Hope the OP could share the reports from CW CS. It’s really really strange, especially for a Swiss made dive watch. What makes the warranty void? Or indeed the water ingress is not part in the warranty? Definitely CW CS team would claim the OP didn’t / forgot to push the crown in hence caused the incident?

Can’t wait to know the updates from OP.

It's good to hear from new members as we were all a new member at 1 time so welcome to the OP, UNIONmagazine.

I've definitely said this before but it's a real shame that several recent first time posters only seem to write on here when a problem arises.

So I'd like to understand why having looked into CW for some time then buying 1 of their watches a few months ago the OP hasn't written an introduction or an "I've just bought this excellent CW watch" type of first post before this "problem" first post. If on purchase of the C65 the OP had introduced themselves and the new watch I think it less likely that there would be some suspicion mooted regarding the issue of the faulty watch and CW's pathetic response (if true or not misunderstood by CW or the OP). Maybe even a photo of the damaged watch prior to returning it to CW as a "warning" to other purchasers of a potential range problem?

This would give some insight into what people consider this Forum to be.

If there is anybody working in CW stupid enough to give such a response to a customer then they should not be working for CW any longer. If the CW staff member "misunderstood" the problem or thought this was being returned for a refund then they require some additional training and direction from the owners. If this post if true then I feel very sorry for the OP and suggest as others have that the next communication is verbal by phone and then follow it up by an email giving a rough transcript of both sides of the conversation and ask CW to provide their invoice and reasons for not repairing this under warranty in writing on Company headed paper.

To UNIONmagazine - I'm sure we'd all like to hear more from you and your response to the posts so far.

Bungle-ator wrote: ↑Sat Sep 21, 2019 11:10 pm Did they send you an invoice or just tell you how much the repair would cost?

When I returned my watch to them they quoted me £360 to fix it and could I "call in with my credit card or send PayPal details". I found it a very strange request without an invoice. I asked lots of questions and was ignored for a couple of weeks before I was told it was being repaired under warranty. It's been a long slog and they've now had my watch for over 14 weeks. As an aside, I received an email with my "order" not quite a couple of weeks ago detailing parts and service costs amounting to £360, which was then zeroed. I wrongly assumed that them sending me this meant it was about to come back to me but apparently not.

I think if I were you I'd be getting in touch with them again. It sounds ridiculous for them to not fix that under warranty.

So far I've had two emails from reps called Tabitha and Megan. One email was to state that the ewatch would not be fixed under warranty due to scuffs on the bracelet and the wecond was to tell me to either coff up £466 or expect my watch back in the post in it's curent waterlogged state.

I've emailed upper management now qwith a hope to excalte the matter. Fingers crossed.

MarkingTime wrote: ↑Sun Sep 22, 2019 4:05 am Seems strange to me.

The warranty/guarantee is for the movement and the bracelet condition is irrelevant, however, I do wonder how long waterproofness could be covered for. Would this be under the 60/60? Strictly speaking, the seals are not part of the movement.

My day to day watch is a five year old Vostok Scubaman that cost me £50 from eBay. It's been worn in the ocean more times than I can count and it's still watertight. I think it's fair to expect a £1000 Christopher Ward Diver's watch to maintain it's waterproof-ness for more than a few months.

tikkathree wrote: ↑Sun Sep 22, 2019 9:36 am Honestly?
I think you're in line to receive the award for "Biggest crock of ##it ever spouted to a customer by a sales partner".

Some of us are old enough to remember the joke in ladies footwear of the knee-length variety: "Fashion boots love, not designed to keep any water out."

I wonder if the owners of the company condone what's happening in their name?

I'm not sure what's worse: the failure of the watch or the failure in customer service values.

And to think that customers used to be looked after by the wife of CW himself.

I'd be copying this post to every social media outlet I could find. Oh and buying a different watch.

Disgraceful.

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

I loved that watch and would have been more than happy to have recieved a replacement with the old strap. Not now. I've lost all faith and my relationship with CW has been soured. To think I wass just about to buy a second watch from them.

My views on this:

Waterproofness of a watch. This I believe can only ever be guaranteed for 1, perhaps 2 years. After this period the watch would need to be pressure tested and at 5 years a change of seals and pressure test. waterproofness is a very particular thing. Not something I think could ever be guaranteed for 5 years. Watches being used in water should be regularly pressure tested.

People have mentioned crowns being unscrewed and as we know the C65 has a push in crown. So perhaps it was not pushed in, perhaps turned under water or perhaps caught on something and was pipped out a bit...perhaps perhaps.

Now to the OP problem, especially considering the age of the watch. The first thing I would have done had I been in the service department was had the watch pressure tested as it came in. I would have watched for bubbles of air coming from the case back seal/crown and crystal. This would have immediately told me whether I was most likely dealing with a poor QC watch. e.g. missing crown gasket, pinched case gasket or leak around the crystal. If I found a fault in this area, I would have contacted the customer and explained this...the repair would of course be free.

If I could see no evidence of a problem, then it's possible the crown could have caught on something, which opened it enough to let water into the watch, or there was some other reason (I will leave to your imagination). In this case even though the customer may have been at fault...even accidentally, considering the age of the watch and the circumstances, I would have to be a complete customer service novice to still not repair it free of charge. I would still provide a report to the customer stating that no leak was found on pressure testing, but treat it as a goodwill repair. The repair would be accompanied by a few specific warnings about non screw down crown watches and water resistance (and how it works) e.g. water skiing in one would be a very bad idea, because there is not enough pressure.

After 1 year, then I would not be so forgiving if a definite manufacturing bugger up was not found and after 2 years, I would state that watches exposed to water (swimming, diving, shower) need to be regularly pressure tested. CW have to decide how regularly that should be...personally I think 2 years. The real problem is user misoperation and deciding when/if that has happened.

