My first DSN purchase, from start to finish...

[Drulee]

On RG, I've been posting about my first purchase from Davidsen himself. I was introduced to his watches with a DSN 240 I bought from a member of another board, then had further dealings with him when I bought and upgraded a bezel for the 240 and some case backs. Since I was fairly happy with his products so far, besides having the rotor on the 240 come apart (but the 240 had been through a couple of hands so I cannot blame DSN for that), I had decided to order a couple of watches directly from him. What follows is my experience, so far, with these purchases. I have been keeping a thread going on RG, but since I'm trying to contribute more to RWG, I thought I'd mirror my postings here as well, since it deals with Panerai reps.

As I had acquired a PAM 089, of the "Ultimate" variety, from another member, and ended up doing some work on it to bring it back to life, I became rather attached to this GMT PAM. Then one day I was looking through DSN's PhotoBucket and came across his fir 089 offering, the blue dialed one. Not accurate to the gen, but a very nice looking watch. After finding out from him that there where no more blue dialed 089s in stock and there where no plans to get them again. I asked about what other blue dialed models where still being sold. After being told about the "Firenze" series, I became quite attached to the 228, as I was a GMT phase in my life After getting photos of his current updated version of the 228 from him, and being told that was what I'd get, I decided to order one. Since I had just given up assembling an 088 myself, but still really like the model, I decided to order one of these at the same time.

Well on a monday afternoon, I wandered into a WesternUnion and wired Davidsen $700 CDN for the watches and a titanium bezel. It took him a couple of days, but he finally had the money collected. On the Friday of that same week he sent me pictures of the 088 that would be sent to me and confirmed that what I'd seen in the latest photos was what I was getting. The weekend passed, and on Monday (Tuesday HK time) I received an email with my tracking number. I was set to follow the package as it went from Hong Kong to Canada customs, to my front door.

Two days later, the watches had arrived in Canada, and was being reviewed by customs. The next day it had been released for processing to Canada Post.

Then the post that started it off:

Alright the postman arrived today carrying some packages

In addition to some straps (gotta stop ordering these) and the 6497 parts I needed to continue with my "movement destroying" phase, the DSN 228 GMT and DSN 088 GMT have arrived. The inner package hadn't even been opened by customs and there was no duty to pay

As I'm busy with some stuff I need to get out of the way on the computer, I'm just going to post pics of the package and its unwrapping for the moment - as I know that I'll be accused of just imagining the delivery, if I don't.

So here is the typical EMS packaging (note the water stains, as it's pouring out again in Toronto):

Here are DSN's notorious brown paper wrapped boxes:

Argh, what's this damage to the package, during transit?

Nope its just creased, watch head is at the other end anyway.

Well there's one watch head (228 on the label) and a standard DSN strap and buckle:

Alright, next box. Another head (088 on the label) and two straps, both standard rep straps - but at least I've got two more 24mm buckles but no deployant, like he has pictured :

What's this, this ones ticking. Wait a second, so is the other one. And as I got to put the watch head back on the table, it starts vibrating in my hand. It looks like whatever movement the package encountered during transit has kept them wound. Plus, this is the first time I haven't had to give the watch a solid tap, to get it going. Nice.

Well, I don't have time to take more pictures right now. But, naturally, I've got to see what they look like, out of the plastic.

I unwrap the 228 first, and really like its feel and look. Looking closer at the dial, I am a bit disappointed, as it seems to be more purple than blue - but given the lousy day outside, it may just be the light and the dial colour does change at every angle - neat.

Now onto the 088. I unwrap it, expecting to be greeted by those notorious lime green marking and numbers. WELL WHAT DO YA KNOW, they're not really greenish, more of an off white - that can't be right can it. I take a closer look and move the head closer to the halogen lamp I'm using for lighting, yup definitely more off-white than green in colour. Needless to say this came as a pleasant surprise. A quick look at the hour hand, reveals that it still is too large. However, the date fonts are huge compared to my other reps.

