This post is not intended as being negative toward CW – quite the contrary. I love the brand, the watches, and especially the ownership community. I would like to in some small way help get to the bottom of the issue that may be occurring so that CW can potentially improve, and thereby ensure happier customers, increased revenue, and so forth.

The basis of the premise here is the BumbleBeast. It could be any watch, but a potential trend occurred to me, as I noticed that others had the same experience I had after the purchase of this watch in the January/February Sale. Full disclosure, I’ve owned this watch before, then sold it, and then bought it again as I love it so much. In my humble opinion, it is the single most amazingly built watch you can have (on sale) for under $1500, bar none. It’s an Omega, really, at a much lower price point. In fact, Omega would kill for this bezel action. Unfortunately I had to return the watch due to this fault, and opted for a refund, not a repair.

Credit to CW, they refunded in full as they always do after receipt and inspection of the returned watch. For balance, let’s also mention that CW’s generous return policy ensures that buyers do have fair recourse in case of a problem with the watch that arrives. Not all brands are so accommodating.

Back to the matter at hand: My watch came with the main yellow chrono hand misaligned; it was resetting to 54’ rather than straight up at 12. It unfortunately had to go back.

Where the trend comes in is because two other Christopher Ward Enthusiasts FB group members, namely Grant I and Michael M both also received this C60 Chronograph with misaligned main chronograph hands. I’m posting below pictures with their blessing.

My watch (sent back to CW and refunded):



Grant’s watch (sent back to CW and refunded):



Michael’s watch (Pending return to CW as he only just received it a few days ago):



My question now is “Why” is this happening for the same model, for three customers? I also know of two other customers who ordered a BumbleBeast/C60 Chronograph with the new logo, yet was sent one with the old logo. Both FB group members too and both also disappointed they didn’t get what they ordered. One of them sent it back but for this discussion, let’s focus on the three for which we have the pictures.

Let’s imagine a Root Cause Analysis.

Problem statement:

3 C60 Chronographs were sent out by CW which arrived to the customer with misaligned hands.

Why?

CW Quality Control did not catch the misalignments before shipping them out.

Why?

The QC process is not properly implemented with sufficient staff (or sufficiently trained staff)

Why?

Turnover of staff, lack of time to train new staff, lack of time set aside for Quality Control, lack of Supervisors spot checks for QC process.

Why?

CW’s success with the Bel Canto and other models have meant extreme volumes of shipping and more staff removed from QC to handle CS and therefore QC is suffering.

The above is just an example, but it would appear at first glance so at least be part of the reason for why this happened for three customers for the same model.

As mentioned at the beginning, this is just an exercise to help get to the root of the problem. The Non-Conformance/Audit process, which is part of my 9-5, means I’m interested in the working process of getting to the root cause, and fixing it. Nobody is pointing fingers or assigning blame, it’s merely an exercise in how we, and CW, and CW’s future customers can achieve a better outcome.

It is in their best interest to avoid returns, thereby saving shipping cost, labor cost, handling cost, and to make their end users as happy as possible so we will continue to #SpreadTheWard as MF told me once

Interested to hear everyone’s thoughts.

The only variable that is glossed over in your writeup is the possibility that the watch indeed did reset to 12 when it left CW. That opens the door to a couple of other questions:

1. Is the packing enough to prohibit the hands from moving in shipment?
2. Is there an issue with the shipper that they are treating the packages like footballs?
3. Is there something inherent with the Chronograph movement design that doesn't handle shock very well?
4. Is there a better state in which the watch could be shipped to avoid this happening?

Either scenario is likely and without being at CW and knowing the current pre-shipping process at CW towers I don't think a determination can be made either way.

As a side note to this I listened to a recent discussion on what it means to get the 'Swiss Made' moniker. One of the items that is spelled out in the documents that a company has to follow in order to meet the standard is that final QC has to be completed in Switzerland. I still haven't quite figured out what they are getting at here. Does that mean if you QC it again at the point of sale you can no longer call it 'Swiss Made' because you snuck in an extra QC before getting to the customer? This seems daft to me. But I could equally see how QC at the point of sale could get loose because final QC has already been performed in Switzerland which in my experience would not be ideal.

This doesn't seem to be isolated to the chronos either. There have been a spate of misaligned hands around the channels that I follow and that is not very exhaustive by any means. To add insult to injury one person sent it in for a misaligned hour hand and they said it was 'within tolerance'. That shows at best a complete disregard of the issue in the original complaint and at worst not a thorough check-in procedure because an incoming inspection should note that the hands do not line up. I have experienced something like this myself where only 1 of 2 issues were addressed at a warranty service and the watch had to go back a second time.

All of this to say that I agree that discussions about QC should be occurring at CW towers for certain.

EDIT to add: On the dial issues, this seems like an inventory control problem. Ideally, you keep the old dial variant on the website until they are sold through or you make the decision to snap the line and remove all of them from inventory. This doesn't seem to be happening and whatever they are doing for inventory control isn't working.

Yes, shipping damage could be a cause, but I’m thinking it’s unlikely due to this not being an isolated incident, and in a very short timeframe. The trend of three identical watches arriving to three different locations with the same issues points more toward QC than shipping damage, but of course it can’t be excluded as a reason.

As you said, could packaging be worthy of review to help protect shipments better? Where is final QC and by whom?

