchuseek interview with Berry Harleman, still one of their watch "experts" today.
https://www.watchuseek.com/threads/interview-with-berry-harleman-catawiki-watch-expert.5210823/

In part, he was asked, "What is it that you do as an expert at Catawiki?"
Answer: "I curate the auctions, which means my team and I review every lot submission that comes in and check the authenticity and quality before we schedule it for auction. Because the condition affects the value, we look closely at that and we do our best to make sure the watches are in good working order."

What genius technology did Catawiki possess in 2017 to be able to check authenticity and quality, look closely at the condition and somehow make sure the watches were in good working order and all this from nothing more than rubbish quality low-res images sent in by sellers? 🤦

May I give a more positive judgement?

Obviously, one best buys from reputable sellers, sellers one knows, without commission (i.e., the OF). But you cannot always find what you want that way. Vise versa, you cannot always sell that way (I found it difficult to sell Dirty Dozen watches on MWF because every member already has plenty). Due to Corona, I have bought and sold various watches through on-line auctions the last couple of months and in my experience Catawiki van offer value for money. There is a better control than on eBay and it is much cheaper than local auctioneers on the-salesroom. You can "buy the seller" and contact the seller after your purchase. The experts offers at least some gate control compared to eBay. If you buy through the-salesroom, you often only get one or two low res pictures and have to rely completely on the reputation of the auction house. Big draw back of Catawiki is that the buyer doesn't commit to pay upfront, so I once had a buyer that went silent after the purchase and all CW could do is close the account.


I would use Catawiki if you know your watches and buy up to say €2000.

I was interested in colored diamonds for a while, one seller was selling a duo, but it was just the same diamond copy pasted in the photos lol, you can't even report stuff

You can contact them, but they do nothing

I do see many unique Omega's on sale there too, and weirdly, every time I look, most are from Turkey, I don't see them listed in the internal market for such ~logical prices, yet they sell on catawiki

But like others pointed out, most watches seem to have something wrong with them

I wonder whether there's a buyer protection etc. - as I never bought anything

Really? Then why do I often see fakes, Frankens and other rubbish on offer on that platform? Like stated by others their so called experts do not really do a lot if anything at all.
And I wouldn't want to be the notary public who is supposed to supervise the auctions.
On Ebay you can at least send a question to the seller or a request for additional pics, things that are impossible on CW.
There used to be a button on CW to give your judgement about the quality of the description. That way you could vent your frustration about the rubbish they sometimes have on offer being described as perfect and flawless. Since they never reacted to the users reactions it is a good thing they took it away I suppose.
The shipping prices are often absolutely shameless.
You cannot search for sold items, so once an auction is over its very hard to find out how much some poor sucker was ready to fork out.
So, I watch but I don't touch. Unless I see something very rare that I absolutely want and am sure not to find somewhere else. But with lots greater care than on other platforms.

Previously, I always turned to Сatawiki . But then I began to notice their error more and more often. It's all clear to me now.

There are deals to be had but risk is high. It's similar in a way to physical auctions where you can't sufficiently examine an item or ask questions. A pig in a poke. You only know what you get when you get it. Not being able to ask the sellers questions or contact them directly is a big drawback.

Never thought about it like that

Honestly I don't think there are deals to be had either, I've spent maybe 24 hours in total on Catawiki, no deals, even on eBay spend 3 hours you'll find a good deal

Really bad and slow customer service with many issues and problems being ignored. Catawiki experts allow low quality listings with errors and wrong descriptions. Catawiki ignore many issues and do not respond to them at all. Bidding on Catawiki is like a lottery. Will you receive the item or will you receive an empty box? Will you receive a quality item or will you receive a badly packaged and a problematic one that Catawiki experts often overlook? And if things go bad will Catawiki support address your issue after taking a long time or will they simply ignore you? It's a lottery of luck.

My Experience with Catawiki

PROS: Industry's low 9% bidder's fee.

