fraggle42

I don't know Archie, I've never been to a Canal street place that sells reps, I'm just going by what Angus says. It would be interesting to find out who buys reps. I've no doubt a lot are sold to scum who try and rip people off, nothing much the dealers can do to prevent that apart from shut up shop completely. Also what is the capacity of a factory? 200 a month per factory or so? 2000?

I don't think anyone minds the nit-picker comments so long as they are factual and not rude. I've no doubt these people have better eyes than me and may own the gen to compare against. I think a lot of little things were picked up on and some were fixed. Whether the manufacturers would have picked up on these problems and fixed them themselves, who knows? Didn't Angus say that sales from these forums are about 4% of the total sales? So we don't really have the power to get everything fixed, and anything we do get fixed is a bonus!

Looks very nice mike! And that indicator between 4 and 5 has got to be a month? Says May in your pics and Oct in the other pics. I'd like a month better than a day anyway My BTR I had to get 3 links for before it would fit, will have a look and see if I have any spare.

Must be a cheap rep, the minute totalizer is waaaayyyy off the 12 o'clock mark and the rest of the chrono hands are reset

There are two things that we can do:- As you say, the more expensive they get, the higher quality and better QC we should expect. OR we can simply not buy them, letting the dealers know we prefer cheaper but more flawed watches. I think that at the moment we have a good range, Watch International are good at getting hold of nice, cheap watches that aren't copied down to the 'N'th detail. They won't satisfy the super rep lovers but they will keep a lot of others happy, and they can sometimes be a good source of parts or a good base for a franken. And then we have the super reps, and there's enough people buying them and enough reviews to help us know if it's really a good rep or a bucket of flaws.

I don't think you've quite got the gist of what Angus' letter was about. He happily accepts proper, constructive criticism. He says he will not put up anymore with the mindless moaning and/or aggressive posts. And that is quite true, there's far, far too many people just saying "this is a pile of cra@, is a wan... for selling it!" Or similar mindless, factless, useless but highly insulting drivel. (About any watch or product, and any dealer or M2M sales) If I was the dealer I would take every person who said someone like that and put them all on a blacklist, circulated round all the dealers and the board admins. They (the buyers) have no interest in trying to improve the product, or work amicably towards a resolution, or provide any useful info for other prospective buyers. The one good thing to come out of that is the people who take notice of stupid comments like that are the people likely to post more, similar comments, so if it puts people like that off from buying from the dealer, I don't think they'll shed a tear I'm all for thought out free speech, but slander and bullying? Get rid of it.

Happy to say these have raised $200. Sorting out the posting and collecting this weekend! Thanks for everyone who made a bid for any of the watches and the winners for their generosity.

If you don't believe there are that many cranky ar**h*les, read the Tudor BB thread. Absolutely minute flaws, complaints about the lume colours that I had to use photo software to sample the colours and create blocks of them side by side to see the tiny difference, just stupid nit picking for the price of the watch. Happily the number of real flaws (dead / dyimg movements, hands come loose, markers come loose) are minimal, I think I've heard maybe 7 out of 400 delivered from the pre-release orders. Dunno how that compares to other mark 1 fresh releases, but it doesn't seem too bad to me.

Sorry to hear that she's an x wife. Hope you don't want to shoot the watch now!

I would love to see and handle a gen, from the photos the rep is so close as to make the gen not worth it, but I want to see for myself if the gen has that unidentifiable 'X' factor that makes everything just click together and the whole look and feel just perfect? Maybe I'm wishing for something that isn't there, I think I have over hyped the watch to myself (and that's before I even heard about the rep being made)

Sigfreid, I think some photo comparisons would be appreciated by the members! Someone has just posted their QC pics of a very recent order and it looks like the new corrected batch of pearls are now being fitted, which is good news. Hopefully a new replacement pearl will be posted to all those who placed a pre-order so we may change it if we desire.

In the UK there are quite a lot of WU counters in shops where you can go and make payments. These are usually in corner shops that sell everything in a tiny shop To me WU has a stigma that not many people used it until the Nigerian scammers came along and due to that a lot of people learned about its existence but in a bad way, it was connected with scammers and always set alarm bells ringing if you saw anyone requesting payment with it. Now I've used it a couple of times for watches (to TC and a TD) I don't mind, and I suspect I'll be using it tomorrow to pay a supplier in china through Alibaba for a few k. It's online, the charges are a bit higher, and I believe the person you are paying the money to has to go to a physical shop with their ID to collect the money, and I believe there's no way of getting a refund if the supplier is a scammer. But what else is there? International bank to bank payments are a total pain in the a... Bit coin is a joke IMO.

