Time is money. . . my £9,000 Rolex is a counterfeit
Probes a world of scams and scandals
S.G. writes: I purchased a Rolex online for £9,000. The seller had arranged payment through PayPal so we were both protected, he said. I called PayPal and it confirmed I would be fully protected if anything went wrong. The watch turned out to be counterfeit and the seller immediately went to ground. PayPal said it had frozen the payment, but demanded proof from Trading Standards or Rolex that the watch was fake. I supplied both, but got no refund. YOU seem to have been going round in circles as the goalposts were shifted. You told me PayPal insisted you get a crime number, so you reported the scam to Action Fraud, got a crime number, and gave it to PayPal.
But PayPal then decided that Action Fraud – which is an offshoot of the City of London Police – was not acceptable.
You had to get a new crime number from your local police station. You got this, but it still was not enough.
PayPal’s next demand was for a ‘seizure document’ from Trading Standards or the police. This would guarantee a refund, you were promised. You arranged this with your l ocal authority’s Trading Standards Office in Milton Keynes and told PayPal, but the next day you received an email saying this was again not enough.
Worse was to come. The left hand at PayPal then started disagreeing with the right hand.
While one person at the company was insisting that you return the fake watch to the seller, another was telling you to keep it as evidence it was counterfeit.
As I pointed out to PayPal, if the seller was indeed a crook, he would likely deny ever having received the watch if you returned it.
Or, he could claim that the watch you returned was not the same as the watch he supplied. Either way, you would then be without both the watch and the £9,000.
A final twist in the tale came when Trading Standards pointed out that as Rolex had confirmed the watch was a fake, if PayPal released your money to the fraudster, this could be regarded as money laundering, which is an offence in itself.
I asked officials at PayPal to look into all of this. It told me: ‘We never ask a buyer to return goods when we have been given proof they were counterfeit.’
It said it received that proof from Trading Standards on May 30.
Now, I am not sure what proof that was exactly since I have seen a statement sent to PayPal by Trading Standards as long ago as March 26. It confirmed Rolex itself had judged the watch to be a fake.
No matter, though. The important thing is that PayPal has now refunded the £9,000 back to the credit card you used. It has also made a goodwill credit of £100 to your PayPal account.
Perhaps it might be best to avoid buying expensive second- hand watches.