I agree that the discussion should be had within CW Towers to hopefully eliminate these issues from happening at all, or at least, less often than is the case at present.

Thanks for the post.

It's always out by 4 seconds as well. If CW did its only final checks before shipping and find an issue, then they could send the watch back to Switzerland for fixing and another official QC sign-off, couldn't they?

maclink wrote: ↑Tue Feb 27, 2024 6:55 pm It's always out by 4 seconds as well. If CW did its only final checks before shipping and find an issue, then they could send the watch back to Switzerland for fixing and another official QC sign-off, couldn't they?

The point is that since final QC is in Switzerland the pre-ship QC procedures might not be adequate in Maidenhead because it is assumed faults will be caught in final QC in Switzerland. I wouldn't set up a QC system like that but I can see how it could happen that way.

A very basic question; are these three separate watches, or the same watch that's been sold sequentially to three unsuspecting punters without any remedial action...

timor54 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 27, 2024 7:16 pm A very basic question; are these three separate watches, or the same watch that's been sold sequentially to three unsuspecting punters without any remedial action...

Three separate watches. We compared serial numbers to verify.

That's not a misalignment really is it. That sounds like a movement manufacturing issue, for a chronograph to not reset correctly to 12. I expect it would be doing that when Selitta made it.

You might not remember, but was it centred at 12 when you got it, but didn't reset on the first use, or did it arrive with a misaligned stop second. Because the mechanism should just reset the seconds hand to "home".

My cheap Chinese quartz Chronographs are very poor at time setting, but they are cheap. My decent Chronographs, Speedmaster, Freelancer, Timewalker, and my C7 are crisp and perfect.

Although Quality Assurance is not my main job these days, I still keep my hand in, occasionally designing QMSs for commercial, aviation and defence industry suppliers. My take on it is that the term "inspection" crystallises the manufacturing farce that is much of the watch industry. I define inspection as the need to apply additional resources to something because someone else is not doing their job properly. It appears to me that the industry at this level has never heard of the "internal customer" model.

As for inspection at CW, the farcically obvious visual defect on my first Twelve Ti was proof that they may employ moles for these roles. The way the return was handled was not great and although we eventually got it all resolved, I was embarrassed for them. There would appear to have been no case ownership and ineffective internal comms. My experience evidenced that the customer focus systems are not effectively designed or implemented in a way that puts customer outcomes at the top of the priority list. Definitely scope for improvement! Deming would be a good read for them.

As for the hand misalignment, it could be a few out of tolerance or incompatible tolerance band overlaps on hands or movements leaving the interface slightly looser than it should be. Could be defective movement parts. Could be an operator not taking care. Proper drill down would be needed to get the root cause identified.

I see there are some C60 Chronographs on the sale page today... Cough - rework - cough?

Well, I don't know anything about running a business, but you're asking a lot of me here, based on just a sample size n=3....

You're concluding (firmly) a number of things here that I don't think have any justification - that the watches were defective when they left CW and no other option is possible; that this collection of three instances amounts to a systematic failure and not just a random event; that CW are unaware of how well their systems work (or don't work); and that you know what they need in order to fix 'the problem'.

I'm not sure CW - or any business - would be swayed by this analysis?

I can't imagine that the standard CW packaging is not sufficiently robust to deal with a small number of cases where the delivery company handles the package in a manner which, in the case of a sentient being, would be classified as negligent/abusing.

Of course I "get" that the original post was discussing the hypothetical and nothing wrong with that.

I know we're addressing an issue affecting a complex mechanical machine produced under modern manufacturing tolerances by a company with modern QA systems in place but,

I can't help but wonder if the problem is one of pusher alignment? I've been a serial fiddler/owner of mechanical chronos and only this week I've handled two "new old stock" Valjoux 7733 chronos where it was all to easy to not press a pusher to the full extent of its travel causing a partial reset.

I accept that I too am applying a hypothetical solution to this occasional bumblebeast problem when what is really needed is for the problem not to exist in the first place. (Sure I'd love to know what percentage of bumblebeast production is involved....)

A quick google search last night did not bring in a host of known problems with this movement.

I'm aligning with Guy in wondering why three watches were returned for refund rather than rectification. (I seem to have awoken in alliterative activity mode!!)

tikkathree wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 8:37 am
I'm aligning with Guy in wondering why three watches were returned for refund rather than rectification. (I seem to have awoken in alliterative activity mode!!)

I think it is perhaps because people don't want to own a known rework piece? My Twelve Ti was cosmetically damaged during rework and went on to develop unrelated accuracy / running issues. A factory fresh example would be my choice too.

Yeah I didn’t want to wait 8-10 weeks to get a watch I had just ordered.

And the analysis may well be totally wrong, but based on the data available to me here that’s my best guess. As I said, it’s just an example. We could go down the DHL or RM direction for packaging shipping issues. There are many options and CW will be best equipped to do their own analysis and see where that leads. I would suggest that ignoring this would be a poor business choice in the long run.

On the FB page, many complain about QC issues: dented dial, misaligned hands, wrong logo sent (as mentioned above too). Somewhere, something is not right. And we hope CW can improve their processes someway, somehow. Customers are becoming disillusioned - like me. My confidence is low at the moment. I hope that changes.