Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

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Re: Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

Post by Bahnstormer_vRS »

QPRcat wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 1:31 pm Is serving conducted at HQ in Maidenhead?

I’ve just sent two watches back. 😬
Depends on the watch.

All SH21 powered watches go over to Beil, Switzerland. Possibly a few others.

The rest will stay in Maidenhead, as I understand it.

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Re: Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

Post by Essex Paul »

Bahnstormer_vRS wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 2:23 pm
QPRcat wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 1:31 pm Is serving conducted at HQ in Maidenhead?

I’ve just sent two watches back. 😬
Depends on the watch.

All SH21 powered watches go over to Beil, Switzerland. Possibly a few others.

The rest will stay in Maidenhead, as I understand it.

Guy
I certainly wouldn’t send my SH21 back to CW again whilst it goes back to Biel.
They have seriously shaky hands over there. Mine came back with tool scratches all over the case.
3rd party watchmaker in Hatton Garden next time for me! :thumbup:
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Re: Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

Post by DavecUK »

Andy-Smith wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 1:50 pm I have one of these Casio. Issue with it is that the minute hand flops back & forth a bit. Not sure its worth trying to do anything about it.
At the price, no, unless you think the hand is loose and just needs reseating, then I suppose you could de-case the movement and improvise something to gently seat the hand. When A watch is below a certain price it's really worth taking a more sensible view on how often to have it serviced and by who, simply because the residuals can be so low. e.g. take the https://www.christopherward.co.uk/c5-ma ... c-mk-iii-9
as an example. It's a £495 watch, might be picked up in a sale for a lot less but even at 495, it's simply worth letting the clock run down on the servicing. You have a 5 year warranty, then can possibly go another 5 years without a service. When you do need one, it's just a Sellita that can be serviced anywhere for around £60 ish and re pressure tested for about 10 if you need that. If the movements really bad you can simply buy another movement for not too much money and have the rotor swapped.. It's certainly not worth spending say £150 or more on an automatic every 4 or 5 years. As far as I am concerned, that way lies madness....you would have paid for the entire movement many times over after a few services. After 5 years the watch you are having serviced is probably only worth a little more/same than the service cost.

So that's my personal take on the cheaper end of the watch market and servicing...certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. When you get to much more expensive watches, then sure you need to pay the big bucks....but then they cost so much more. Fortunately the better movements can go much longer without a service...
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Re: Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

Post by Bahnstormer_vRS »

Essex Paul wrote:
Bahnstormer_vRS wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 2:23 pm
QPRcat wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 1:31 pm Is serving conducted at HQ in Maidenhead?

I’ve just sent two watches back. Image
Depends on the watch.

All SH21 powered watches go over to Beil, Switzerland. Possibly a few others.

The rest will stay in Maidenhead, as I understand it.

Guy
I certainly wouldn’t send my SH21 back to CW again whilst it goes back to Biel.
They have seriously shaky hands over there. Mine came back with tool scratches all over the case.
3rd party watchmaker in Hatton Garden next time for me! Image
..... and who's to say that your Hatton Gardens watchmaker won't be having an off day, with shaking hands?

We are all human and no-one is infallible.

Guy



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Re: Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

Post by Andy-Smith »

DavecUK wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 3:10 pm
Andy-Smith wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 1:50 pm I have one of these Casio. Issue with it is that the minute hand flops back & forth a bit. Not sure its worth trying to do anything about it.
At the price, no, unless you think the hand is loose and just needs reseating, then I suppose you could de-case the movement and improvise something to gently seat the hand. When A watch is below a certain price it's really worth taking a more sensible view on how often to have it serviced and by who, simply because the residuals can be so low. e.g. take the https://www.christopherward.co.uk/c5-ma ... c-mk-iii-9
as an example. It's a £495 watch, might be picked up in a sale for a lot less but even at 495, it's simply worth letting the clock run down on the servicing. You have a 5 year warranty, then can possibly go another 5 years without a service. When you do need one, it's just a Sellita that can be serviced anywhere for around £60 ish and re pressure tested for about 10 if you need that. If the movements really bad you can simply buy another movement for not too much money and have the rotor swapped.. It's certainly not worth spending say £150 or more on an automatic every 4 or 5 years. As far as I am concerned, that way lies madness....you would have paid for the entire movement many times over after a few services. After 5 years the watch you are having serviced is probably only worth a little more/same than the service cost.