Well that's all the time I have now. So back in the plastic they go. And I will put aside some time in the near future to take as many pictures as possible, while trying to keep them all in focus.

More to come....

Then an update:

Alright, I thought I'd be able to hold off taking a closer look at the watches until much later tonight. But I caved in a couple of hours ago, and re-opened the packages, and took out the watch heads.

First off, I went over the 088 again, looking much closer at the dial. Well, comparing the lumed areas with the untouched (white) GMT numbers around the edge of the dial, they do have a bit of a lime green tint to them. But nothing as strong or green as I was expecting. I could definitely live with it, and did not feel compelled to send it off to Vac.

Next, I decided to set the correct time, date and put the GMT hand on a 24hr cycle reflecting local time. While doing this I noticed that the crown was sitting a little high, when I pulled it up it came into direct contact with the underside of the CG. Great, I thought, I'm not going to be able to set the thing. As it happens, it was the right height to move the hour and minute hands, but would scrape along the CG as I turned it. After setting everything to the exact second (using my "atomic clock synced" computer clock), I pushed the crown down and closed the CG lever - no problems there. I decided that, although not the best QC, I could live with that too. The second hand continued ticking away.

I then wound the watch slowly fifteen times just to add to its PR; I followed this with a couple minutes of agitating the case, listening to the rotor turn, and feeling the case vibrate. That should have wound it up enough for the next few hours, at least.

Back to the dial. I examined the silver sub-dial, cyclops and date window a bit more. I concluded that I definitely prefer this dial (even with its inaccuracies), that silver sub-dial really completes the package The cyclops looks fine to me, but I don't know what problems to look for anyway. The date font seems much thicker than my 240 and completely fills the square opening. It is a bit sunken, but you really have to look under the cyclops and very closely to tell.

Alright, on to the 228. What really hits me again, is the purple colour of the dial. After going through the same time setting routine as the 088. I look at the dial with different light sources, different angles and even varying distances. It is definitely PURPLE. I go back to Davidsen's PhotoBucket and bring up the pictures on his site, and bring up the ones he sent me. Definitely not purple in colour, they are all blue in the pics. I look closer and realize that the sub-dial, is indeed blue, like the pictures. I am not happy about this at all. And I put away the 228, feeling disgusted.

Overall the CG on both seem to be passable, as good as, if not better than their "Ultimate" counter parts. But I could be wrong, as I don't go into an in-depth comparison because.... I look over at the other watch and realize MY 088's TIME HAS NOT ADVANCED SINCE BEING SET.

Have I not pushed the crown back in far enough? No that's not it, it is in as far as it will go. Perhaps it did not wind up enough. I set everything again and shake the watch some more. The second hand happily navigates the sub-dial, so I put it down and start to check the lume.

The hands on both watches have a very strong lume, while the dials are markings and numbers are much weaker. Both watches' lume charge up fairly quickly and seem to last a while. But the "12" and "6" lume, on the 088, has been applied unevenly, which has resulted in a blochy appearance when you look closely at them. From a distance it isn't too noticeable. I can live with this as well, and wouldn't bother complaining about it.

However, after checkin the 228's dial colour again, and using the computer a bit more, I remember the 088. After picking it up, I get a sinking feeling in my gut. The time has not changed at all since I last set it. Anger starts to grow within me.

I try one more time to set it, shake it, and let it sit for an hour this time. NO F'N CHANGE. The time has not advanced at all. How can this be? I take a second look at it, and what's this, the seconds hand is chugging along as it should. Alright, so it's not a dead movement. Wait a moment, the GMT hand is showing the correct hour (in 24hr format). So DSN's quality control (or lack of) did not verify that the hour and minute hands where seated properly? Or, more likely, has one of the cogs screwed up? I know that the GMT movements have been prone to break down in the past, to allow one to be sent off without even verify it works. Come on.

As it stands, I am in very bad mood. I am not going to spend any time right now taking pictures, so please don't request any until tomorrow. I have sent a polite email to Davdid San explaining the problems. And I await his reply.

