Unexpected Benefits Of Buying Watches From Authorized Dealers And Brand Boutiques. Did you know that there are valuable benefits to buying watches at authorized dealers and brand boutiques that aren't typically advertised, and that you very well might not know about? It's true, and while our goal isn't to tell people where to buy their watches, there is an infrequently discussed story here to share with watch lovers.

The story in the New York Times this week was unsettling: The New America Foundation, a major think tank, was getting rid of one of its teams of scholars, the Open.

Some thoughts concerning possible areas of economic growth in the watch industry for 2017 and beyond. Quizlet is one of the largest online flashcard sites. Their app syncs with their website, letting you study flashcards from your phone. It’s easy to navigate and. · IRS Watch. We write about tax practice & procedure. full bio → Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

As a consumer, your job is to get the most value for your money. Smart consumers spend less to get more, and when people overpay, we look down upon them. These natural tendencies of consumer behavior aren't abandoned when it comes to buying luxury goods such as watches.

The point of this article is to show certain "hidden areas of value" that might very well change why and where people make their watch purchase decisions. I first want to put this whole article into context, because people without a lot of experience buying watches might not understand all the places where watches are available, and their various pluses and minuses.

There are official and unofficial ways of getting a watch. Official places to purchase new watches include authorized dealers who carry a range of brands, as well as brand boutiques that carry products from just one brand. Some watch companies make their timepieces "officially available" for purchase online (either directly on their site or via third- party authorized dealers) and some don't. Unofficial ways of buying watches include a host of "gray market" dealers who aren't authorized dealers but acquire timepieces in a range of ways. A discussion of the gray market and why it exists is really for another article. However, we do discuss the basics of buying timepieces in the a.

Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get. Some reasons you may not know that can make buying watches from authorized dealers and brand boutiques worthwhile. · Interested in the long-term investment opportunities that might arise from disruption? Watch these emerging trends in the coming decade, says Morgan. E! Online - Your source for entertainment news, celebrities, celeb news, and celebrity gossip. Check out the hottest fashion, photos, movies and TV shows!

Blogto. Watch Watch Buying Guide. Because gray market dealers aren't bound by pricing policy rules from brands, they can discount a lot.

It should be noted that gray market dealers are different from pre- owned watches dealers, who specialize in re- selling used watches. The common sentiment among many watch buyers is that gray market dealers have two main benefits. One is making it easier to purchase watches because they operate mostly via websites, and thus people can buy from anywhere. Second is price. Gray market dealers often offer prices that authorized dealers cannot beat. Price discounting at authorized dealers does often exist, but it isn't very deep. Further, at most brand boutiques, no price discounting is allowed by the brand. So, assuming products are available at gray market dealers and all things being even, it makes a lot of sense why consumers often want to purchase their watches at gray market watch stores.

In fact, one of the only "published" reasons watch brands offer to encourage people to purchase at authorized dealers and boutiques is warranties. Watches purchased at gray market dealers do not come with official warranties, meaning that if there are issues with the watches the consumer will be forced to pay for repairs that would otherwise fall within warranty coverage – or, in some instances, the grey market dealer will offer their own warranty. To be honest, most watch warranties aren't that great to begin with. They can "save" you in many instances, but customer satisfaction when it comes to watch brand warranties and servicing isn't that high - but of course, that also depends on the brand.. Nevertheless, if you have a good relationship with an authorized retailer that you purchased a watch from, and you have a legitimate mechanical issue with your watch, then you will be "taken care of" properly.

Are warranties the only benefit of paying full or close to full price for a watch? No. Over the years, I've learned of a lot of other interesting benefits that watch customers get from buying timepieces at authorized dealers and/or single brand boutiques. These are benefits that vary by store, city, and brand.. So I can't really promise that any of these benefits will apply to you if you buy a watch directly from a brand or at a brand boutique, but there is a good chance at least some of what I am about to discuss will be a welcome surprise when buying a watch through an "official channel."In preparing this article, I sent out questions and interviewed a lot of people.

