Taking An Omega Speedmaster Professional For Omega Authorized Service

July 06, 2015

The problem of getting a watch serviced Cwhen to do it, whether to do it, and whether its worth it Cis something many of us prefer to avoid for as long as possible, and for several fairly transparent reasons.?First of all, it can be expensive Canywhere from the cost of a decent dinner and drinks for two in Manhattan, to something approaching the price of a fairly decent car, depending on the watch, the maker of the watch, whos doing the watchmaking, and how much needs to be done to get the watch working again. ?Secondly, it takes a while. ?We all know that as a general rule, good work and fast work dont go hand in hand, but it can come as a nasty shock to hear that it is going to be several weeks to several months, to (in extreme cases, where a very complicated and/or vintage watch is going under the knife) a year or more. And thirdly, it can be risky Crisky in all sorts of ways. ?If you take an old watch in for factory authorized service and you want it left as original as possible, you may be in for a tussle. ?As a rule, watch manufacturers, and their after-sales service departments, do not consider themselves in the restoration and preservation business. ?Their task as they see it (often) is to present their clients with, as much as possible, an essentially new watch, with the most recent technical upgrades and updates. ?Under such circumstances the insistence on the part of a customer that, for example, the dial and hands remain untouched can seem nothing short of bizarre Cif you want, the thinking goes, a properly functioning watch why in the world would you want to keep some ancient dial, with its ability to luminesce long gone, instead of getting a nice, shiny fresh one that glows brightly in the dark as any self-respecting dial should? ?This means that, in addition to cleaning and renewal of oils, very often parts are simply replaced --dials, hands, mainsprings, crown, stem, gaskets are all generally candidates for replacement with new ones, and it's not unheard of, in the case of larger companies, for entire movements to sometimes be swapped out for upgraded versions.And on the clients side, of course, it can be infuriating to hear that an after-sales service department insists on changing parts when to do so may utterly destroy the value, to a collector, of a vintage watch. ?Add to this the issues of cost and time mentioned above, and what you have is a sort of perfect storm Ca failsafe, reliable, works-every-time recipe for mutual acrimony and discontent. ?Nonetheless, it's worth finding out --even from a sample size of one --what it's like, so here's a quick look at one person's experience (mine) with one watch. The watch in question was one thats pretty special to me; an Omega Speedmaster, which was the first good watch I ever bought, as a sort of gift to myself after grad school. ?Its not an especially exotic model Ca fairly standard Professional, with an 861 movement, that left the factory sometime in late 1985Cbut Im pretty attached to it. ?It was long overdue for service, having last been cleaned and oiled in 2005; at that time it had been serviced by a (very good) independent watchmaker. ?This time, however, I decided to take it to Omegas after-sales service center at the New York Omega boutique, on Fifth Avenue.Right from the outset I was treated extremely politely and the folks at the service center could not have been more accommodating (for obvious reasons it was an incognito visit.) ?In fact, just from an interpersonal interaction standpoint the whole thing was one of the nicest, most consistently white-glove customer service experiences Ive ever had, which correlates with anecdotal reports I have heard from friends whove had work done there as well. ?I dropped off the watch (not without some anxiety) and went home to wait for the estimate. The first thing that happens is that a watchmaker at the boutique takes a look at your watch and sends you an itemized list of everything thats wrong with it. ?Mine, after a decade of steady and sometimes hard use, had accumulated enough to form quite a dispiriting narrative Cso much so that I almost felt that, after enumerating all the nicks, bumps, scratches, scrapes, dried/absent oil, grime, and what have you, the watchmaker wanted to scrawl, YOU MONSTER, at the bottom of the estimate (about which more in a minute.) Shamed into taking action, I told the service center to go ahead.At this point, the only hiccup occurred; I asked the service center to please leave the dial original (not because I particularly care about collectibility CIm not planning on selling this watch, ever) but because I just liked the look of the tritium dial markers. ?I got the impression they were a bit uncomfortable with this, but after some back and forth the service center agreed to my request. ?(As an aside, as it turns out Caccording to Sources Inside The Industry I consulted Cthat you actually do have to treat trititum dials as a radiation hazard Cexactly what you have to do varies somewhat from state to state but employee training in safe handling techniques Ceven for the low levels of alpha radiation emitted by tritium Cis de rigeur in NY State; there are certain disposal procedures to be followed, etc cetera and so forth.) Originally, the service center wanted to send the watch back to Bienne as well, and the original time estimate would have had it not back in the USA until early September (this for a watch dropped off in mid April) which was an unpleasant shock as well. ?However the estimate was revised downward to four weeks once it was clarified that the watch didn't need to go overseas. The entire process took about eight weeks Cthe watch went in for service in mid-April and came back mid-June. ?That felt like quite a wait Chell, it was quite a wait --although such intervals are not unusual, even for relatively simple movements like the caliber 1861.?Now, the total cost for the service was pretty steep: just a bit less than $800. ?As luxury goods go, thats not an incredible amount of money, but it is a significant fraction of the actual cost of a new watch (if you round up the cost of a new Moonwatch to five thousand bucks, its actually about a sixth of the cost of one new.) ?If you want to be philosophical about it (and you dont have much choice Cunless you want to go to an independent watchmaker) you can look at it this way: if you stick to a five year service interval, that works out to $160 a year, or a little over thirteen dollars per month, or a little over forty cents a day. ?We routinely behave profligately with much larger sums than that and think nothing of it. ?And, bear in mind, what you get back is Cif everything goes right Can essentially brand new watch; from Omega that means fresh gaskets, worn parts replaced (including stem, crown if need be, new mainspring, etc.) and they actually give you the parts they replaced (at least, the cosmetically important ones.) ?Of course you can go to an independent watchmaker and there are some wonderful craftsmen out there who continue to do amazing work in the face of an increasingly adversarial professional environment. ?If youre looking for a good one, for the first time, your best bet is to ask around a lot, and make sure you get multiple recommendations from folks you really trust, because there are unfortunately some hacks out there too who will maltreat your watch, take your money, and leave the subsequent problems for someone else to deal with (this is true, by the way, of brand authorized after-sales service; there are no guarantees.) Did I feel like it was worth it? ?Well, the watch is in beautiful shape --it wasn't just fully cleaned and put back in factory-fresh working order, it was also freshened up cosmetically --the case and bracelet were detailed (I never thought an 1171 bracelet could look so good.) ?Given the level of care the watch got, and the unfailingly great experience I had with the service center staff, I can say that I do feel like it was worth it (after all it's only once every five or six years) --but just barely. ?If it had taken too much longer, or if there had been any issues with the watch after I'd gotten it back, I'd have started to feel ill-used, and I'm reasonably knowledgeable about what goes into servicing a watch; for a customer who isn't, the risk of dissatisfaction's even greater.The real issue for the brands in general is that the long wait and high cost create certain expectations, and the slightest issue can produce disproportionate disappointment. ?And thats the long term problem Cclient expectations have to be managed so that customers for luxury watches dont find themselves so irritated at costs and delays they dont understand, that they decide watches are for the birds.?On the other hand, if you have a great experience, and you get back a watch thats been well-treated and you feel well-treated too, after-sales service has the potential to be the best PR a brand ever had.