Please do not post any responses, telling me that "he will take care of it", "this will happen, given all the watches that get shipped out in a week", "don't worry, just give him some time to get back to you" or "mistakes happen". I have seen these excuses for him (and other dealers) posted way too many times lately. I chose to ignore the nay sayers, my fault entirely. As it stands, from reading the multitude of complaints about him recently, if you order a watch from him it will be a "crap shoot". You should be fully prepared to spend more money on shipping costs, and more time getting what you thought you had ordered in the first place.

I realize that there are long time members who claim to have ordered dozens of watches from him with no problems whatsoever. Well all I can say, seeing the many who have posted their opposite experiences, you are either extremely lucky, are a preferred customer (but I doubt this), or the majority of your orders took place more than a month or two ago.

If I have offended anyone, I apologize, I did not intend to. Right now I am in an extremely agitated mood and I'm glad I'm not in a public place. It has been a long time since someone has been able to put me in this state. I'm off to meditate for a while

As a footnote, I do expect Davidsen to offer some sort of solution, but a few of the noted problems where just plain avoidable. Take the purple dial as an example. We had been communicating steadily about watches with blue dials, I had started by asking if he still had the "blue dialed" 089, and in subsequent emails, he had remarked "yes this watch has blue dial" referring to the 228. Even the pictures of the "latest improvements" that he sent, showed a blue dial.

Discussing this is just making me angry again, as there are other points I had made....

Later..

Shortly followed by this update:

Well now I have mixed feelings. Although, I'm still angry about the situation. It took Davidsen less than an hour and a half to respond. This confirms that he must have a daily ritual of reading his emails mid mornings, during the week. So if you want a reply by the next day, make sure send your email to him before 9am Hong Kong time.

Now back to his proposed solutions. He has offered to send a full refund for the 228, as he no longer carries the blue dial - now he tells me And would like me to ship back the 088, so he can replace it. I would expect nothing less, but was impressed with the quick response, and the offer of refunding my money - never heard of him doing this before.

I'm so confused.

And followed with:

Well it looks like I'm going to have to go through the "return all the watches he sent to get them replaced" phase of the Davidsen buying cycle. Damn, I thought I was special and that I'd be among those so very lucky few who actually got a fully functioning watch that was exactly what they had ordered, and only required a few "mods" on their part to make it acceptable.

Well it wasn't to be, it turns out I'm just like the average customer who should alway factor in the cost of having to do a couple of returns, and add extra time to when you thought you would be able to actually use the watch.

But since I'm an addict now, when I had that 088 in my sweaty palms, I even thought to myself: "Do I really need to know the correct time?" So, I better get used to this routine, as I'm sure I'll be going through it quite a few times in the future.

But seriously, what is it with the Chinese and "shiny purple" things.

P.S. As I'm not going to be able to get to the post office until Monday, I'm going to try and take as many pictures, of as many angles as possible of these watches. If the dial colour on the 228 had been what it used to be, and the movement worked on the 088, I would have had absolutely no regret about getting these watches from DSN.

DAMN, I just looked over at the 088 and its been keeping the correct time for the past seven hours - what a tease.

After reading some members' comments, I then added:

I intend to email him asking about perhaps swapping movements and sending back the 228 with the broken movement from the 088. But before I proceed I need to make sure of two things. First that he is agreeable, as I do not want to get stuck with the 228 - have you had success just getting parts from him to resolve any problem? Next, I need someone local in Toronto who can do this, because if I'm going to have to pay for shipping anyway (on top of whatever I get charged for the swapping) why not just ship it back to DSN?

You mention modding the crown/CG. Are you referring to the scraping issue? How could this be modded? And if I did go the swapping route, could that possibly take care of the problem.

Onto the dial colour, now. You may have been "surprised", but I was shocked and [censored] off. I had sent him numerous emails talk about what watches had that blue dial colour, and finally decided on the 228. The pictures that I requested from him to make my final decision (the same ones he said where of what his 228 looks like now - that I posted above), show the blue dial. What I got was a "god awful" shiny purple dial, with a blue sub-dial just to tease me. I'll be putting pics of it up before I return the watch.

