First order with Andrew @TrustyTime + remarks

[portant]

Hi everyone.

After doing some research, I decided to go with @TustyTime because of their positive reviews and the fact that they accept crypto and have an actual website, instead of some shady WhatsApp number.

I just paid for a Ballon Bleu 36mm SS/LE Wht/Rm Cal 076 from 3KF, and a box.
Not sure what much of that means because I haven't nerded out on the subject since I bought my first and only rep on the internet back in 2008.
By the way, inflation really did take its toll. I understand that the industry professionalized itself ever since and reps really improved, but wow, didn't expect to pay that much for a rep, but I'm sure it's worth what they're selling it for.

CAR0526A - Balon Bleu 36mm SS/LE Wht/Rm 3KF Cal 076 [CAR0526A] - $318.00 : Trusty Time Watch, Your Trusty Watch Shop

Trusty Time Watch CAR0526A - Balon Bleu 36mm SS/LE Wht/Rm 3KF Cal 076 [CAR0526A] - 3KF Factory Cartier Balon Bleu 36mm Made 1:1 like the Genuine MOVEMENT: Asia Automatic Movement with Decorated Rotor like Cal 076 CASE DIAMETER: 36mm THICKNESS: 12mm DIAL COLOR: White Dial with Roman Numeral...

trustytime138.io

CARBOX001 - Cartier Box Blk with Card & Booklet 1:1 2019 Version [CARBOX001] - $88.00 : Trusty Time Watch, Your Trusty Watch Shop

Trusty Time Watch CARBOX001 - Cartier Box Blk with Card & Booklet 1:1 2019 Version [CARBOX001] - Material: Original Design 1:1 with White Decorative Card Paper Outer Box, Inner Red Cartier PU Leather Box with Black Suede Material with Booklets, Tag and CardDimension: 150mm (L) X 130mm (B) X 90mm...

trustytime138.io

One thing that didn't really change since the late 2000's are the websites/buying process
I believe it is using a discontinued version of ZenCart from that era, and there's no crypto checkout per-se, you get a manual email with the preferred addresses (usdt-erc, usdt trx and btc) and you have to send it manually ( by the way, avoid paying with USDT-TRX as the fees are insane and that chain has nowhere to go but down).

This isn't a dealbreaker, but "luxury" purchases are often impulse purchases, and adding useless friction to the buying process could lead to less sales and second thoughts.

Anyway, this isn't specific to their website, which really isn't the worst. Some of them don't even have search despite having thousands of references.

The whole thing is really puzzling to me, because you could scrape their whole website and port it to some free wordpress/woocommerce CMS with contemporary checkout systems and frictionless crypto payments, all that over a weekend.

You would think that industry margins would be good enough that it would allow them to invest in contemporary websites within a 20 years span, but it looks like it's only getting worse (in my opinion), with sellers now exclusively dealing through governmental honeypots such as WhatsApp or Telegram, which is insane and basically equates to doxxing yourself somewhere down the road, or having your phone number sold or leaked or whatever.

Anyway... I'll keep this updated !
Have a nice day.


Timeline.
May 28 ;
Auto order email received at 6:00 AM
Crypto instructions email received at 7:30 AM.
Payment sent at 21M
(... to be updated)

 

[portant]

- Updates


May 29 ;
Email received saying "Payment verified OK and Awaiting QC"

June 1st ;
Similar email received saying "Payment verified OK and Awaiting QC" meaning that nothing probably happened in the meantime.

Today is the 5th of June so that's 9 days after placing the order on the 28th of May and still waiting on any significant update.

I understand that I'm dealing with middlemen here (which apparently is industry standard for some reason) but this isn't very engaging I have to say. Also, I manually suggested that shipments be divided so that if the box gets seized, I at least get the watch, but I only received two generic (duplicate) communications that didn't acknowledged my shipping safety suggestion.

Overall, the process has been manual and rather clunky with an strong "early 2000's e-commerce" vibe all along the experience, and I'm still a bit puzzled as to why, given of how technologically advanced China is.

Like, I bought a pair of sunglasses on DHGate on the 28th, same day I ordered the Rep, and it's already travelled across the world and I'm wearing them as I speak, so yeah...

 

[portant]

I have to say that communication has been absolute shit, so far.
As in inexistant, besides payment reception confirmation, that one was really quick, surprisingly.

So I sent an email asking what's going on the 10th day after order confirmation, yet it has remained unanswered after the 13th day now, so waiting/wasted time for the QC thing has already exceeded than their highest waiting time estimation of 12 days, with zero communication about anything.