CONS:

1. After a recent upgrade in the autumn of 2022 it has become harder to get around the Catawiki interface.

2. Auction bidder can no longer see the sellers name and address nor contact them to ask questions to clarify condition of the items before bidding on their lot.

3. The descriptions of many of the lots are lacking proper descriptions for numismatic items.

4. Catawiki experts say that they don't want IBNS grading in the item description if the item is not graded by an independent party (slabbed, encapsulated) such as for instance - PMG or PCGS. Thus Catawiki gives preference to independent graders (which often make mistakes in identifying and grading paper money and banknotes) rather than IBNS grading standards. Remark: Catawiki and their numismatic experts are members of the IBNS themselves.

5. The imposed 51 word limit in the item description for Sellers does not always allow to explain the condition of the item and to include detailed description in some cases when the item is not new. No wonder sellers write "it is nice" instead of describing the condition in very detail since the 51 word limit often prevents to fully describe the item.

6. If a buyer (winning bidder) does not receive their shipment within 25 days after payment and does not submit a "CLAIM" to Catawiki, Catawiki pays the seller even if the goods are NOT delivered to the buyer yet. Then the buyer has to contact and deal with the seller instead of being protected by Catawiki all the way until the goods are delivered. Although Catawiki assures the seller that they will pay the seller only after the goods are delivered, but on the contrary a buyer seems to only be protected against non-delivery for the first 25 days! And how about those buyers who live in more remote destinations and if there is slow delivery of mail that takes 1 to 2 months or more?

7. You can not cancel your auction bid even if you made an innocent mistake or even if you found out that the item you bid on had a hidden issue not disclosed in the auction by the seller.

8. Catawiki website and software is sketchy and buggy, with occasional dead links.

9. A frequent event is when you submit a "claim" to Catawiki in order to keep on receiving their delivery support beyond the 25 days you get blocked from Catawiki for about 5 minutes:

"Access Denied
You don't have permission to access (link was here) on this server."

10. Catawiki support now takes weeks to reply and many questions and inquiries as well as complaints are left unaddressed and unanswered.

11. Catawiki experts allow sellers to write any kind of inaccuracies in the descriptions of their items and there is no way to contact the sellers before bidding on their items. Catawiki support ignores remarks abut multiple blunders in their listings and does not correct them before bidding begins.

12. Selling process on Catawiki may be long, slow and even dysfunctional in places. Catawiki requires the seller to provide their ID that shows both sides of the id such as drivers license or a passport, but then when they are provided a large image of the id both sides they reply they are unable to read it. Then they ask for a second document proving your residential status and street address and you will also be asked to register for German LUCID number even if you're not living in Germany and even if you are a private seller just wanting to sell off some of your collection or a single car. Registering for German LUCID is extremely complicated process with confusing instructions.

13. Some sellers take weeks to ship out the sold items and some buyers are slow to pay for their won items.

14. Some sellers make items photographed spread like playing cards thus obfuscating most of items within the spread = impossible to see paper items condition. Buyer (bidder) has to GUESS the condition of the items they are bidding on! Therefore bidding (buying) on Catawiki is very much like a lottery!

15. Messages sent to Catawiki support about the excess shipping charges by some sellers fell n deaf ears = no answer by Catawiki support. That is unacceptable since it means financial loss for the buyer!

16. Due to excessive shipping charges, a Catawiki seller refused to refund the excess above the reasonable S&H cost, but when I wrote to Catawiki they ignored me, but after 2 months of emailing them they finally had ONE of their customer service representatives offer a me a €10 Voucher. I agreed and requested the Voucher, but after that they never replied again and did not honour their voucher offer.

17. Allegedly Catawiki has some kind of deal with TrustPilot to delete reviews about Catawiki. TrustPilot accepts all kinds of reviews, but not for Catawiki and a few other selected corporations. I saw even fake reviews and buddy reviews (fake 5 star reviews), which were accepted and posted at TrustPilot, but any kind of review on Catawiki becomes deleted by TrustPilot immediately. Here's the article explainig the situation:

TrustPilot refuses reviews of come corporations

TrustPilot accepted all reviews of mine except for some corporations such as Google, Facebook, Catawiki etc. I can see the pattern of automatic refusal of good, well written reviews on certain corporations and companies and no matter whether I meet all of their requirements and even provide my ID and proof of purchase or proof of received service, TP still refused reviews for those entities, while approving a lot of junk and even out of topic reviews for other posters.