I wanted to offer specific examples of the unexpected benefits people might get from buying watches at authorized dealers or at brand boutiques. A lot of brands, while happy to discuss the matter with me off the record, didn't really want to be specifically mentioned or to have me share what they do for their consumers in this article. That seems strange at first, but it really has to do with protecting the exclusivity of their events and services, as well as not wanting to step on the feet of their authorized dealers. You see, some benefits only exist when you purchase a watch from a brand boutique, while others exist whether you purchase the watch from a brand boutique or an authorized dealer. That brings me to the second major reason why the brands aren't willing to be too public about these benefits - they don't apply to all consumers or at all stores. So, while we can't make promises, I'd like to discuss some of the likely things you can expect if you decide to purchase watches at authorized dealers or at brand boutiques.

The value of these things vary, but are not insignificant – and added up, might very well make up for paying full retail in a lot of instances. Extended Warranties. In addition to getting the basic 1- 3 year warranty most timepieces come with, buying watches from authorized dealers as well as particular brand boutiques can come with extended warranties.

It isn't uncommon for buyers of watches from high- end brand boutiques to receive warranties as long as 5 years in length. These warranties often cover just the movement or major defects, but depending on your relationship with the retailers, warranties can be extremely valuable.

In the worst case scenario, a faulty timepiece can be completely replaced with a brand new one. Compare that with no warranties at gray market retailers, who also often have "no return" policies that can infuriate purchasers who receive problematic watches. Most brands further offer zero recourse to consumers who complain to them after having issues with gray market dealers. Opportunity To Purchase First. Looking forward to buying that hot new watch as soon as possible?

Interested in getting your hands on a hard- to- get limited production timepiece? Retailers tend to keep track of what their customers like and also keep waiting lists. They can also make specific requests from a brand headquarters when one of their customers makes it clear they want a particular model ASAP. This doesn't just apply to when an impatient customer wants a new model, but also in instances when limited production or limited edition models are going to be very difficult to get. Brands like Patek Philippe are famously picky with who they sell their "Grand Complication" models to - and in many instances, they must "know" who their customers are.

Other brands simply want to reward their frequent customers that they sell directly to or via authorized dealers. So if you are in the market for a hard- to- get new watch or want to be among the first to get something right out of production, you'll want to purchase watches the official way.

Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn’t Like—I Know Because It Happened to Me [Updated]The story in the New York Times this week was unsettling: The New America Foundation, a major think tank, was getting rid of one of its teams of scholars, the Open Markets group. New America had warned its leader Barry Lynn that he was “imperiling the institution,” the Times reported, after he and his group had repeatedly criticized Google, a major funder of the think tank, for its market dominance. The criticism of Google had culminated in Lynn posting a statement to the think tank’s website “applauding” the European Commission’s decision to slap the company with a record- breaking $2. That post was briefly taken down, then republished. Soon afterward, Anne- Marie Slaughter, the head of New America, told Lynn that his group had to leave the foundation for failing to abide by “institutional norms of transparency and collegiality.”Google denied any role in Lynn’s firing, and Slaughter tweeted that the “facts are largely right, but quotes are taken way out of context and interpretation is wrong.” Despite the conflicting story lines, the underlying premise felt familiar to me: Six years ago, I was pressured to unpublish a critical piece about Google’s monopolistic practices after the company got upset about it.

In my case, the post stayed unpublished. I was working for Forbes at the time, and was new to my job. In addition to writing and reporting, I helped run social media there, so I got pulled into a meeting with Google salespeople about Google’s then- new social network, Plus. The Google salespeople were encouraging Forbes to add Plus’s “+1" social buttons to articles on the site, alongside the Facebook Like button and the Reddit share button. They said it was important to do because the Plus recommendations would be a factor in search results—a crucial source of traffic to publishers. This sounded like a news story to me. Google’s dominance in search and news give it tremendous power over publishers.