I'm not throwing accusations or whatever, I'm just letting people know how it's going for me (very poorly), and what I would have liked to know before ordering.

That being said : I don't care who you are, what your processes are or what business you're in, when a customer sends you half a grand (or any amount, for that matter) of crypto without escrow, and you don't answer said customer emails and concerns hastily (according to your own waiting time estimations), you are delivering a terrible experience and you are aggravating your customers.

 

[Warwickhunt]

It's worth remembering that you may not be the only order Andrew has on his books at the moment. While I have had messages from a few email accounts from them sometimes relaying the same information,I don't think it's a high employee operation. I'm sure you realise that you are buying a replica product from a middleman who is operating under threat of criminal proceedings which would deny him of both his liberty and his financial security. Sadly this isn't Amazon or ebay, Trustytime has been around for years. There's a good reason for that, I'm sure you will get what you ordered,possibly not in a time frame of your choosing which is something that Trustytime goes to great lengths to point out at the time of ordering.

 

[portant]

It's worth remembering that you may not be the only order Andrew has on his books at the moment. While I have had messages from a few email accounts from them sometimes relaying the same information,I don't think it's a high employee operation. I'm sure you realise that you are buying a replica product from a middleman who is operating under threat of criminal proceedings which would deny him of both his liberty and his financial security. Sadly this isn't Amazon or ebay, Trustytime has been around for years. There's a good reason for that, I'm sure you will get what you ordered,possibly not in a time frame of your choosing which is something that Trustytime goes to great lengths to point out at the time of ordering.

Hi ! completely agree, again, sorry I really didn't want to make it seem like I was throwing shade or making accusations at the person, I know 100% what I'm dealing with, intermediary and so on, and in fact, I'm more interested/excited about the whole researching/buying/delivering process and the rep industry as a whole, than the actual reps, which I'm not worried about at all, since I know comes from a trusted, ancient source.

So I'm really saying this from an ecommerce efficiency standpoint, as that's what I've done most of my life, and I wondered what their process would be like. I also nerded out on darknet markets and their technical constraints quite a bit, and I think there's a page to be taken from their book.

If that matters, It seems that I was sending emails to the "wrong" address, so, to anyone visiting from Google or elsewhere, maybe don't only send or reply to emails for ongoing orders from [email protected] (even though your order confirmation and payment validation did came from it) and also use [email protected] or [email protected] (these may change from time to time so check out this forum too) , and then you should get quick answers, which I eventually got quickly earlier today. So in terms of processes, it's just putting a domain email forwarder.

Anyway, apparently they're still waiting to hear from the factory, which was to be expected, but again I'm really interested in knowing how on earth do factories not have their own distribution network connected with stock managements and so on. I mean, they got Temu, TikTok, Deepseek, so clearly it's not a skill issue, but it is an interesting topic, at least to me.

Again, I said Andrew should be praised simply for having a website, because what I'm seeing everywhere these days is people selling right out of stupid mainstream messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Telegram, which, besides being a privacy nightmare, also strikes me as an efficiency nightmare.

 

[portant]

Anyway. It has been 19 DAYS since I wired the funds. Nothing gets shipped, no updates unless I ask for them.

I sent them 2 follow-up requests (again, nothing comes my way unless I ask, which equates to absolute dogshit communication in my book, as money has been wired and we're way past the 12 days max average QC estimate) yet nothing is moving.

All I get are laconic "yeah still waiting for the factory" kind of replies, which is ridiculous, given the context and the questions that it raises.

Are they busy building the damn thing ? Don't they have stock ? What's going on ?
Then, if they don't have stock or if they're not building it or whatever the case may be, who or what am I even waiting for at that point ?
There's no unlocking that situation in sight that I can tell.

There's zero communication and zero answers, zero alternatives, which just makes me feels like I'm being dicked around.

I have to say, the whole process (for me) has been ridiculously bad every step of the way and I'm hating every single moment of it.
This is by far the stupidest internet deal that I have ever made (besides straight-up scams) and I'm 100% positive that I'd have better customer experience buying surface to air missiles on the darknet (which I'm not going to do, obviously, as I have no use for anti-aircraft artillery at this point in my life, but I'm making a point that I'm sure prospective buyers of replicas reading this Customer Report will make sense of).

And frankly, the observation that he has other customers to take care of is sort of none of my business, like if I give you half a thousand dollar of my money to go watch shopping, that puts this transaction into the Premium category, never mind the price of the authentic watch, it's still a premium product, yet the experience has been anything but.

