if ya can’t trust a bootlegger…

so, recently, i all but got out of the stock market…

…i think i still have ten bucks left in play that’s currently worth twenty, but had been worth a good bit more, so i’m letting it ride as of when i’m writing this (july 20th), but my main investment was in some petroleum exploration company who’s name i can’t recall. what i DO know is that back in february of 2020 five stocks was worth around $6,000 but thanks to the ‘rona i bought those same five stocks for $250 with stimulus money around my forty-ninth birthday in 2020. and that’s not $250 a piece, that’s $50 each, for a total investment of $250. that number doubled in a year, then sank, then tripled, then sank, as the market will do. i waited till this june, and sold it exactly at the two year mark of purchasing it, for $1,250, or $250 a piece.

as of this writing, july 20th, it’s only worth about half that, plummeting only a couple days after i sold, and being as low as just under a bill a couple weeks ago. i feel pretty good getting out when i did.

the plan was to use part of the money responsibly and part not so much. while i didn’t make rolex money in the market, i did make rolex CLONE money, though. i figured the only real one i’d ever get would be my father’s, who said he wanted me to have it, but only, literally, “over his dead body”. then he passed and my stepmother refuses to give it to me because she “has this wonderful picture of him grinning ear to ear because i got him a real rolex!”

something tells me i’ll never see that one.

but i did order this for around two bills:

it’s one of two watches my boss ever had that i liked, and two bills was a great deal for a great clone compared to what a real one will set you back…

(and that’s USED!)

i thought it was suspicious as fuck when i went to order and the main forms of payment they like are venmo and cashapp. i have both, but neither, to my knowledge, have any buyer protection so i opted to go the credit card route, which they did through paypal.

(pay attention in a few paragraphs because there’s valuable lessons here)

i got a text stating i would get a tracking number within hours after completing the paypal thing. i got a text letting me know the payment request was sent, and a second letting me know that payment was received, and then…nothing.

i emailed the customer service email. i texted the number that had texted me. i called the number that had texted me. all dead ends. finally, after a week (the texts had stated i’d get the watch in two to three days) i opened a case with paypal stating i’d paid and nothing was ever shipped. three days into said case, a package arrived. i was all stoked until i opened it to find…

which is not what i ordered, but is SOMETHING, and the only other watch in the catalog with “rose gold” in the title so i figured it was an easy mistake to make. since something had been shipped, it was just the wrong thing, i had to close the case with paypal because i knew he could show he shipped something and it wouldn’t let me change my case to “they shipped the wrong thing” even though that IS an option when you first set it up.

i contacted the guy and actually had a pleasant conversation. he stated that he tries not to make mistakes, but they can happen (i get it), and he would ship the one i actually ordered out and once i got it and approved it, he would send me return label for the erronious one and we’d be square.

that was the last i ever heard out of him. days went by, then weeks, with no new shipment and no responses to communication. finally i got back a hold of paypal only to (lesson time) learn that once you open and close a case on a transaction, you can NOT open another case on said transaction. the rep on the phone even tried to the point i got an email stating another case had been opened when it hadn’t.

i was just fucked, paypal-wise. this really needs to be stated on their website.

their rep advised me to take it up with capital one, the credit card issuing bank, who instantly gave me a credit on my account while they investigated, stating that if it went my way the credit stayed, and if not, they’d charge me again. so far they haven’t charged me again, but i also haven’t gotten an email from capital one stating they have closed their investigation. i HAVE, however, gotten an email from paypal stating that due to capital one opening their investigation, paypal was closing there’s, which i thought they already had? all in all a huge hassle, that possibly ends with a free rolex i didn’t actually order, so there’s that. hey, i guess, free is free? not bad for a clone of one that’s at least cheaper than the one i wanted so i can look more “down to earth” and shit?

(again, that’s USED. seriously, who spends this much on a watch in this economy?)