Face to Face - Safe transactions.

[ChristophW]

Hello,

First time poster. I must say this forum is pretty amazing. I've never seen a message board so helpful and self-organizing as this one. I'm impressed with the resulting thriving micro-economy of traders created purely based on online reputation.

I'm considering purchasing from one of the many people here who have proven themselves trustworthy. If you're going to wire money to someone online, the only tool you have at your disposal is trust.

Now, if you're going to do Face-Face transactions, which I'm also considering, you have many more tools for safe transactions at your disposal - this also means that you can do transactions between people with less established reputation in person. Could people please elaborate on exactly what to do to optimize physical and economic security when doing deals that are in person, and high value - specifically Rolex. Here are the key questions I have:


- Where should we meet in person?
- How can the buyer know with absolute certainty that the Rolex is genuine, has no replaced (non-original) parts?
- How can the buyer know, and seller prove that the item is under a valid factory warranty, not stolen?
- How can money exchange hands securely at the same time that the watch is exchanged while knowing that the physical item is authentic?

I have not been able to imagine a scenario that guarantees all of those key points. For example, to guarantee authenticity, I imagine you could pay an appraiser, or service center to verify the authenticity/originality/legitimacy/warranty status of a watch, but then the money must exchange hands somewhere else (they likely wouldn't want you doing so inside the service center). In the time that you leave the service center and arrive at the second secure place of exchange, someone could switch the watch out with a fake.

Furthermore, you don't want to be walking around with that much cash, so I would imagine that doing the exchange inside a bank is likely the best option (where the both of you can be present and have the bank teller directly transfer money between you). However, how could one arrange that the appraisal/verification also occurs inside of this bank? Can one enlist paid services of an appraiser to be present at the bank?

Another option for "sealing" the authenticity of the watch might be a tamper-proof physical sticker-seal. At the service center, I could put my signature on the sticker (which generates a unique finger-print), take a photograph of it, then meet the seller at the bank. When I see the device, I will see my unique signature/sticker that matches the photograph on the watch at the time that money exchanges hands.

Thanks a ton!


Christoph