My experience buying Apple Watch from Croma

DBot

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TL;DR: Unbox the product with video even if bought from a store.

I bought an Apple Watch Ultra from Croma on Thursday. Since it was unavailable from them, they said they'll import the stock from another showroom. All billing experience was smooth. They gave the box to me sometime back so I was waiting for the billing to be complete. The box was dusty but I've had this experience before. The salesperson (SP1) insisted on opening the box where there was CCTV surveillance. He started taking unboxing video, although I was not comfortable, he said it's for safety purposes. I open the seal of the box and the watch had dust on the plastic wrap. I said to him (SP2 who is the apple representative of the store) that it's impossible because they're close to air tight seal and dust can't enter. SP2 said sometimes it can occur due to dusty environments. I unwrapped the plastic wrap and the watch was also a bit dusty and I was not okay with that. One more thing I noticed was that the cable box was flipped so the pull tab was under. I had to invert the box to take it out. I brought it to the attention of the SP1 telling him there's no way apple does something like this and I'm not okay with the product. SP2 said we'll confirm it with apple warranty. Then SP1 found that the product was already activated. Then we started taking look at the product and the band insertions were full of scratches. They asked me to leave the product with them and they said they'll contact me in a day or two either with new product or a refund.

SP2 was also shocked and he was looking at the box and found the band box was not sealed completely. He opened it and found there was a duplicate strap with the wrong color inside the box.
Since I bought the watch with Apple Care+, I was asked to open the box inside for the registration process. I've previously bought MacBooks and took it home to unbox. So I learnt that I should unbox the product inside the store even if bought from the store and no courier was involved.
 
Which city?
Glad the SPs asked you to do the unboxing there else usually we happily come back home thinking its Croma or reliance, don't do any unboxing video and thus have no evidence to prove otherwise when things go wrong.

My exp. with Croma has been good except for last 2 deliveries where the deliveryman was in a hurry and I suspected somethings not right, I opened the product only to find it was broken and all pieces inside the box.
Didn't took any video but since I was their old customer, they delivered me the replacement ASAP within an hour.
 
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Coimbatore.
The product was perfectly sealed. Especially the green pull tabs that come from apple was exact replica so I didn’t have any doubts. Probably wouldn’t have recorded at home in excitement.
 
I purchased my S23U from Croma and did the same. Opened everything immediately, asked my wife to take a uncut unbox video infront of the sales person. Fortunately everything was ok.

Online is not the ONLY dangerous way to get cheated.
 
Update: After five days of back-and-forth communication with them, they didn't even send an official email acknowledging the issue and outlining further resolution. Every email looked like one-sided communication. I was afraid that without any document, this can't stand in court. Whenever I called their phone, they just said, "We've emailed them, and there's no response from the team." I told them not to bring their internal investigation into this because it was clearly opened in front of the camera and staff, and their internal issue is not my issue. I just asked for an official channel/email confirming I didn't get the watch. All of their answers were, "Trust me, bro, Croma won't take your money". Even on the day of purchase I asked them for any official document stating I didn't recieve the watch, it was typical trust me bro response. I said I need something before leaving the store, they gave me a merchandise entry pass. Finally today, I resorted to blackmailing that I'll raise a dispute with the credit card provider; they sent a return invoice in 20 mins.
serial number on the watch.
Correction: serial number on the box.
 
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Glad it was resolved. Scary that even offline shops end up with the same issues that are prevalent with online shopping.
Noted for future offline purchasers to open up and verify such products.
Again what is the solution to this mess.
 
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