Cartier’s flaw became its customers’ fortune! It is not very uncommon for shoppers to sometimes encounter marked down prices on websites or even bungled listings. But that would be French jeweler Cartier, is indeed sheer dumb luck. The lucky man Rogelio Villarreal who didn’t even know the ubiquitous luxury label did realize on perusing the website packed with expensive niceties, that $13 earrings are a deal of a lifetime, or a mistake that needs to be capitalized on. The 27-year-old Mexican wasted no time in placing an order for a pair of gold-and-diamond earrings marked as worth just $13 or 237 Mexican pesos.
I was amazed to see how much the necklaces cost and so on and I said: ‘Someday,’ until I saw the earrings,’ Villarreal wrote in a post on X. ‘I swear I broke out in a cold sweat.’ It may have been a glitch on Cartier’s website but the young surgical resident with several grey cells made the most of their mistake by ordering two pairs of earrings that one would usually spot only on the mega-rich. In reality, the earrings were worth $13,000 and the luxury brand later corrected it, only it was too late.
No amount of convincing from customer care executives to cancel the order, temptation in the form of gifts, a complimentary bottle of Cartier Cuvée champagne and a leather Cartier item, or even getting the law involved discouraged a determined Mr. Villarreal to give up the steeply discounted accessory, a whopping 99.9% discount!
In fact, he nose-dived into it. As per the New York Times, the consumer protection law is so well known in Mexico that people use social media to draw attention to erroneous prices. Resolute Villarreal raised the case with Mexico’s federal consumer protection agency. He also took a page out of Cartier’s website, a contact form to cite a federal consumer protection law that states that a goods supplier can be taken to court ‘by not respecting the terms and conditions under which’ a product or service is purchased. Cutting the long and legal story short, at the end, Cartier sent the earrings to Villarreal, which he had purchased for his mother.
Mr Villareal took to X to share his euphoria that involved two small wrapped gift boxes from Cartier with the brand’s signature stamp included. Fashionistas, and Cartier must be weeping at their loss but Villarreal slept victorious! It is a rare occasion that the man scores this big in the fashion department, and he made the most of it by bragging unabashedly, “I took advantage of the opportunity and even ordered two pairs,” bragged Rogelio Villarreal. The internet had mixed reactions, and some were clearly more conscious than the lucky Cartier customer.
One X user stated matter-of-factly, “It is easy for the brand’s lawyers to demonstrate that you acted in bad faith and with treachery — add to that everything you are [tweeting], it reinforces the bad faith,” said the X user. “You [won’t] even be left without the bottle of liquor they offer you [after] paying the costs of the legal process. Another wrote, ‘Would you agree if tomorrow, due to a silly mistake, you lost half a million pesos? The problem is that you don’t deserve them.’
Even Mexico Senator Lilly Téllez weighed in, ‘Kids: What the buyer of the Cartier earrings did is not correct,’ the post read. ‘It’s wrong to be opportunistic and take advantage of a mistake at the expense of someone else, and abuse the law, even if it’s in your favor, and outwit a business. It is more important to be honorable than to have a pair of Cartier earrings.’ No matter the opinions, the matter is now settled, the earrings are delivered, and a son made a mother very happy. He also did the needful by signing an agreement to settle his complaint with the consumer protection agency.
