JEDDAH, 12 April 2005 — Saudi authorities have seized two truckloads of fake watches while they were on their way to Jeddah, Minister of Commerce Dr. Hashim Yamani announced yesterday.
Acting on a tip-off, inspectors of the Commercial Fraud Committee in Jeddah intercepted the trucks carrying the watches for distribution to shops in the city, said Dr. Yamani. The inspectors found 647,977 watches in the trucks without proper documentation indicating the country of their origin. There were also 720,212 watches with fake brand names.
Jeddah has numerous street vendors selling watches of different fake international brand names, especially in downtown Balad district right in front of large shopping centers where the original brands are sold.
Arab News asked Ubood Basaad, general manager of Bajsair Watches, the agent for Swiss watches in the Kingdom, about the impact of the problem. “This problem affects the Kingdom’s economy and its reputation. Pilgrims who come for Haj and Umrah are unaware of the extent of commercial fraud in the Kingdom; they think the problem does not exist in the holy land of Makkah and Madinah,” said Basaad.
He added that there are no specific merchants for such fake products that are smuggled in from China and Thailand. “Our financial loss caused by these products is not big, however, because no one knowing the difference between the genuine and the fake would buy the fake,” he said.
“There is no competition between the genuine and the fake products because the difference in quality is obvious,” said Yaqub Hamid, a salesman at a watch store in Al-Mahmal shopping center in Balad. “Watch customers of brand names can recognize the difference in the raw material of the watches. Those who buy fake watches are of a low economic level,” he said. He told a story of a woman who came to repair her watch with the same brand name we sell here, but upon inspecting the watch I told her that it was fake and would not fix it, she became angry and said that I must be mistaken because the watch was a gift from her husband on their wedding day.
At one of the streets outside the shopping center, Arab News saw Ahmed, an Indian expatriate buying one of the fake watches from a vendor. “I’m buying it as a gift for a friend. It’s cheap and looks good, as good as the original, no one can tell the difference unless they are experts on watches,” he said.
