Customer service

Discuss Christopher Ward watches
Ijk123
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Customer service

Post by Ijk123 »

I am a fan of Christopher ward watches but a little concerned . I have emailed customer service twice in the last 2 days requesting information with regards to buying a new bracelet for my C60 pro 600. I haven’t received a reply. I would have thought that I am surprised considering the fantastic reviews the company always seem to receive.
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Re: Customer service

Post by Jcalder68 »

That sort of delay does found odd, particularly from my experience.
Try phoning them. I have always found them the be exceptionally helpful whenever I speak to them.

C
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MarkingTime
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Re: Customer service

Post by MarkingTime »

I always find a phone call to be more effective and "immediate".
Mikkei4
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Re: Customer service

Post by Mikkei4 »

I had need to contact CS in January and thought I'd try the "proper" way via email to the CS address. It took one day to receive an answer and then the following emails were responded to within an hour or so. I was told that CS will reply to all emails within 24hours.

Once you have received an email from a "named" CS staff member responses are generally quick, the only issue being that they don't seem to use the "Out of Office" auto answer when they're off work.

As others have suggested phone in or email the CS Manager direct (scott.callaway@christopherward.co.uk) with a brief history of what's happened.
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Bahnstormer_vRS
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Re: Customer service

Post by Bahnstormer_vRS »

@ijk123 - Welcome to the forum. :wave:
Ijk123 wrote: Sat Feb 23, 2019 4:27 pm . . . . I have emailed customer service twice in the last 2 days requesting . . . . . . .
Would that be Friday & today or Thursday & Friday?

Always worth remembering that CW work to customary UK business hours i.e. 9:00am to 5:00pm Monday to Friday.

Much as they are an Internet company with a worldwide customer base they do not, as yet, operate 24/7.


With regards to you buying a new bracelet for your C60 pro 600, what information are you after?

A forum member may well know the answer.

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And in short measures, life may perfect bee. - Ben Jonson (1572 – 1637)

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TP Fit
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Re: Customer service

Post by TP Fit »

I contacted customer service last Friday, which was after hours since I am from the United States. At this point it will soon be Tuesday and I have not heard from them either. I figure I would wait 2 business days before I contact them again. I was kind of surprised I didn't get a response back by now. I don't know their typical response time so I will be patient. Calling them wouldn't be an option because of the time difference.
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Thegreyman
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Re: Customer service

Post by Thegreyman »

In fairness then they have so far only one business day (Monday) so hopefully you’ll get a reply shortly.

As Guy said, if you post your question here, you may get a response quickly from the combined knowledge of the forum. Oh and welcome to the forum to you and the OP :)
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jawang35
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Re: Customer service

Post by jawang35 »

I'm having the same problem with their customer service. I purchased a C65 Trident GMT in December. The movement stopped working earlier this month. I filled out the contact form 2 weeks ago asking for help. Hadn't heard back for a few days so I called the U.S. customer support number, which is answered by what seems like a third-party service (which is reasonable since I wouldn't expect them to be able to field customer support during U.S. business hours). The third-party service directed me to fill out a repair request form. 2 weeks later still haven't heard anything from them. I'm trying to be patient and not bombard them with e-mails but my patience is growing thin after 2 weeks. I just sent them a follow-up e-mail hoping to hear back. Unfortunately a quick survey of their 1 star reviews on Trustpilot (https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.ch ... en&stars=1) confirms other people are experiencing the same problems. At this point I'm not sure I want to send them my watch only to wait 2 months to receive it back. Might just have to find a reputable watch maker locally instead.
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Essex Paul
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Re: Customer service

Post by Essex Paul »

Crikey, some bad reviews there. Potential customers checking trustpilot first wouldn’t go anywhere near CW.
I share their pain. My £1700 watch purchased in November stopped performing. Sent it back 5 weeks ago and not a dickie bird.
The chances of me buying a second are diminishing by the week. :(
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PaulJS
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Re: Customer service

Post by PaulJS »

I am neither going to add criticism ( as I haven't had any really poor CS from CW) nor be an apologist as it is not my place to make a judgement on others level of disappointment and dissatisfaction.

What I will say is that, despite my level of CW ownership and overall satisfaction, reports of this nature put me off spending a significant amount of money on a CW watch. The most I have paid is £497 and I certainly wouldn't want to be into watches of £1500 + and have question marks hanging over the service level should there be a problem.

It is a real shame but, based upon reports such as these, CW really need to up their game.

We all know that a watch cannot necessarily be repaired and returned in a matter of days, but the stress comes from getting no or slow responses and having to repeatedly chase. There is no excuse for this as having resource to maintain customer contact is not limited by the availability of highly skilled personnel, it just takes bodies.

I worked for a long time having to manage customers' expectations and learned that people are generally satisfied if you keep in touch even if you can't tell them what they want to hear. It is hearing nothing that does people's heads in!!