So that's my personal take on the cheaper end of the watch market and servicing...certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. When you get to much more expensive watches, then sure you need to pay the big bucks....but then they cost so much more. Fortunately the better movements can go much longer without a service...
Thanks Dave, I agree with you entirely. Andy
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Re: Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

Post by Essex Paul »

Bahnstormer_vRS wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 3:52 pm
Essex Paul wrote:
Bahnstormer_vRS wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 2:23 pm

Depends on the watch.

All SH21 powered watches go over to Beil, Switzerland. Possibly a few others.

The rest will stay in Maidenhead, as I understand it.

Guy
I certainly wouldn’t send my SH21 back to CW again whilst it goes back to Biel.
They have seriously shaky hands over there. Mine came back with tool scratches all over the case.
3rd party watchmaker in Hatton Garden next time for me! Image
..... and who's to say that your Hatton Gardens watchmaker won't be having an off day, with shaking hands?

We are all human and no-one is infallible.

Guy



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“We’re all human”.
Yeah that’s a professional response I’d expect from CS. How long were you in CW CS department?

Not a great comeback after waiting for your watch for 2 months. Can’t wait to get my Audi back from service scratched. Sorry Paul, the technicians are only human. Really Guy?? :lol:

P.s. I’d trust Hatton Garden professionals all day.
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Re: Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

Post by gaf1958 »

DavecUK wrote:Fortunately the better movements can go much longer without a service...
Hmm, maybe so, but I might add that Seiko’s cheap automatics (7S26 et al) frequently run for many decades without servicing. When that moment finally arrives, the movement, like many a quartz movement, is either binned and a fresh replacement installed (they’re cheap as chips) or in some cases serviced. I suspect the latter is often when the owner has the knowledge (or perhaps the desire to learn) of how to service it themselves.
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Re: Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

Post by MarkingTime »

PaulJS wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 9:57 am
Essex Paul wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:22 am I’m completely miffed about “quartz servicing”.
No one pulls a quartz movement apart do they?

My wife’s Tag has a new battery and is water/pressure sealed and tested at approx £65 every 3 years, (or whenever the battery runs out), at a Tag service centre.
Not once have they said it needs “servicing”.

And CW want £150?
Don’t get it. 10 year battery maybe?
Could not agree more - am I really going to pay to have my £225 C4 'serviced'? Anything over about twenty quid for a battery change is an uneconomical outlay.

I would be interested in the evidence used to determine that stripping down a quartz movement is either necessary or cost effective. Equally, the whole power consumption testing process sounds like complete guff to me.

As an engineer and engineering manager my business was all about ensuring reliability and quality of performance balanced against cost and one thing I do know is that you don't spend man hours stripping and rebuilding a cheap component even if it is U/S let alone just to find out how well it is working!

I would love to know the science behind the quartz servicing rational - is there published information on such things as mean time between failure, for example.

TBH this all sounds like hokum to me. For the cost / value of a typical quartz (and certainly the bog standard ones that CW knock out) the only sensible approach is to stick a new battery in each time it stops working until this doesn't solve the problem and then do one of four things:

- If you are really attached get the movement replaced at an independent ( since I assume CW will want full bunce for wasting time with 'diagnostics' as part of the service.
- Stick it on fleabay as non working.
- Bin it if you can't be bothered with either of the above.
- Keep and use as test bed for honing your watch disassembly / reassembly skills if this interests you.

