Discussions At Rwi - Re Banners And 5 Star Dealers

[fotoman]

i posted on this before cause i was confused. but i have been reading some more discussion with what is going on at RWI. I don't think anyone there could or nessecarily should give a rats ass about what i have to say cause i am not very active there.

but, here - i do participate. so i wanted to just put on the record my thought, for what it is worth.

1. i think it is important for the board to stay independant of the dealers. I think "ranking" dealers officially just doesn't accomplish anything. when i started this, you didn't have a dealers section. there was an offers section, but you had to search alot

2. now people get it on a siver platter - they don't need any additional headlines.

3. there is plenty of information out there for consumers to make their own decisions.

4. no dealer is perfect. i love josh, and trusty, - i do. never had a bad interaction with them. but, i have had some bad deals with other dealers - and other people on the board think they are the best thing since sliced bread. - to each their own - every dealer is different with different styles - those are personal decisions and criteria that i do not believe can be ranked on independant criteria (which is something you woud need for a star system)

5. i think this board has integrity. Did i jump on dev cause i thought he was overly harsh? yeah, but, we debated, got our points out, agreed to disagree and went on. - i did not dispute his right to state his opinion, just tried to convince him to take a different perspective.

6. Maybe there is no money changing hands now with dealers for ratings, but lets get real. money makes the world go round and maybe not today maybe not tommorow but someday soon, it will turn to money, or free watches or whatever. if you don't think so, you haven't had enough "real world" experience. this opinion is based on lots of experience of bribing politicians for a living. - Its amazing how people change over time

of course i am not knocking our admins or RWI's admins, i'm just saying that sooner or later, money comes in - maybe its just enough to keep the board going.

well i am happy to chuck in my 5 bucks a month to keep the forum independant.

this of course has not happened yet here, but i see it there, and who knows, people get ideas. - so, for whatever its worth, i wanted to go on record - and do it here, where i consider home.

-

to many long years of - our current system hurray

to end on a positive note - this is clearly the golden age of reps - it won't last forever. i am super happy - i am super poor and I LOVE RWG!!!!!!

[Dutchy]

Great post. I especially loved your 'positive' conclusion, lol....."super happy, super poor" hehehe

I think we all love RWG (and we all have a crush on Mr. Admin)

[Cucumber_Jones]

The reality is:

1. There is no money or contra involved.

2. RWI is Tim's board and he can do anything he wants.

3. Now I can stop answering who has the best sub.

Edited November 29, 2006 by Cucumber_Jones

[fotoman]

The reality is:

1. There is no money or contra involved.

2. RWI is Tim's board and he can do anything he wants.

3. Now I can stop answering who has the best sub.

i agree with all your points. I dind't post there - i posted here, where i feel some ownership as an active member and sponser.

well except 3 - my point was - the age old question is really who has the best sub FOR ME

is it the newbmariner? for the perfect sub?

that was always the prevailing theory right? Choose your dealer then you watch?

are you really willing to say that josh and trusty have the best sub?

[robertk]

I agree. totally terrible idea!!!

who determines?

are there 4 star dealers? 3 star? 2 star? 1 star????

[hambone]

I must say that I have to agree with Phoband. The forum should have the appearance of independence. I do think that both Josh and Andrew fully deserve the 5 star status given them at RWI however it does not feel quite right to have their banners on top as if they were official sponsers.

[fitmic]

Great post!

This board MUST stay "independent".

[KB]

Great post!

This board MUST stay "independent".

It will don't worry.

Ken

[jonthebhoy]

It will don't worry.

Ken

Amen to that.

JTB

[offshore]

Amen to that.

Offshore

[Admin]

I'm not going to comment on RWI and the reasons they do this, but RWG will not be endorsing any particular dealers, as this will most likely lead to suspicions on the reasons for doing this, no matter what your reasons are. Like the previous posters have said, there is no doubt that both Joshua and Andrew are great dealers, but the opinion of a dealere is all in the eye of the beholder. We all have our own personal opinion about who is the best dealer and this forum is here to provide information so that people can make an informed decision on who to buy a replica from, maybe even buy a replica and then decide who is the best dealer for them. What is a 5 star dealer to you might be a 2 or 3 star dealer to someone else.

And just for the record: At RWG we have a dealer section where every dealer pay to have his own section. But just because they pay a fee, does not mean that RWG endorse these dealers. The fee is there to fund the operation of RWG, like the RWG supporter fee. Since they pay a higher fee, they get their own section here, and they can do all their advertising there.

If a dealer starts to get a lot of bad feedback, the dealer will be removed. This was the case with puretime a while back ago. Puretime had some personal problems and could not keep up with his obligation to his customers. So he lost his dealer section here at RWG. Because of our policy of only allowing 12 watchdealers, he has been in line for a spot here ever since he came back and had all his problems sorted out and all his "old" customers had received everything he owned them. This is also the reason we only allow 12 dealers; we try to only have dealers that you can trust. If we wanted to, we could probably have 20-30 dealers here. I get at least 1 PM/e-mail every week from somebody who want's to sell their watches here. But the dealers contacting me have the same watches we already have access to here. Nothing new. So why let them in? Sure, they might be able to offer you a slightly better price, but I think we all know by now that most of the time it is worth paying the extra $5-10 to the dealers we have here. We know them, we know they will deliver and they deliver beautiful watches. And if something is broken or wrong, they will take care of you.

