A couple of months ago I saw a Facebook ad for Mocelli.com – they would send me watches for free, I just pay shipping ($13.00 each). This is to “get the word out” about their brand, in the hopes that people would see what I was wearing, ask me about it, and then they’d eventually get more paid business.

So, after browsing around a little, I ordered 3 – the DaVinci watch, the Business Classic watch, and the Luxury Fashion Rome. I didn’t do this until after I ordered, but eventually I found lots of Google results for “is Mocelli a scam? YES!” Eh, we’ll see. At least I’ll get a blog post out of the review if they’re not that bad.

I just decided, “Hey, I know I need a new watch, even if it’s not that great, how bad can it be? It’s probably worth as much as I’d get if I went to Target and bought a $13 watch there.”

The DaVinci

This one was ordered first and arrived last. Not sure why, but it was. I’ll get to the review of this one later, because I want to give my impressions as I remember them happening, and I received (and opened) the other two first.

The Business Classic (BC)

Who doesn’t like more dials?

The Luxury Fashion Rome (LFR)

I ordered these two as “add-ons” to the original order, so they were  shipped together. They arrived in a plastic grey package, no box, no instructions, nothing. Maybe that should have been my first clue.

Next clue – they have the “Val s(USD $)” on the package. The LFR had a value of 0.47, while the BC had a value of 2.42. Just a bit under the $79 advertised. Uh oh – what have I done?

Opening it up, each watch is in a plastic bag with a cushion around it. No box. Eh, what should I expect for free? It’s not like I thought these were going to be Patek Phillipe or anything.

The Luxury Fasion Rome review

The LFR looks nice. It’s got a gold-tinted edge, a pull-out knob for adjusting the time, the second hand is sweeping around … wait … does that say “IV” at six o’clock? IT DOES!

Further inspection reveals this: whoever put this together clearly doesn’t know how to use Roman Numerals appropriately. Instead of “IV”, they wrote “IIII”. And for 6, they put “IV”. Which is actually 4. Some little nugget of truth must be buried in there somewhere, because for 9 it’s “IX” and 11 it’s “XI”, so at least something must be getting around in that forced-labor camp. If only they’d been consistent.

Next thing I notice while trying to put it on is that the leather on the band is extremely stiff. Almost impossible to bend it back to slide the pin through to hold it. I wouldn’t want to put it on or take it off more than once a day because of this. Not a good thing in my –

Hold on – let me look at those gears a little more – HOLY SHIT! Those aren’t gears at all! This isn’t a “skeleton” watch like what you see advertised by Rolex, or even Stauer (I see those in the SkyMall mags when I am afforded the luxury of airline travel – hint hint). Nope, those gears right there? Those are a single piece of metal, stamped into the shape of gears. They don’t move, they don’t oscillate, nothing. Just there for eye candy and to deceive the simpletons. Well, call me Charly, because it worked.

Next – there are also statements on the product page as follows:

• Brand Name: Susenstone     I highly doubt this. There is no brand name written anywhere on the watch. I did a search on amazon for Susenstone, and there are a number of watches, but this one did not show up.
• Feature: Back Light, Rattrapante, Auto Date            I have no clue what a Rattrapante is supposed to be, but clearly there is no Back Light or Auto Date. There isn’t even a manual date on the thing anywhere. False advertising? Clearly. Worth shouting about? Eh, probably not.
• is_customized: Yes              Uh, no, that didn’t happen. Nothing at all is “customized” about this watch.

Overall – probably pretty fair advertising to give it a value of $0.47. Had I looked a little more closely at the image before buying, I probably would have noticed the flaws. But, it was on a cell phone, it was cheap, it was an impulse buy, and so I’m not sweating it.

On to the next!

The Business Classic review

I’m expecting a few different features with this one. The buttons at 2 o’clock and 4 o’clock, on a watch like this, are most likely starting, stopping, and resetting some chronometer (stopwatch) elements. With the three inset dials, surely one of those is “hours” and another is “minutes” and the last is “seconds”. Plus, the word “tachymeter” on the rim should be able to be used to find an average speed. (Thanks, Wikipedia!) So there has to be some kind of stopwatch feature, right?

WRONG, bitch! Pulled this watch out and I see three four things wrong with it right away:

• 1 – the top and bottom buttons DON’T DO ANYTHING. They don’t even push in, to give you the illusion that you’re doing something. They’re just nubs, pips, stand-out things even more useless than nipples on a silverback gorilla
• 2 – Those little inner dials? Yeah, they DON’T DO ANYTHING either. They just sit there, with fixed “hands” that don’t move. They don’t even rotate on their own, to give you the illusion that they’re doing something. They just sit, pointing at 26, and at half past 1, and at 60. Not sure what they were intended to do, but they’re clearly not achieving that part of the mission.
• 3 – the little hour markers, with the white rectangles outlined in silver – yeah, those are bogus as well. How can you screw that up? Well, so far 2 of those little silver rectangles have fallen off. They’re now floating around inside the face, and potentially gumming up the works. I wonder how long it will take the others to fall off, too.
• 4 – Tachymeter is spelled wrong on this one. They put it as “tachymetre”, as if it is paralleling the differences between British and French spellings of “meter / metre”.