When I pointed out the different dial colour to him, he replied "228 tht is the only dial i have.if you do not accpet the dial color i hav eto send you reudn". I don't have to tell you, I DO NOT ACCEPT.

Great, I'm angry again.

Then responding to a suggestion to get the 088 working:

I'll give it a try today, but I figure if it's acting like this now, it is only a sign of worse things to come.

What I'd like to do is swap the movements between the 228 and 088, as the one in the 228 has been going strong. But I'm not going to do it with getting the ok from DSN, as I don't want to get stuck with that purple dial.

Then after taking some time to think about my next course of action:

I thought I should give any watchers of this thread an update on what's going on.

First of all, for all those who bring up his lack of full comprehension of the English language, I don't think this is an acceptable excuse for him anymore. I composed an email detailing what was wrong and some suggested solutions (saving us both time and money) for the problem. Then, with the help of member's username (who spent over an hour doing this for me), I had the letter translated into Chinese and sent it to him.

A few hours later, I received a reply from him that he does not accept emails written in Chinese and will on communicate in English. So be it, English he gets and no leeway for perhaps not understanding my message. Within one minute (around 11am HK time) I sent another email (with very simple wording) telling him what I wanted to do. So far nothing back from him (7pm).

Also, he has only supplied a PO Box for returning items to him. I have found out that you cannot send registered mail to post office boxes, so there is no way for you to prove that he has received them.

I am weighing my options right now, and leaning towards just dealing with it locally - perhaps sending him the dead movement and shiny purple dial For now though the watch backs remain unopened as I do not want him to have any reason not to accept the returns if I decide to do so.

One final note, the money I've paid him (around $700 CDN with fees) means absolutely nothing to me, so I'm not concerned at all about having him hold any refund over my head. However, a business dealing, whether with someone in Toronto or somebody on the other side of the World, means everything to me and I take it personally when the other party is unreasonable when resolving problems that may arise. I am not saying that Davidsen has been unreasonable in any way yet, I just want members here to know that I will post everything regarding the resolution of this problem, that seems so many others of you are experiencing, but may not want to post about, in the fear that you'll lose your money and have nothing to show for it.

I still have to take pictures of what I received from him, as I've been dealing with a few things the past week which are a bit more important to me . By the way, I really do like the 088 and the titanium bezel that I got from him is even better than the first replacement bezels.

I then re-hashed one of my options:

I was just going to have the watch smith take the broken movement out, take the working movement out, remove the "shiny purple dial" from the working movement and put it into the 088. I'd then just send the dial and movement to DSN.

This way, I would at least have a working 088. Hopefully, he'd accept the separate dial, hands and movement and just give me a discount on my next "crap shoot". If not, lesson learned and no more business. Plus, as I have a regular DSN A7750 (no GMT), I'd just wait for one of his dials to show up for sale and stick it on the A7750 and put that in the 228 case, which I really like, nice back too.

And I'm sure, if I really have to have one of his watches (although there are only a couple more I'm interested in) and he turns out to be very uncooperative, I could always piggy back on another Canadian member's order (giving them the discount) and not have to worry about him again.

Finally, I decide to put some pics up showing that awful "shiny purple" dial:

I completely expected to have some CG and crown irregularities, that I would have to deal with. And I expected that there may be a bum movement upon arrival. It was really the dial (not that I didn't mention the colour ) that set me off. What makes these guys think they can send you something different from what you ordered in the first place, then expect you to pay extra to rectify the problem?

I had to take some quick pics (lousy as they may be) to show you the shiny #%^@*& dial, that DSN now puts on his 228 GMT. Don't worry, I'll take more improved pictures soon. By the way, that very nice dark blue strap, which would have gone great with the original 228's dial, is a custom one made by BlueRadish (no, I'm not getting compensated for the cheap plug ).

Also, I forgot to give the watch a wipe down before shooting, had to do it quickly as the battery was dying, so please excuse the specs of dust that show up.