I am sure that there will be those reading this having had some great CS, but that is cold comfort to those who have experienced the opposite.
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Mikkei4
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Re: Customer service

Post by Mikkei4 »

Some observations and my personal opinions ......
We have 3 new members who's 1st or 2nd posts on the Forum are complaints about CW Customer Services.
The time-span of expecting or waiting for a response from CS varies from less than a working day (due to time-zone conflicts) to 2 weeks.

Welcome to the 3 of you - it's a shame that you've needed to make your introductory posts to the Forum as complaints.
Applying the shortest expectation period to the 1st complaint, it'd be nice to hear from the OP about his bracelet query in case we could help.
In the 2nd complaint CW have been allowed a window of around 5-6 working hours to respond.
The situation in the 3rd complaint is unacceptable but I wouldn't have waited for 2 weeks to a response concerning a faulty £1000 watch.

So
ljk123 - can we help re. your bracelet query if you haven't yet heard back from CW yet? Have you emailed Scott Callaway directly yet?
TP fit - you haven't given details of the reason for you contacting CW CS but maybe you've realised that a response within a 6 hour working window was not realistic as you've stated you'll wait 2 working days for an email response. If you don't get a response to answer your query can I suggest you use the direct email address for Scott Callaway.
jawang35 - That's bad news about the failure of your C65 Trident GMT within less than 2 months of purchase. I would not have waited 2 weeks for a reply ! I'd be badgering CW UK every day having given them 2 full working days to respond. Again can I suggest that you use the direct email address for Scott Callaway. Also I wouldn't advise using a local watch repairer/maker as this would negate your 60month CW Warranty - get onto CW, get your watch back to them and then be patient for a repair and use the delays to push for a quicker turnaround or immediate replacement.

As I experienced recently there tends initially to be a "holding" email reply from CW CS as a response to the "Contact" form email. This reply is not written particularly well but usually it is followed up within 24 hours by a direct email from a "named" CS staff member and from then on I used that direct contact email address.

I hope that CW CS sort out the issues of all 3 of you and it'd be nice to hear back from you all in better circumstances.
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Re: Customer service

Post by Mikkei4 »

Essex Paul wrote: Tue Feb 26, 2019 9:50 am Crikey, some bad reviews there. Potential customers checking trustpilot first wouldn’t go anywhere near CW.
I share their pain. My £1700 watch purchased in November stopped performing. Sent it back 5 weeks ago and not a dickie bird.
The chances of me buying a second are diminishing by the week. :(
@Essex Paul - your situation with your C1 (I think) is not good is it and I can understand your frustration. 5 weeks without an update is unacceptable.
A few years ago I had to have a TAG watch repaired (I broke the crown off the stem). I received an email probably every other day to keep me updated of the repair progress. Sure it took about 6-8 weeks to get it turned around but they kept me advised frequently. That's the level that CW should work to as a minimum.

There's plenty of members here that have work experience of giving good Customer Service including me. I would love to get into CW CS to understand why there are still such issues in such numbers and to fix their CS once and for all as it's not working consistently. They need to issue tight internal and external SLAs, create a fault escalation process, exhibit these on the website, stick to them and compensate customers when they fail these.
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TigerChris
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Re: Customer service

Post by TigerChris »

This thread highlights exactly my point in the thread about survey results. The survey said about people moaning etc, and here we have an OP that has joined, moaned, p155ed off, and not been back since. They have been signed in for a grand total of 1 minute! Any bracelet query for the C60 600 could have been answered by several here, and a quick search would have shown that but, oh no, let’s go and moan! Mikkei4’s post says everything I can think of, just in a more polite way than I would have put it :lol:

Rant over! :lol:
Mikkei4
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Re: Customer service

Post by Mikkei4 »

^^^ LOL :thumbup:

That's funny as in ha-ha, not as in strange!

It is actually how I started to write my version but thinking of 1 of the other points in the survey I didn't want to put new members off joining and staying so went for a "polite" and "read between the lines" version.

BUT ....... new members or those reading for a while before joining ...... this forum is more than a place to post your CS, CW or any other moan/complaint in your 1st or 2nd post.

We accept and acknowledge that CW aren't perfect, whether that's in the watch design, logo placement, CS or watch faults and repair. This is NOT a place where criticism of CW is banned and long serving members can/will give help, guidance and a balanced view of CW watch reliability and other issues.

It's just that it's nicer to have read somebody's Introduction before they throw in a "bad CS" comment as their 1st contribution to the forum.
jawang35
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Re: Customer service

Post by jawang35 »

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. Since I just e-mailed them a follow up last night I'll wait a day before e-mailing Scott Callaway directly. I don't want to void the warranty by going to a local watch maker but if I don't hear back for another 2 weeks what choice will I have?

Point taken about the complaint being my first post. I was just reading to see if anyone else had problems contacting customer service and when I came across a post I figured I could register and contribute my current experience. I hope this gets resolved and I can join the ranks of happy Christopher Ward customers on this forum.
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