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Buyer Beware!
In 1997 my wife left the first major company she had worked (very hard) for and decided that she would buy herself a gift for her years of service. She had wondered into Filene's Basement in Washington Square (a place she loves to frequent). At this location their is a jewelery section and she happed to find a beautiful Tag Heuer ladies watch. It was priced at $1000. Figuring she was getting a "good deal" and not getting ripped off, she bought the watch.
Life was grand and she wore the watch with pride. Time moves forward and she had stopped wearing the watch (it also helped I got her a new watch for Christmas last year). This year we had decided to give the Tag to my sister as a gift. She got a new battery put in the watch and had it polished. It looked like new again. She wrapped it and got a beautiful card and wrote some very nice words to my sister and gave it to her for Christmas.
The watch was a bit small and my sister needed to add some links to it so it would fit properly. I have a great jeweler I often go to in Milford, MA (which happens to be near my sister) called Marshal's Jewelers. I told my sister to go there and she would be taken care of. Richard, who runs Marshall's, got the watch and informed my sister he had to send the watch to Tag as they don't provide links, you have to send them the whole watch and they would add them.
Richard called my sister to say that Tag had sent the watch back stating that it was a FAKE!
WOW - can you believe that? It really upset my wife. First she was upset and a bit embarrassed to have given my sister a fake watch, she was also upset because the watch she had so proudly spent a great deal of money on wasn't real. Not only that what can you do? I mean, I can write a blog about it and warn people you probably shouldn't buy a watch at Filene's Basement, but its not like you can go back there and ask for your money back can you? Perhaps we should call the news and have it show up on nightly TV.
Anyway, buyer beware - and always remember that invaluable lesson my grandfather taught me at an early age. He said, "If it seems to good to be true, it probably is." He also said, "You get what you pay for in life." He said a lot of other stuff too, but I'll just end it here!
