We tried (my wife and I) to order a watch through Jomashop and this was our experience:

Called the bank to confirm our identity and authorize the purchase. Paid for the watch, expedited shipping, and shipping insurance.

Charge shows “pending” for days, no shipping notification or update. Wife calls them to ask for a shipping/status update. They decide all of a sudden they want a copy of her ID (front and back), have all sorts of questions for her that sound like U.S. Census questions, etc. They were asking her things that were really inappropriate to ask and had nothing to do with verifying her identity, under the guise of “trying to make sure there’s no fraud.”

We thought they were very unprofessional, and rude on the phone, as well as out of line with their questions. I think if they require you to send them documents that should be mentioned during the checkout process and asked for BEFORE they take your payment. We canceled the order and now have to wait several days for the charge to be canceled/refunded and now are not able to buy a watch from elsewhere until this is resolved.

We have bought high end items plenty of times from other sellers/websites and never had an experience like this. It completely turned us off from Jomashop and the whole thing was a bad experience, as well as disappointing.

Interested to know if anyone else had a bad experience like this with Jomashop? And if you have recommendations for vendors who don’t do sketchy things like this? The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth.

Thanks in advance!

  • FnuLnuTwo@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I’ve always had great success with Jomashop. I’ve bought probably 10 or so watches from them. But I also just treated it like buying anything else online from anywhere else. Possibly you telling your bank in advance raised some flags.

  • JB_9999@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I’ve never heard of this from Jomashop, it sounds like your bank flagged it as fraud and caused the issues.

    • Penguino83@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      I know it wasn’t flagged by the bank, because I called and pre-authorized it, told them I was about to make a purchase, gave them the exact amount, verified my identity with them (called through their banking app as well by the way which uses 2FA). The bank had no issues approving the charge. So it was odd. I also called my bank again seeing that the charge was still listed as pending and they told me there were no holds on the bank’s end. They were asking my wife personal questions, not just things to verify her identity. It was really odd and I would think it was someone else posing as Jomashop to try to commit identity theft if it wasn’t for the fact that I called Jomashop’s official number directly and they did confirm it was them.

    • jacob4568@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Yeah. I think it’s the customers bank that caused an issue.

      I’ve had a successful purchase from joma and so have many people here.

        • cedsall@alien.topBEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          Do a search here in Reddit for Jomashop. There are plenty of other bad experiences. Someone just posted one within the last couple weeks. I’ve heard so many horror stories that I won’t buy a thing from them, and definitely not a luxury item. I don’t care how much you save. Headaches aren’t worth it.

  • abnormal_human@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I get that you’re mad at Jomashop, and maybe someone’s tone on the phone wasn’t the best, but this sounds like inexperience with banking and wire transfers more than anything else.

    You got KYC’d. If you’re not familiar with the process, google KYC and read about it. A computer at your bank or Jomashop’s bank flagged your transfer as potentially fraudulent, and when that happens, they have to get information from you to submit it to their bank so that the bank can file it away somewhere in order to comply with their regulations. Once the bank is happy, the funds can be released.

    They don’t need these docs for 95-99% of transactions–that’s why they don’t ask in advance. They don’t actually want your docs, their bank is requiring it to release the funds, and most likely the bank is indicating which docs they need on a per transaction basis, so they may not even knjow what to ask for in advance. It happens rarely enough that your sales contact may not be that familiar with the overall “whys” behind the process, and really, it’s not exactly their job to educate you about how banking works, so I can understand why the conversation might have gone badly, especially if this exchange was already making you tense.

    If you had submitted the KYC docs like they asked, this would probably be over by now and you’d have the watch. This can happen with any wire transfer and is not specific to Jomashop (although some banks are worse than others). I’ve had it happen with and AD–one time it took 10 days of excruciating limbo to resolve (fucking TD bank), but you should be mad at the bank, not at Jomashop. I also had something like this happen once when wiring funds to buy a car.

    However since you decided to take your toys and go home, now you get to sit through the fun wait of reversing/aborting a wire transfer which, yes, takes several days because wires are very much one-way fire+forget instruments and they need to be extra special sure that the money ends up in only one place.

  • spaniel_rage@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I’ve honestly never had a bad experience with a Japanese retailer through Chrono24. Plus the yen is very weak right now.