It sounds to me like this is modelled on the vehicle serving approach that main dealers use to mitigate the fact that cars are now so reliable :

Complete a four page check list of many items for which there is no basis to believe a problem exists and then charge £200+ for an oil change.

Smoke and mirrors.

Paul
It costs the equivalent of approximately $150 US for a brand new SW200-1 to the average punter n the street, much less to a manufacturer.
I would imagine that a competent watchmaker could turn round a service on such a movement in less than a couple of hours labour time, more if repairs are needed, but then it would be more cost effective to replace this movement also.
Better, in my opinion, to run the watch until it shows signs of a problem and then just replace the movement. Far cheaper in the long run when compared to regular servicing.
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Re: Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

Post by McDaWisel »

I like having the original movement in a watch. That’s purely subjective of course, but then isn’t a subjective view of what you like about a watch what our hobby is all about?

I wouldn’t do it for all my watches but for the ones I like I would much rather keep it as original as I can, rather than letting the movement grind itself to death from lack of lubrication and then just replacing it.


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Re: Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

Post by PaulJS »

McDaWisel wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 3:13 pm I like having the original movement in a watch. That’s purely subjective of course, but then isn’t a subjective view of what you like about a watch what our hobby is all about?

I wouldn’t do it for all my watches but for the ones I like I would much rather keep it as original as I can, rather than letting the movement grind itself to death from lack of lubrication and then just replacing it.


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I can completely understand the desire to keep the watch original, similarly my wife does not have her DJ returned to 'as new' because she says the wear is what makes it 'her watch'.

However, when you send a CW back for servicing /repair how would you know if they just swapped out the auto movement for the sake of expediency?

Since they don't tell you what exactly they have done they could simply have a revolving movement policy where they whip them out and put in a new or recon one in its place.

Given the tales recounted on here of watches coming back with the wrong bracelets and even the wrong watches being returned, how much confidence would you have that, once the movement is out of your watch, there is a robust process in place to track it and marry it up later?

I am not saying this is even necessarily a big issue for some people, but for others......

Cheers,

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Re: Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

Post by Bahnstormer_vRS »

@PaulJS - You know what has been done Paul, because on a service / repair (non-Warranty), CW give you a report and check list of what has been done.

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Re: Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

Post by PaulJS »

Bahnstormer_vRS wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2019 10:13 am @PaulJS - You know what has been done Paul, because on a service / repair (non-Warranty), CW give you a report and check list of what has been done.

Guy

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Fair enough, in that case I stand corrected - I thought there were reports on here of people not being able to get the details of what had been done to their watches. Presumably that was in relation to warranty work?

If so it seems an odd policy to provide details of the work carried out for one and not the other.

Cheers,

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Re: Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

Post by mvlow »

PaulJS wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2019 2:30 pm
Bahnstormer_vRS wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2019 10:13 am @PaulJS - You know what has been done Paul, because on a service / repair (non-Warranty), CW give you a report and check list of what has been done.

Guy

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Fair enough, in that case I stand corrected - I thought there were reports on here of people not being able to get the details of what had been done to their watches. Presumably that was in relation to warranty work?

If so it seems an odd policy to provide details of the work carried out for one and not the other.

Cheers,

Paul

Paul, to confirm they do send you information on what was done. This is what I received with my completed warranty repair earlier this year.

IMG_3249.jpg
IMG_3250.jpg
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Re: Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

Post by what-time-is-it »

I think like most things CW - it's inconsistent and what you receive back depends on which technician has done the work and whether they remember or choose to enclose the paperwork. Happy to be proven wrong, but have read many tales of fixes without any additional info.
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Re: Service cost and what is involved in a CW service

Post by PaulJS »

what-time-is-it wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2019 2:53 pm I think like most things CW - it's inconsistent and what you receive back depends on which technician has done the work and whether they remember or choose to enclose the paperwork. Happy to be proven wrong, but have read many tales of fixes without any additional info.
This seems to sum it up - I am sure that I too have read of no info being provided or available - but clearly, as the evidence shows, it does happen.

Cheers,

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