Again, this could have be smoothened out from the start by having constant regular communication and updates, which is really basic customer care at that point.

This may come across as old school, but my orphanage raised me with two very important rules in life :

1. dropshippers are dicks and dropshipping is a nasty business
2. don't sell shit that you don't have or that's not yours to sell

Food for thoughts.

 

[Alkay3]

Have you not read any of the information available on this forum? The trusted dealers, like Trusty Time, are just middle men. Once you place an order they usually have to order and get the watch from the factory, who may or may not have it in stock.

It takes time and patience in the rep game. You are not buying a widget from Amazon. From your comments it does not sound like this is hobby for you.

 

[dmatt]

I doubt long rants laden with colorful prose will help. After feeling better by decathecting, all remains the same - no?
This is a mismatch of reality and expectation, though latter is well described here in Forum in many ways. I await watches now too, experiencing the slow updates that accompany this kind of acquisition.
I hope the TD turns to the other cheek.

 

[tripdog]

 

[bcwatcher]

Don't listen to the board bro...I bombard my heroin dealer constantly and he always answers immediately, a true professional.... you're getting screwed!

 

[asayamalaka]

This is by far the stupidest internet deal that I have ever made

if you're into crypto i find this very hard to believe

 

[portant]

Well, I mean, the trusted intermediary can request that my topic be deleted if my prose isn't suitable for this audience or whatever reason, I wouldn't mind all that much, although I would be a tad bit sad if the admins decided to get rid of my cheerful banter.

But hey, I'm just offering a well documented thread sharing my experience buying a rep online (and mind you, this is just the beggining) , and that's precisely the sort of thread that I was looking for while I was doing my research on this forum... I'm just writing this because that's what I would have liked to read before ordering, so hopefully someone reads this and doesn't set their expectations too high and this will be the last thread of its kind, thanks to my cheerful banter.
But at the end of the day, when you take out the cheerful language, it's still valuable, correct information, as in I'm not making any of this up.

And by the way, my expectation was a 4-12 days timeline for QC which I didn't make up either, that's the official info that I was given.
So this isn't a mismatch between my expectations as a crazy person, and reality, but rather between "what I've been told" vs "how it's actually going".

All that being said, I'm not the CEO of Amazon but I've done ecommerce and I don't think it's outlandish to expect at least a friendly update when you're a week late on your estimated (and self declared, I insist on that) timeline. I'm not bombarding anyone with messages or asking for daily updates and I'm well aware of the constraints of the industry, but frankly this is just like a common courtesy thing at that point.

I'm not freaking out (some people would!) because I know this was to be expected and that the TD is good for it, I'm just saying that I feel like I'm being dicked around, which is strictly based on my honest to god observation of the lack of updates after +1 week of the self-declared 4-12 days QC timeline.

Anyway, it is what it is.

 

[Reaps]

I think you should read my guide. I fully state that deadlines are more like suggestions in the rep game. First reps always make people go crazy....

Once you recieve your QC you'll quite frankly see all this fuss was for nothing.....

You said it yourself. There is a mismatch of expectations here... quite frankly.... some guide reading will help....

As for that 12-14 day QC promise. That's just a copy paste generic statement they always say. While TDs would love to have accurate timeframe like the Dominos Track n Go, the reality of the matter for illegal goods is that timeframes are very hard to judge and keep....

17 days is long but not uncommon. You'll see members who wait 2-3 months for watches. I have had a 3 month wait.

You have a fair point about communication but most TDs... if nothing to say they wont say anything.

If you can't wait just ask for a refund and try with a new dealer. But then I will assure you, you'll also wait with whichever dealer you chose

 

[dmatt]

I think you should read my guide. I fully state that deadlines are more like suggestions in the rep game. First reps always make people go crazy....

Once you recieve your QC you'll quite frankly see all this fuss was for nothing.....

You said it yourself. There is a mismatch of expectations here... quite frankly.... some guide reading will help....

As for that 12-14 day QC promise. That's just a copy paste generic statement they always say. While TDs would love to have accurate timeframe like the Dominos Track n Go, the reality of the matter for illegal goods is that timeframes are very hard to judge and keep....

17 days is long but not uncommon. You'll see members who wait 2-3 months for watches. I have had a 3 month wait.

You have a fair point about communication but most TDs... if nothing to say they wont say anything.

If you can't wait just ask for a refund and try with a new dealer. But then I will assure you, you'll also wait with whichever dealer you chose

Reaps speaketh the sooth...