CW really need to realise that year one needs to be a golden year

As for the OP next course of action, read this, deal with them calmly and factually, make sure any calls are followed up in writing. As the right questions and wait for answers e.g. when they pressure tested it what did they find, ask for the results, what pressure they tested at. You would expect the watch to at least meet its performance standards for the first year whatever CW put on their warranty. The difficulty is in proving you did nothing wrong. Most manufacturers immediately spring to the defence of "you did something wrong, or we don't cover water damage". I don't know how many do after only 6 months though.

As someone else said, the words "shotgun and foot spring to mind".

P.S. I hope when this happened you put the movement in a warm place to let it dry completely and left the crown in the hacking position to limit damage through the movement starting up again during shipping etc..Although in fairness "seawater is a cruel environment for watch interiors.

Deleted.

Amor Vincit Omnia wrote: ↑Sun Sep 22, 2019 10:11 am I would also like to see the report. My first reaction on hearing a claim of water ingress into a new 600m WR dive watch, after 30 minutes of splashing around in waist high water, would be to ask:

“Did you have the crown screwed in?”

The OP doesn’t mention this either way, but I wouldn’t necessarily take it as a given.

It doesn't have a screw in crown. It's a two stage crown which pretty much has to be clicked right in for the watch to be comfortably worn on the wrist.

Bungle-ator wrote: ↑Sat Sep 21, 2019 11:10 pm Did they send you an invoice or just tell you how much the repair would cost?

When I returned my watch to them they quoted me £360 to fix it and could I "call in with my credit card or send PayPal details". I found it a very strange request without an invoice. I asked lots of questions and was ignored for a couple of weeks before I was told it was being repaired under warranty. It's been a long slog and they've now had my watch for over 14 weeks. As an aside, I received an email with my "order" not quite a couple of weeks ago detailing parts and service costs amounting to £360, which was then zeroed. I wrongly assumed that them sending me this meant it was about to come back to me but apparently not.

I think if I were you I'd be getting in touch with them again. It sounds ridiculous for them to not fix that under warranty.

Hi, I received two emails. One informing that that that watch had two many scratches to be fixed under warranty and a second email informing of the cost of repairs.

Toph wrote: ↑Sun Sep 22, 2019 3:00 am This seems absurd. I mean how can a diving watch , under warranty, that get filled with water, be pushed back to the owner?
Never mind the fact You may have worn the watch on a different strap mostly too.

I have just purchased my first Christopher Ward watch and it should be arriving in the next few days but I ordered 3 weeks ago.
I have been told several different timelines and missed deadlines for delivery. It appears the seperate business units don’t speak to each other but eventually my watch is on its way, they upgraded to express shipping too. I’ll be posting when it arrives. Still as a first time buyer it was quite scary.

My advice , don’t get angry with them, just state that it is unacceptable and ask why they advertise a warranty and a guarantee if it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. You would like them to stand behind their products. Someone should see what the right thing to do is. (Unless they can see you’ve damaged the case and watch yourself of course)

Anyway good luck but certainly a poor trend in service experiences

Hi, I have mainained a civilised tone in my emails. Astonishment maybe but civilised nonetheless. Not for one second did I think that the CW customer service team would adopt this hostile attitude.

What’s going on?where has the original post gone?

Oooh. Something is fishy.

If the first post is deleted it pretty much renders the whole thread useless as people like me come on and wonder what is going on.

stefs wrote: ↑Sun Sep 22, 2019 12:39 pm What’s going on?where has the original post gone?

OP was online about 40 mins or so ago, but now isn’t shown in a member search.

Mikkei4 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 22, 2019 11:53 am It's good to hear from new members as we were all a new member at 1 time so welcome to the OP, UNIONmagazine.

I've definitely said this before but it's a real shame that several recent first time posters only seem to write on here when a problem arises.

So I'd like to understand why having looked into CW for some time then buying 1 of their watches a few months ago the OP hasn't written an introduction or an "I've just bought this excellent CW watch" type of first post before this "problem" first post. If on purchase of the C65 the OP had introduced themselves and the new watch I think it less likely that there would be some suspicion mooted regarding the issue of the faulty watch and CW's pathetic response (if true or not misunderstood by CW or the OP). Maybe even a photo of the damaged watch prior to returning it to CW as a "warning" to other purchasers of a potential range problem?

This would give some insight into what people consider this Forum to be.

As this closely describes my experience i'll answer the question from my own perspective.

I discovered CW in 2018 through a fashion blog site Fashionbeans who recommended their watches and so picked up a Trident in a sale directly from CW. At this stage I knew nothing of the forum but you can be assured that rather than posting praise of the watch and brand online I did this in person and spread the word about quality and value for money. Upon CW publicly promoting the MK3 I decided that a 40mm would be better for me and so I sold my old Trident at a profit

The MK3 did not meet expectations in terms of QC so I contacted them and also began searching if others had any issues. When you search Christopher Ward Problem in a search engine this forum is high on the list. I assume that this is influenced by the fact that CW do not have a multiple retailer presence and so where they are referred to most whether positive or negative is here.

Whilst it may be seen as rude or hijacking what is a fan forum, it was really helpful to ask on here to get sensible answers and opinions from people with knowledge of CW - Which is very reassuring when the response from CS is below par, mis-leading or non-communicative.

I guess the forum can be considered to be exactly that, where discussions take place, the topics of which will vary. People can choose to post, reply or comment or ignore at their preference. In this case this thread my help the OP with support and sympathy of their issue which will hopefully be resolved and maybe in future they will stick around and contribute to other topics, which is more likely if both their experience with CW and forum contributors is a positive one.