The support responded below (it's an alleged canned insincere response), but I won't bother writing to them as they always send useless messages and don't do anything to change anything. For instance when my review is deleted for unknown reason, they blame their robot and when they request my id and proof of experience such as purchase invoice and when I supplied it to them, TP still do nothing to restore the very detailed and well written review. Instead, after they collected my private information they ignored me since, instead of restoring my well written review. They just collect my private information that way for unknown reasons.

The following also does not apply to me since all my reviews are written from a single account and only are based on my own experience with companies that are not related in any way to me other than via a purchase or by receiving a service.

TP wrote: "This could be for example if the reviewer has more than one Trustpilot account or if the review has been identified as being written from an IP address related to the business."

Sure, why would I write a long and critical review for the company, if I was related to them? That logic does not make any sense.

Thus contacting TP Content Integrity Team (as they suggest) is a waste of time as they will not restore even the best written reviews no matter what documents you supply to them. I tried and failed every time. While TP is allegedly full of biased, junk and "buddy" reviews that are accepted in an instant and are not removed even if reported. I am sure there are "buddy" style reviews that are ordered by companies. The 5 star reviews are written by "buddy" and low star reviews may be written by competitors. Yet TP are ok with those kind of reviews. They just allegedly don't like honest reviews written about their alleged "buddy" corporations.

Regarding the latest TP response to my review: that's not going to happen and you know it since I have corresponded with your Content Integrity Team on several occasions and provided the requested document of proof of purchase (Catawiki) and since then there's been just plain silence.

I'm very pro Catawiki these days, but I agree with most of your points

First of all as a seller, I strongly disagree with your refusal of S&H fees, you see these before buying, and often sellers use these as a minimum bid, for example I bid on a lot of gold jewellery as a buyer as gifts, and I'm always aware that some sellers set Shipping to 100 Euros to cover the costs, the actual bid is like their profit - also you'd pay less tax, a strong pro, as you don't usually pay tax on shipping - so ultimately your refusal to accept a Shipping cost that you saw at the time of your bid is 100% on you and I'd consider your refusal malicious

As a seller, I LOVE THAT CATAWIKI PROTECTS SELLERS - eBay is full of shipping delay abusers these days, so the biggest pro of Catawiki is seller protection

As a seller, I don't sell on Catawiki, because it's a chore to submit something, less of a chore than Chrono24, but a chore, and Payoneer takes a big hidden chunk too, like 5% ish on FX conversion - also an issue with eBay

As a buyer, maybe there's an interesting watch every 6 months, I've recently bid on one, lead it at 750 euros, below reserve, but the seller could've offered it to me as it was a fair bid, he didn't, I wanted to contact Catawiki to reach the seller, but when I looked at options, you could only call Catawiki, so I moved on

As a buyer, I bought a ring as a gift, listing said DHL Express, seller used cheap DHL, which arrives by post office, like your experience, Catawiki only sent me a voucher, and it turns out, it doesn't matter what a seller writes as the shipping option, s/he can use whatever he wants. But it's good to be pro seller, so I don't hold a grudge, and luckily there were no issues with post office customs

My reviews are quite well written, honest, fair and very detailed and that's what scares them.

Good to know that you agree with most of my points. Being malicious... as a buyer/bidder, if I win I pay the top price for the lot, so I don't want to pay excessive shipping charges in addition to already paying the top bid plus the auction fee. Take a look what Catawiki has to say:

https://www.catawiki.com/en/help/bu...ping-costs-seem-excessively-high-what-do-i-do

"Catawiki requires sellers to accurately calculate their shipping costs, however, sometimes the actual shipping costs are lower or higher than what was estimated.

