Rolex shortage, ways to possibly alleviate it?

[SkyDwelling]

I began attempting to get a blue dial Sky Dweller in 2017 when the watch was announced and it has been nothing but unpleasantness. At different times I could have easily bought it gray market and I've always had the money for that but I chose not to on principle. Also because I want the experience I always had whenever I bought a Rolex. I used to be able to walk into an AD, find everything in stock (except the SS Daytona), buy a spanking new watch with my own name on the warranty then go home and enjoy removing the stickers and sizing it to my wrist. That's a part of the fun of buying a Rolex and I will not replace it with a gray market watch purchase.

For 4 years I contacted almost a hundred AD's. No one has my watch, no one would even put my name on a waiting list for one, and on occasion it would be implied that if I buy available watches it might be a good start for a "relationship" that might get me on a list. I do want the watch but nowhere am I desperate enough to spend tens of thousands on watches that I do not want in order to get it. This means that 4 years on I'm still unable to get the watch nor even have my name on a list. No problem, my life will not come to a halt because of a watch or any other piece of goods.

Still I don't understand why they haven't thought of certain measures to end this problem, and wanted to discuss it with you in case I was missing something. I don't believe the suggestion that Rolex wants this or loves it. If it did it wouldn't have instructed AD's to take extreme action to disrupt gray market such as cutting the tags, removing the stickers at the store, and keeping the warranty card for a year. Also if you look at Rolex social media you will see chaos. Every time Rolex makes a post it gets hundreds of negative replies from people complaining they can't get watches and telling stories of blackmail by AD's and such. No one wants that and Rolex can't be happy about this ongoing negativity on its social media.

I looked at secondary market sites and saw a great abundance of watches with extremely high mark ups. My desired Sky Dweller goes for 25 to 30 thousand that's more than double the price. It is the same on the bay. Hundreds of watches for double the price most brand new with stickers and warranties with recent dates. Thousands of people therefore get those watches without any intent to keep them and instead unload them for double the money immediately. Two ideas I think might fix this.

1st, why don't Rolex increase the prices of the watches to what ever people are paying for them gray market? If every watch made is happily bought by some one at a high mark up or double the price then why don't Rolex sell them for these exact prices? The speculators would then still buy the watches and sell them at triple the price? No problem Rolex raises the price again as long as people are willing to buy every last watch for that money from gray market. This should continue until the watches reach a price that no one wants to pay a dollar over and that would kill the grey market and Rolex would still sell every last watch made.

That sounds unfair to normal collectors who then have to pay three times the original price, but they could never have got the watches at the original price any way. If in order to get a desired watch at the original price one first must buy other undesirable watches that they can't sell for what they paid for, are they really getting the desired watches at that original price when they have lost a lot of money on other watches first?

2nd solution I was thinking about, is some thing like what car companies do. If you want to buy one of the limited hyper cars you can't sell it for a certain number of years or else you will be black listed and would never get another car from them. Why won't Rolex decide that only the person who's name is on the warranty can have any sort of service for a number of years after purchase? If some one else takes the watch to any AD for repair in that period the watch is rejected and it's serial gets black listed and the buyer would have to find another way to service it or get original parts for it. It might not end it completely but sure a person would hesitate to buy a gray market watch if he knows that for 7 years if the watch has a problem or gets damaged it will be impossible to repair it with original spare parts.

Very interested to hear your thoughts and fill in the gaps for me. I am sure if it was that simple Rolex would have done it a long time ago so I must be missing some thing.