I think this is supposed to be copying this one:

That one, in fact, may have actual moving parts inside, and therefore have a value of something like $20 listed. However, even this is sketchy, as that website has a total of 0 reviews for that product. Another scam? Perhaps.

At least I overpaid for the BC. I mean, I could have gotten the same item for either $10.45 or as low as $4.10 (free shipping!). I know, because my Amazon search for “Susenstone” turned up at least 3 hits for this same watch. Looks like I could have saved enough for a large Starbucks. Oh well, at least I’ll be redeemed when my last watch arrives and is actually a $79 value that I practically stole from them for just the shipping.

The DaVinci Watch review

As I said, it took about a week longer for this one to show up. No idea why, it just did. It was packaged separately, again in simple grey plastic bag and a cushion inside. No box, no insert, no instructions. I guess the description on the Mocelli page showing the watch INSIDE A BOX was intended to be “hey, this is what it won’t come in, don’t get your hopes up”. They must have just forgotten that caption.

This is a bracelet clasp, not a buckle and hook type, so it’s going to need to be adjusted if I ever get around to it. The band says “stainless steel”, but it feels more like aluminum. I’d be shocked it it really was stainless. At least the face really doesn’t have anything to get wrong. There are little dots at all the hours, and even the 6 is written in the correct Roman Numeral, “VI”. Yay!

It’s a little heavier than the others, but not nearly anything like a comparable watch with actual stainless steel band and intricate machinery inside. I’ve held and worn those before, and you know they’re on your wrist. This one feels as light as the other two, comparable with my exercise wristwatch which is a plastic band and little digital readout. So nothing extraordinary here.

But would you look at that? My Amazon search an hour ago also shows this same watch as a “Susenstone Fashion Watch”, with a retail price of $4.98 + FREE SHIPPING! And again with the no reviews. I really ought to do my homework better next time.

A quick Google search for “da Vinci watch” turns up this same item on a few other websites, with prices at $14.99 or $19.99. So, yeah, I overpaid, but at least not as much as I could have!!! [Incidentally, other “DaVinci” watches on that page cost thousands of $$$. Don’t buy me one of those. If you do, I’ll return it for the cash and give you only half of the cash back. Maybe 30%.]

Oh, and looking at the “Val s(USD $)” on the outside of this bag, looks like the DaVinci has a value of 2.00. Which is about right for something that should retail for $4.98 without shipping cost.

As I said, this one needs to be adjusted before I can wear it comfortably. However, when I look at the band edges, it doesn’t look like there are adjustment pins so I can take a couple of links out of the band. If they’re there, they’re hiding pretty well. I’m kind of expecting that if I go to the Watch Stop in the mall I’ll get laughed at. And maybe I will – but that can be an addendum to this post.

In all, I think I could wear the DaVinci watch once a week, the Roman once a month, and the BC one not at all. It’s just not the kind of image (Hey, I’m a big phony!) I want to present when I wear a watch.

About the only good thing I can say about these three is that they’re reasonably accurate on keeping time. They’ve been set for about a week now, and all are fairly maintaining the hours and minutes. I suppose I could track it over a year’s time, but that seems like a lot of work for very little benefit.

Ultimately, the ratings are as follows:

Luxury Fashion Rome:  1 / 5 stars.

Could have gotten to 2 if they’d not pretended to make a skeleton watch and then just stamped out a pattern. And had the correct numerals. Still would have been overpriced at $13, because comparable are only $5 all over the web.

Business Classic:  1 / 5 stars.

Nothing more to say here – they’re a cheap knockoff, and it shows, and I even got overcharged at that.

DaVinci: 2 / 5 stars.

This one has a little potential due to design. Non-deceptive advertising in the “stainless steel” on the band would have given it at least a chance at respectability.

Mocelli Overall: 5 / 5 stars

They did their job. They got me to buy their product without returning it. Their delivery was solid, hitting on all the trigger points that led me to a sale. They managed to do it in a manner that got me to buy without doing any kind of due diligence about the product or the company. And they managed to get me to do it without a product return and, ultimately, with a 5-star review. [APPLAUSE] Well done, Mocelli. You deserve the minimalist profits you’ve skimmed from me this week. [APPLAUSE]