You'll have to excuse the blurry ones, but I thought that they really showed "that colour" that I hate.

Latest update:

Well I've been contacted by a member who has worked with DSN watches and is local to me, and who I had bought a movement from, so I've met him. He says he can do the movement switch and dial removal without any foreseeable problems. So I will probably take this route. Of course I'm still mulling it over, and still haven't opened up the watches, as I don't want to void the DSN warranty.

I'll keep this thread updated and post some better pics of both watches, once I take them.

Thanks for bearing with me.

[PaulVanDyk]

that "blue" dial is hideous for sure

how about some pics of the 088?

[Drulee]

that "blue" dial is hideous for sure

how about some pics of the 088?

How dare you even refer to it as "blue', once and for all it is a "shiny purple" dial. I wanted to get the pics of the latest 228 dial posted, to warn members before they went through the same thing I did - so I made time to take a few pics of it. I was going to take the pics today, but had dead batteries and didn't have time to search for the extras. They will be appearing soon, though. Must say that I really like the looks of the DSN088, too bad it doesn't work just now.

Latest update: I'm waiting to hear back from the local "watch guy", with his schedule. In the mean time, being the glutton for punishment that I am, it looks like I'm going to go ahead and roll the dice again. DSN hasn't been ignoring me at all, so I've been getting info on another watch of his that I really like and that nobody else has. Will probably order it in the next couple of days

[cc]

For a second, I thought you were reviewing a gen watch you purchased...

I've always needed to tinker with my watches after receiving them. Tightening screws, realigning parts, disassembling to remove dust, etc. There is NO real "quality control" from any of our dealers, even DSN. I've purchased over 10 watches from him a couple years ago without any major issues but were all manual winds.

I would say over 75% of reps I have purchased (over 70) have been duds or have had some issues. After all, you are buying a replica watch.

[Lumpy1186]

The dial is sort of close to blue ... but close only counts for lawn bowls and hand grenades.

I think most of us here have had experienced the gut wrenching disappointment of crooked crystals, smudged dials and DOA's.

The transplant sounds like a good idea, keep us posted and post some pics of the 88 when you get a chance.

Good luck and thanks for sharing an interesting story....

Lumpy.

[Noel Fleischer]

sorry to hear about the problems.i bought 1 DSN- 089 and had no problems.

i will agree that except for BK; who only sells Rolex; there is hardly any QC

from the dealers here. i've about finished my collection (at least 50 reps and maybe 18 gens)

and i too have become frustrated by the issue of qc especially with the movts.many of the reps have had to be fixxed

sometimes costing almost as much as the watches themselves. it has become almost impossible to find a gen swiss eta

movement, even when you pay extra for it- most of the dealers lie about that too.i usually factor $150 0r so into every rep for future repairs. then its not to aggravating.

[ghost]

BK is the ONLY ONLY true QC-er! I wish i could buy ALL my reps from him! How bout it BK? Start doing the PAMS too! ;P

[Drulee]

For a second, I thought you were reviewing a gen watch you purchased...

I've always needed to tinker with my watches after receiving them. Tightening screws, realigning parts, disassembling to remove dust, etc. There is NO real "quality control" from any of our dealers, even DSN. I've purchased over 10 watches from him a couple years ago without any major issues but were all manual winds.

I would say over 75% of reps I have purchased (over 70) have been duds or have had some issues. After all, you are buying a replica watch.

I guess you skipped over a lot of my comments , I stated that I was not expecting perfection in any way, and was fully aware of what to expect when buying a rep. My main gripe was the ugly shiny purple dial, which just screams rep and cheap junk (IMHO).

The dial is sort of close to blue ... but close only counts for lawn bowls and hand grenades.

I think you're being thrown off by the blue sub-dial, believe me when I say that dial is not close to blue at all.

[Jawo]

I have had no luck with Davidson. I had a bad experience once and will not trust to go back to him again. He sold me a fiddy that had brutal scratches on the bridges. It turned out that he resold a watch that had been previously returned by another member. Nasty.

