yinzburgher wrote: ↑Thu Feb 28, 2019 11:59 am
bopat23 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 28, 2019 11:41 am
Guys, firstly, I apologize for my third question of the morning regarding RG and Ebates!
I'd love to hear from anyone who might have made a successful luxury watch purchase from RG during the 26% cashback period. I have been eyeing a Railmaster for ages, and these are currently at grey market prices on RG even without the 26% (a great deal at ~ 3300 USD give or take). With the 26% cashback this would be a no brainer for many, but I'm curious to know if anyone has made such a big purchase and gotten ~ 850 dollars as a check!! This would be crazy!!!
I haven't but plenty of members here have. High dollar items are actually typically some of the better deals on RGM. Unfortunately I have a feeling your considering a purchase from the seller
nanaple. I've haven't heard too many success stories about buying from them. Most reports here and previously on WUS seemed to regard them as either incompetent or even conniving.
I have been successful and will share my experience here. Not trying to brag, this is just what I found... I was shopping at the end of December during the last 26% cash back for a Rolex GMT Master II 16710 - preferably 2000 to 2003 (Super Luminova, SEL bracelet, holes case, pre-ceramic - perfect model years for me). My local used Rolex dealer has this model for $9,400 (no box/papers). Market values on these have just been insane this year and continue to rise. I found several models on RGM for what I was looking for - although most seem to have sold now. I picked one from 2001 that was not the cheapest but appeared to be advertised honestly (small defects identified in pictures), it was a fair price at $9,200 or so (no box/papers), and was in really excellent condition (some others were a bit rough looking). I purchased from Kaiul (which is a luxury pawn shop).
I had issues throughout my purchase. The shopping trip and check mark showed up immediately. The cash back showed up a day later. Kaiul invoiced me with $100 or so in shipping, but the total was over a million JPY and PayPal could not process the transaction. I spent time on the phone with PayPal and my credit card issuer trying to figure it out. Kaiul sent me an update e-mail, but in Japanese, so with the translation I was a bit in the dark on what the heck was going on. Finally Kaiul sent me an updated invoice. I still had issues with the credit card issuing bank and had to fight with their fraud protection to get the purchase through. By the time I finally got to pay though the currency conversion rate changed for the worse, costing me another $177, but Kaiul had to drop the shipping to $20 to get the purchase down to a million JPY. The purchase finally went through and the watch arrived safely in the US. It wasn't quite as great as what Kaiul advertised, but it was close enough for me to not complain and I did open the caseback and verify it's 100% Rolex.
So I was supposed to get $2,425 in cash back. One day it disappeared. Ebates just took it away without saying a word. I sent e-mails to Ebates and they asked me to confirm the purchase, which I did through copies of e-mails from Kaiul. Within a day Ebates returned all of my cash back. I was literally sick to my stomach until that cash hit my account again.
Then Ebates missed their delivery by PayPal of my Big Fat Check - same as with many others on here. Again I was worried, but not too worried and Ebates finally came through with payment. So, yes, honest to goodness, I finally did get $2,425 back for one transaction from Ebates. And honest to goodness I do NOT recommend to others that they do this. It all depends on how risk averse you are. Bottom line though, I'm not going to shout it from the mountain tops that others should take this risk. That's their call. You can win at this game, and I won with this Rolex, but I don't trust that you will for certain win every time. In my case I also got credit card cash back and ended up paying about $6,820 for a watch that, based on condition, probably has a fair market value of $10,000 and is continuing to appreciate every day while it's still on my wrist and being enjoyed!
Somehow it magically turned into a "Coke" after this picture.
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So while I will not recommend this to others, I do personally feel that the risk is worth it for myself. I was waiting for this Ebates deal to hit again and had done extensive searching before the deal hit to know exactly what I wanted. I do see that some of the best pre-owned watches get snatched up quickly when these deals hit. So on this last go-around I did purchase an Omega Speedmaster Professional moon watch sapphire sandwich. Fair market (low average) on Chrono 24 seems to be about $3,500 used. After Ebates and CC cash back, coupon, Super Points, and shipping I paid about $2,170. That's a smoking hot deal, better than I could ever dream of getting from a US seller. So I took the plunge again. Still no cash back showing and the watch is already in the United States, but I am not too worried this time.