Questions and answers
The questions worth asking before you trust a record.
Direct answers, including where the product does not yet do something.
Verification and professionals
- How exactly are professionals vetted?
- Every application is reviewed by hand. An applicant states their discipline, business details, credentials and the brands they work on, and an administrator checks that evidence before the profile is published. No profile is approved automatically, and nobody can verify a record before approval. We are onboarding the first professionals now, so the directory is deliberately short rather than padded.
- Does Watch Trust guarantee a watch is authentic?
- No. We never call a watch 100% authentic. A record shows what its owner reported, which documents support it, and which findings a named professional signed, with the date. The judgement stays with the professional and the evidence stays visible so you can weigh it yourself.
- Can AI verify a watch?
- No. Our assistant may suggest a brand, model or reference and stores a confidence value and its source, but a suggestion never becomes verification. Only an approved professional can record a signed finding.
- What stops someone uploading a forged document?
- Uploading a file only ever produces document-supported evidence, never professional verification: the label says who supplied it. Documents are stored with an integrity hash so a file cannot be silently swapped later, professional findings are append-only and corrections are recorded as new entries rather than rewrites, and uploads, shares and verifications are written to an audit trail. A document becomes professionally reviewed only when a vetted professional examines it and signs that finding.
Your data
- What happens to my records if Watch Trust shuts down?
- You can export at any time, and we would not close without notice: our commitment is to give advance warning and keep exports available throughout the wind-down period so nothing depends on us staying online. Your evidence belongs to you, not to the platform.
- Which export formats are available?
- You can request a machine-readable export of your account data — records, identity fields, service history, valuations and evidence metadata as JSON — together with the original document files you uploaded. This covers the GDPR right to data portability. Write to us from the contact form and we will confirm the request against the address on your account.
- Who can see my watches?
- Only you, unless you act. Access rules are enforced in the database rather than in the interface, documents live in private storage and open through short-lived signed links, and a shared Passport reveals only the fields you selected. Serial numbers are masked by default even on shared records.
- What happens when I transfer a watch?
- The history transfers; your personal data does not. The new owner receives the record with its evidence and the documents you selected. Past ownership remains in the timeline as a dated event, without exposing previous owners' contact details.
Plans and access
- Is it free?
- Two active records are free and stay free. Paid plans and paid professional services are not purchasable yet because checkout is not connected; where a plan or service is listed you can leave an address and we will write to you when it opens.
- Do I need an account to check a record?
- No. A Record ID, Passport ID or shared link can be checked without signing in, and the verify page has a demo ID so you can see the flow first.
Something not answered here?
Write to the team and we will answer directly. Privacy, legal and security requests reach the same place.