By tying search results to the use of Plus, Google was using that muscle to force people to promote its social network. I asked the Google people if I understood correctly: If a publisher didn’t put a +1 button on the page, its search results would suffer? The answer was yes. After the meeting, I approached Google’s public relations team as a reporter, told them I’d been in the meeting, and asked if I understood correctly. The press office confirmed it, though they preferred to say the Plus button “influences the ranking.” They didn’t deny what their sales people told me: If you don’t feature the +1 button, your stories will be harder to find with Google. With that, I published a story headlined, “Stick Google Plus Buttons On Your Pages, Or Your Search Traffic Suffers,” that included bits of conversation from the meeting. The Google guys explained how the new recommendation system will be a factor in search.

Universally, or just among Google Plus friends?” I asked. Universal’ was the answer. So if Forbes doesn’t put +1 buttons on its pages, it will suffer in search rankings?” I asked. Google guy says he wouldn’t phrase it that way, but basically yes.(An internet marketing group scraped the story after it was published and a version can still be found here.)Google promptly flipped out. This was in 2. 01. Google never challenged the accuracy of the reporting. Instead, a Google spokesperson told me that I needed to unpublish the story because the meeting had been confidential, and the information discussed there had been subject to a non- disclosure agreement between Google and Forbes.

I had signed no such agreement, hadn’t been told the meeting was confidential, and had identified myself as a journalist.) It escalated quickly from there. I was told by my higher- ups at Forbes that Google representatives called them saying that the article was problematic and had to come down. The implication was that it might have consequences for Forbes, a troubling possibility given how much traffic came through Google searches and Google News. I thought it was an important story, but I didn’t want to cause problems for my employer.

And if the other participants in the meeting had in fact been covered by an NDA, I could understand why Google would object to the story. Given that I’d gone to the Google PR team before publishing, and it was already out in the world, I felt it made more sense to keep the story up. Ultimately, though, after continued pressure from my bosses, I took the piece down—a decision I will always regret. Forbes declined comment about this. But the most disturbing part of the experience was what came next: Somehow, very quickly, search results stopped showing the original story at all. As I recall it—and although it has been six years, this episode was seared into my memory—a cached version remained shortly after the post was unpublished, but it was soon scrubbed from Google search results. That was unusual; websites captured by Google’s crawler did not tend to vanish that quickly.

And unpublished stories still tend to show up in search results as a headline. Scraped versions could still be found, but the traces of my original story vanished. Boulevard Full Movie Part 1. It’s possible that Forbes, and not Google, was responsible for scrubbing the cache, but I frankly doubt that anyone at Forbes had the technical know- how to do it, as other articles deleted from the site tend to remain available through Google. Deliberately manipulating search results to eliminate references to a story that Google doesn’t like would be an extraordinary, almost dystopian abuse of the company’s power over information on the internet. I don’t have any hard evidence to prove that that’s what Google did in this instance, but it’s part of why this episode has haunted me for years: The story Google didn’t want people to read swiftly became impossible to find through Google. Google wouldn’t address whether it deliberately deep- sixed search results related to the story.

Asked to comment, a Google spokesperson sent a statement saying that Forbes removed the story because it was “not reported responsibly,” an apparent reference to the claim that the meeting was covered by a non- disclosure agreement. Again, I identified myself as a journalist and signed no such agreement before attending. Watch Karate Kill Megavideo. People who paid close attention to the search industry noticed the piece’s disappearance and wroteaboutit, wondering why it disappeared.

Those pieces, at least, are still findable today. As for how effective the strategy was, Google’s dominance in other industries didn’t really pan out for Plus. Six years later, the social network is a ghost town and Google has basically given up on it.

But back when Google still thought it could compete with Facebook on social, it was willing to play hardball to promote the network. Google started out as a company dedicated to ensuring the best access to information possible, but as it’s grown into one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world, its priorities have changed. Even as it fights against ordinary people who want their personal histories removed from the web, the company has an incentive to suppress information about itself.

Google said it never urged New America to fire Lynn and his team. But an entity as powerful as Google doesn’t have to issue ultimatums. It can just nudge organizations and get them to act as it wants, given the influence it wields.