Hi there,
I have been looking at A Lange & Söhne (ALS) vs F. P. Journe (FPJ) pieces for a while. For ALS, the piece I am interested in the most is the Zeitwerk. In the FPJ current collection, the Souverain or Automatique are really cool!
Now, the reality is, I prefer to go grey for either of those options, for various reasons. For the Zeitwerk, it’s because ALS Zeitwerk can be found at a discount, and for FPJ, because I don’t want to wait. However, I was talking to a ALS rep and they said this about buying grey:
I never recommend gray market retailers because you do not get a factory warranty, and a brand like Lange can be pricey to service. Even if you can get a better price, it’s still a lot of money to buy from someone unauthorized. And, should you choose to sell or trade the watch later on, you won’t get as much with it being sold to you on the gray market originally.
Is there truth to the aforesaid? Also, as I will be buying from Chrono24, is there a way to double check with those brands if the watch I end up getting is legit? Since, I will have 14 days as per Chrono policy to return / flag something.
Not always. I bought an ALS gray and got a valid international warranty and full set of papers. The gray dealer acted as a middleman and had a German AD drop ship to me through a freight forwarder. The deal was really good compared to what I could get locally, in part due to the exchange rate at the time and in part because the gray dealer and AD were no doubt exchanging the piece at close to dealer cost. The warranty was activated at the AD right before they shipped it.