Man buys $14,000 Cartier earrings for $14 after a mind-boggling blunder

Finding luxury items in thrift stores or vintage shops is considered a steal deal, otherwise, one rarely gets to buy an expensive brand at low prices. However, this man got to buy designer earrings from the brand's website for $14 even though it led to a month-long dispute. Rogelio Villarreal, a person who hails from Tamaulipas, Mexico, ended up purchasing two Cartier diamond earrings for $14 each pair which should have cost him $30,000, reports PEOPLE. It all started in December 2023 when Villarreal found an advertisement while scrolling Instagram. 

"I was amazed to see how much the necklaces cost and so on and I said: 'Someday,' until I saw the earrings," he posted on X on April 20, 2024. The Cartier earrings were being sold for $13.85 (237 Mexican pesos) until they later changed the price to $14,000 (237,000 pesos). Villarreal took the deal and bought the earrings for $14. He wanted to gift one of these earrings to his mother. "I swear I broke out in a cold sweat," he wrote on X. These pieces were 18k rose gold stud hoops with 142 brilliant-cut diamonds embedded in them. These are sold on the US Cartier website for $11,600. 

He wrote in another X post, "I doubt that you would have missed the opportunity." Villarreal couldn't believe that he was able to buy the designer earrings for such a small amount. Soon after the company began to contact him wanting to cancel his order by saying that the pieces weren't available but he didn't give in. Then, Cartier representatives started calling him to tell him that “the earrings that he had ordered were not at the correct price, which is why they wanted to cancel the purchase, and that because of the inconvenience they would give me a gift," reports The New York Times. Moreover, the company also offered a "gesture from the house of Cartier" - a bottle of Cartier Cuvée champagne and a leather item.

Villarreal didn't budge and filled a contact form on the Cartier's website and stated a federal consumer protection law in Mexico mentioning that a supplier could be taken to court if they "do not respect the terms and conditions" under which a product or service was bought. He then checked the terms and conditions for sales on Cartier's website in Mexico which states that any dispute can be brought to the Office of the Federal Prosecutor for the Consumer for "conciliation" so that's what he did. He registered a complaint at the Matamoros branch of PROFECO and the agency summoned Cartier for arbitration where the government tried to help the parties to reach an agreement. 

Villarreal received a notice from Cartier a week before the mediation meeting that his earrings' will be delivered on April 26, Friday. He wrote on X on April 22, Monday, "War is over." He got the earrings and posted a picture of the two white boxes with a seal on them. He captioned the post, "Once upon a December." He also shared an unboxing video of the earrings on TikTok and it gained 2.1 million views. He captioned the video, "What everyone was waiting for." People on the internet were divided on the incident. Some appreciated the man's tenacity in getting the company to comply with their terms while others blamed him for using the law for selfish reasons. 

You can follow Rogelio (@rovilljssr) on TikTok for more content on the Cartier earrings.