Thank you for letting me turn something I was thinking of breaking for parts into a watch I love Low cost mod but a helluva change in looks.

Thanks Martin! :thumbsup:

Hehe, pics in the Tag Heuer section showing off the huge difference the new crystal (thanks Ssteeel!) and sunnydale AR have made. AJ, I aspire to your standard of modding and finishing!

Huge thanks to SSteel who gave me a replacement crystal for my Day Date, and many thanks to SunnyDale who got a batch of crystals AR'd amongst which were two of mine. Here are some pictures comparing before and after (the before crystal is my old one - the problem with it was flaws within the crystal hence I have tried to take pics at a good angle that definitely show reflections and so show the difference in AR)

Thanks I know it is a tiny thing compared to the guys in here that service movements, etc, but it made me happy! And it's still working this morning lol

I think it's a relatively new problem (in general) that has arisen at the same time that online shopping has become popular. People can sit on their armchair and browse a store that is physically the other side of the world, and with a few clicks, choose, order and pay for stuff. They have to realise if goods have travelled 2000 miles to their front door, if there's a problem the goods have to travel the 2000 miles back to the store to be sorted out. If I bought a loaf of bread from the corner shop and it was mouldy I wouldn't phone up the credit card company and get them to get my money back, I'd go round to the shop and exchange it. What would be the point in solving it any other way? PayPal really is bad news, it lets the customer ignore their responsibilities and common decency and just screw the dealers over. It completely relies on every single buyer and seller being honest and decent, and cannot cope fairly with anything else.

It always confuses me how some people can be totally inconsistent in their communications. I mean some who is just doing it as a hobby, you can understand. They have desire for the watches, so they will enjoy talking, handling, and selling the latest things, especially if they have had a large input into the making of it, and they won't be that interested in old items, been there, done that. Nothing wrong with that at all if it is just a hobby, but if you're running a business? Not so good doing it the same as a hobby guy. I'm guessing that PT really needs a full time sales person to deal will all orders efficiently and then the man himself will I guess be a lot happier and can pursue the hobby side and be as energetic about new watches as much as he wants. And the full time sales person cannot be like the usual kind of staff we encounter, where they use boiler plate replies and don't have much knowledge or any power to sort things out. Thanks for the heads up on Shinewatch, will keep an eye on their sub forum!

It competely will not work in the UK. If I do a direct bank transfer and type the account number wrong I am completely at the mercy of the receiver to give me my money back. I always get the person I'm paying to send me an email and then cut and paste the details into the online banking screen - if it's wrong it's their fault and they still owe me the goods. I think I've only done b2b transfer to companies about 4 times in my life. DirectDebit is the only thing that allows for clawback in the UK for transfers from a bank account.

Go on then, tell us which is you ultimate Rolex toolwatch?

Ok, I only dismantled it to take the crystal out to send off to Sunnydale for new AR, but having got the crystal back today I thought I'd put it back together. Keyless works have been a bane for my very short and inexperienced watchsmithery life, so pulling the crown on this damn nice and not cheap 7750 Tag Heuer Carrera did make me damn nervous, and I haven't been looking forward to putting it back together. But it's all gone swimmingly! Even the movement holder tabs and their screws, hiding right down at the bottom of slots in the movement ring, straight in. Keyless works, after aligning it up properly, no problem. The day didn't want to change from the crown until i flicked it over one day by winding the hands and then it was fine. I feel like framing this watch and putting it on the wall It'll never go this smoothly again! Woohoo! I'll try to do the same with the 42mm PO tomorrow - so expect lots of swearing and cursing as the whole movement explodes all over the garage

Thank you for allowing it Nanuq! A chance for those who didn't get to take part in the raffle to contribute and have a go at winning a gen beater! They may not cost much but they've lasted a year without missing a beat for me.

Mods here don't interfere with private sales. They will help with a purchase from a TD here.

Do NOT open a PP dispute. Get in contact with the mods. They will try to mediate and tell you what is the best course of action.