If you notice you have overpaid for shipping fees when your object arrives, please contact the seller via your order detail page. In this case, the seller is required to reimburse you directly for any excess shipping costs."

I am both pro-seller and pro-buyer and I do not abuse sellers or buyers and I expect both to act fairly.

When I sell something on Catawiki I try to set my shipping charges to a minimum, or even make them free. Sellers don't need to see that you make money from shipping charges. Most Catawiki sellers when requested refund the excess shipping charges. Only a couple did not, actually, ended up with just one stubborn one, who wrote that shipping charge of €15 was his lifeline, while I ended up paying a top bid for his lot and it arrived damaged in a plain envelope with a stamp of €3,30. That's not cool. That's what I am talking about. But I had Italians charge me €45 for shipping and it arrived mangled in cardboard and tape by some courier, and I did not request anything back since I have no idea what they paid for shipping.

The worse on Catawiki is their "Experts" who allow so many blunders and even wrong photos, wrong descriptions or wrong items etc. but when I was selling a single lot the "Expert" was messing with me too many times unnecessarily" while his Dutch buddies are let an easy hand.

So I stopped bidding on Catawiki. And I prefer to buy from small online shops with one owner who knows what he is doing and who is responsible for his actions.

Plus, lately you just can't find good deals on Catawiki.

I agree that there are no good deals, if they streamline things a bit, they'd probably get more sellers, when I sell, I want to sell fast, and Catawiki is very slow. Probably why only stale things make it into the platform. As exciting things sell elsewhere much much faster. Also easy for rare things to go unnoticed, I for example sold a sigma dial Omega on Catawiki, didn't fetch any premium

Interesting to learn about that policy, but I still disagree, shipping isn't just the last leg, and those prices aren't net prices either, Catawiki gets a cut from them, eBay gets a cut from them, there's gasoline prices, car maintenance/wear costs, packaging costs, I personally charge an average $30 on these platforms, the net shipping cost is $15 - and I'd probably still make a loss if it was on eBay, so when a buyer requests $5-10 back when you're already making a significant loss, it became a trigger for me in the current economy, that's why my opinion is personal and a bit strong



Currently looking at this, the shipping cost is 100 euros, I'm tempted to switch to the dark side and request the excess 😁

Look, not everything is a gain. Some stuff is being sold at a loss and many sellers are happy to collect some money for groceries or to buy some long desired "toys" rather than keep the "junk" that's hard to sell these days. Losing money making you unhappy? Then don't sell on Catawiki or on any place that makes you unhappy. I sold some lots that I wanted to get rid of for 50% of what I expected to sell them for and I was still happy even if I lost money. With the money I collected I bought other stuff that I needed and I may make money from that stuff in the future. I am in no hurry and am patient. I can wait. Let's (all humans on Earth) be more tolerant towards each other and more kind, more honest, less rude to each other. If you're looking for a place to make money, a store of your own is the way to go. I don't depend on flea-bay or cat-a-wicky to survive. It's more of a hobby thing for me. An occasional one. Yet since Catawiki won+'t allow to even ask a question fr the seller before bidding, and even they won't answer it themselves (before bidding) I find it ridiculous to even return to bid on Catastrophic Wiki. And I have noticed how quality of the lots on Catawiki hellrocketed down in the last several months. My last advice: never depend on excessive shipping charges for your profit or your "survival". You will just make buyers unhappy and not everyone will complain. Others will vote quiety with their feet. For example, I no longer buy from Italian sellers since they charge exorbitant charges for shipping. I am not talking some heavy stuff or jewellery. I buy stuff that weighs just 10 to 100 grams and fits into an envelope and is made of paper. Regarding ebay, I find ebay even worse than Catawiki. At least Catawiki has some innovative interface even if it is full of blunders, errors and bugs and even that Catawiki is unwiling to fix things right. And then I am no fan f online "auctions" in general and prefer to shop at family or individual owned shops with excellent customer service.