Stevanella Gioielli SAS - cannot recommend

[Auragentum]

I have previously posted this under the watch out section, but as per another user's suggestion, I am posting my experience under this forum as well.

Bought a 2011 Explorer II 16570 from the Italian grey dealer Stevanella Gioielli SAS (aka Stevanella Orologi). The ad was listed on Chrono24. That in itself should have made me walk way.

The watch was supposed to be mint and like new. But once again I learned that mint and like new can be defined very differently to my perception.

It all started with the seller Simone Stevanella offering me a higher price than what they offered to my friend, who had also inquired about the watch. This despite the fact that I was a repeat customer as I had bought a Zenith from them previously. My friend was not. So another reason to walk away, but of course I didn't. Instead I decided to buy at the same price as what was offered to my friend.

When I received it, I immediately noticed a few things. It wasn't like new/mint condition. There was a lot of noticeable dust on the dial. The caseback had a lot of scratches and grip marks from some sort of tool. In addition, the LEC on the glass was very easy to spot from all angles indicating it was a fake crystal. It should be mentioned that none of the pictures showed any of these issues, even if they were high res. So leads me to believe they were not recent pictures. Especially since the caseback scratches/grip marks were easily caught by my iPhone camera.

I brought this to the sellers attention but he got on the defensive from the get go. The watch had according to him never been opened... kind of strange since it had lots of dust on the dial and grip marks on the caseback from a slipping tool. As for the glass I took it to my AD that could not say for sure that the glass was fake, but they had never seen such a visible LEC before. They even compared the glass with the many spare crystals they had on stock.

I decided to let it go with the potentially unoriginal glass, but raised the issues of dust and the caseback. I offered to have either my AD or an independent watchmaker polish the caseback and open the case to clean the dial (and subsequently do a pressure test) - if Stevanella would reimburse me the costs.

He was not accommodating at all. Instead he finally offered to take the watch back and refund me, but not the shipping fee. This goes against my principles as I see the return shipping fee as an obligation of the seller, when he has clearly sold a watch which was not in the advertised condition.

In the end I decided to keep the watch and have it polished, cleaned and pressure tested at my own expense. The main reason was that I was not comfortable sending back a watch to Italy of all places (a country notorious for losing packages). In addition, I was no longer comfortable with the seller and there certainly was a trust issue. Therefore I somewhat reluctantly decided to keep the watch, to avoid a potentially even bigger headache.

Long story short: I would not recommend dealing with Stevanella Gioielli. The condition of my watch was far from advertised. When brought to their attention, everything was dismissed.

They may have good reviews from other buyers. But not from this one. Just a heads up for others who may consider buying from them.