MEXICO CITY — Luxury jewelry maker Cartier isn’t known for giving things away, but in the case of one Mexican man, they practically did.
Rogelio Villarreal was browsing the Cartier website at leisure when he came across an offer that seemed too good to be true. “I started to break out in a cold sweat,” he wrote on his account on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Apparently, Cartier had made a mistake and put gold and diamond earrings on sale for 237 pesos ($14), instead of the correct price, 237,000 pesos ($14,000). Villarreal ordered two sets.
What followed were months of back-and-forth during which, he claims, Cartier offered him a consolation prize in lieu of the jewelry, and during which Mexican officials backed his position that the company should honor the advertised price.
Villarreal finally got his hands on the earrings last week, at their price, and posted a video online of himself unpacking the merchandise. But he soon tired of the public attention (he discovered that not all that glitters is gold) and posted on Monday: “Okay, let’s talk about something else, I’m tired of earrings being the only thing anyone knows about my personality.” .
Villarreal’s case had become a lightning rod online during an especially polarized time in Mexico ahead of the June 2 presidential election.
Some observers criticized Villarreal for taking advantage of what they saw as an honest mistake on the part of the high-end jewelry company. Some claimed she should return the earrings or pay taxes on them. Some called him a thief.
Villarreal, a doctor doing his medical residency, said he had to fight for months to get the company to actually comply and claimed they offered to send him a bottle of champagne instead.
The company did not respond to requests for comment.
“I have the worst luck in the world and I have never made money, and what I have is because I bought it,” Villarreal wrote on his social media accounts. But now he was able to buy two sets of $14,000 earrings for just $28.
He says he gave one of them to his mother.
“It feels great and it’s great to not be the loser for once in my life,” Villarreal wrote.
Jesús Montaño, spokesman for Mexico’s consumer protection agency, known as Profeco, confirmed Villarreal’s account of his struggle.
“He filed a complaint in December,” Montaño said. “There is a conciliation hearing scheduled for May 3, but the consumer has already received his purchase.”
When asked about the ethics of all this, Montaño said that companies “have to respect the published price.” If there is an error, “it is not the consumer’s fault.”