[Drulee]

Alright enough chit chat, let's get to some pictures Here you go (WARNING: 40 pictures)

[Drulee]

Two weeks later, and here is what has happened since my last post:

Well I had been battling with the decision of returning the purple dialed 228 or harvesting all the parts.I am getting a new GMT dial soon, that I think would go great in the 228 case, so I have decided not to return the 228, especially since the A7750 hacked GMT movement in it has been keeping great time and is showing no signs of having any problems.

Since this decision was made, I've been in contact with DSN and arranged for my next purchase of a 165 and some parts. He's responded quite quickly to my questions, and has actually expanded his "ok/pls study/advise" a bit

Because of my problems with my order, covered in great detail above, he has also given me a nice discount on this order

Overall, I can say I am currently satisfied with the final outcome, as I have not had to return any watches, have a functioning DSN 088 (with some minor glitches that aren't DSN related), will have a "fanatasy" PAM 228 GMT that I think I will actually prefer to the original glossy blue dialed offering, will soon have a DSN 165 (that hopefully doesn't evolve into another thread), will have a few improved DSN parts and a dial to upgrade my soon to come Hybrid 089 and create another hybrid, and will also have a "shiny purple" dial that I can use for target practice.

A nice ending to what, at first, seemed to be a disappointing transaction.

What have I learned from all this? What ever noob in this hobby eventually learns. When dealing with the Cartel (not personal experience, just members remarks) or David San, you should be fully prepared to have something go wrong with the transaction. Whether it is a dead or malfunctioning movement, wrong coloured dial, less than perfect CG or just a loose/missing screw, odds are something will come up. There is also the chance that if everything in the Universe is aligned correctly, every order you place from a dealer will arrive exactly as expected. I underline the "as expected" part, because before placing an order everyone should do a lot of research on the forum and set their expectations accordingly.

From the start, I've never expected (and neither should you) to receive a watch equivalent in quality to a genuine watch costing thousands of dollars. What you should basically expect to end up with, is a functioning watch that should resemble the pictures posted by the dealer, that with care and servicing will last a couple years and maybe more, depending no the movement and servicing done afterwards. Taking one of my purchases as an example, I've paid less then $300 to have a beautiful functioning replica of a Panerai 088 GMT that would normally have cost around $7,000 and that 98% of people wouldn't be able to tell from the real thing.

As far as dealing with David San, it may be frustrating at times, but in the end he is just as fair and reliable as any other of the popular Asian dealers in the "Trusted Dealers" area. He has a tendency to improve his offerings without notice, unfortunately occasionally he also "downgrades" them without warning. If you are not prepared to pay for shipping to return a unsatisfactory watch, once or twice, wait for that extra amount of time added, or have the watch taken care of locally, I would suggest you just don't buy a rep watch from the mentioned dealers or any other Asian dealer for that matter. If you want to buy from someone who actually performs quality control himself, but does not carry as large a selection as some of the Asian dealers, I would suggest Sead1999.

Could we be paying less and could there be better quality control? Probably, but for those of us living in North America (can't speak for the Europeans) these dealers seem to be the only options for the types of watches we're looking for. Until another dealer, with better connections to the rep factories and an interest in providing good customer relations, comes on the scene, this all we have. So, for now, we have to live with it. Hopefully, in the future, that will change.

If anything else regarding this transaction arises, I will update the thread. Otherwise, that's all folks....

[sssurfer]

Great write up, I've read it with emotions like a novel book.

Thanks for sharing your experience Drulee, I think you decided to the best.

[Drulee]

Great write up, I've read it with emotions like a novel book.

Thanks for sharing your experience Drulee, I think you decided to the best.

Thanks, I must say dealing with DSN, and I'm sure many other dealers, is like a good short story You get excited when making your order, then after receiving it your hopes can get dashed, then you rack your brain trying to figure out if you should return them or take a journey searching for someone to fix them locally, then after having them fixed you feel great wearing them, and finally you get an extra boost when DSN gives you a discount on your next foray into the rep world. Not for the faint of heart, or average consumer.