[offshore]

So there it is ladies & gents; straight from the horses mouth (So to speak)

Independent we are, and so we will stay... and your admin team, and this forum, will remain unbiased (but not without our own personal opinions)

To me, this is the very crux of belonging to this group, and any time we move away from this ideal, would cause myself and all the others involved here to have to take a look at our " reason de etre"

Isn't this part of the reason, this wonderful home was established? To eradicate influences from outside parties... beyond our control?

Hope it finds an accord with all out there.

Offshore

[fotoman]

Well I am very happy to hear it !!!

Long live rwg!!!

I guess thanks to the admins to the dealers to the The Zigmeister to everyone for making this such a great place. there are a lot of people that put work and time in and not a lot of thank you.

So thanks!!!!!

This is the greatist drain on my financial resources ever

[FxrAndy]

Thanks for that reasurance from Admin and all the Mods, Il ove the way this place works and the members here, especialy the supporter members! The quality found here is outstanding from the service we recive to the posts we read.

[Watchmeister]

Wow, now I know why RWI is called the dark side. Of course, I am ecstatic to hear that RWG will stick to one of its raisons d'etre. Weeding out dealers who are not performing for whatever reason is far more valuable than establishing a star system. What is more impressive is how quickly the admin and mods came forward to let the membership know their feelings and that the opinion is the correct one. Now we can go back to normal business around here. I don't know who Tim is but that whole system if it continues down that path (IMHO) smells pretty bad. It wreaks of the same odor as all those scam sites we all ran away from oh so long ago.

Happy Holidays to All! And thanks again to the whole administration.

[V]

Well.. they may be MANY Replica boards but the reason I really LOVE RWG is because of its integrity...

Congrats to Admin and the mods for a beautiful place to be

P.S. Of course I am against the promotion of specific dealers even I do believe Joshua & Andrew are as great as can be.

With the search button it is not very difficult to understand that

[TwoTone]

I'm not going to comment on RWI and the reasons they do this, but RWG will not be endorsing any particular dealers, as this will most likely lead to suspicions on the reasons for doing this, no matter what your reasons are. Like the previous posters have said, there is no doubt that both Joshua and Andrew are great dealers, but the opinion of a dealere is all in the eye of the beholder. We all have our own personal opinion about who is the best dealer and this forum is here to provide information so that people can make an informed decision on who to buy a replica from, maybe even buy a replica and then decide who is the best dealer for them. What is a 5 star dealer to you might be a 2 or 3 star dealer to someone else.

Well said Thomas...

I would like to add that we approach this issue from a very conservative place. If you notice, the Admin Team rarely makes a public comment on Dealers as far as endorsement goes...

We each have our favorite's, but we're careful because appearances - real or fancied, can have an influence...

Although one would have to admit that Neils rope is longer than most

Personally, I think we have a great group of Dealers that offer a wide variety of excellent product...

TT

PS: Politics - Forum life mirrors Real life...

"Where People Gather - Life Happens"

[sashwatch]

AMEN!

[jraines87]

I have no opinion on anything. I'm really a complex computer program made to appear as a real person...

[slay]

The reality is:

1. There is no money or contra involved.

[Klink]

life is good!

Edited November 29, 2006 by Klink

[jonthebhoy]

The meat of one man

Is the poison of another

And I will always

Be my sister’s brother

To have ones cake

and pay too much

when all the time

you’d rather go Dutch

Life is nude

JTB

[eddhead]

i posted on this before cause i was confused. but i have been reading some more discussion with what is going on at RWI. I don't think anyone there could or nessecarily should give a rats ass about what i have to say cause i am not very active there.

but, here - i do participate. so i wanted to just put on the record my thought, for what it is worth.

1. i think it is important for the board to stay independant of the dealers. I think "ranking" dealers officially just doesn't accomplish anything. when i started this, you didn't have a dealers section. there was an offers section, but you had to search alot

2. now people get it on a siver platter - they don't need any additional headlines.

3. there is plenty of information out there for consumers to make their own decisions.

4. no dealer is perfect. i love josh, and trusty, - i do. never had a bad interaction with them. but, i have had some bad deals with other dealers - and other people on the board think they are the best thing since sliced bread. - to each their own - every dealer is different with different styles - those are personal decisions and criteria that i do not believe can be ranked on independant criteria (which is something you woud need for a star system)

5. i think this board has integrity. Did i jump on dev cause i thought he was overly harsh? yeah, but, we debated, got our points out, agreed to disagree and went on. - i did not dispute his right to state his opinion, just tried to convince him to take a different perspective.

6. Maybe there is no money changing hands now with dealers for ratings, but lets get real. money makes the world go round and maybe not today maybe not tommorow but someday soon, it will turn to money, or free watches or whatever. if you don't think so, you haven't had enough "real world" experience. this opinion is based on lots of experience of bribing politicians for a living. - Its amazing how people change over time

of course i am not knocking our admins or RWI's admins, i'm just saying that sooner or later, money comes in - maybe its just enough to keep the board going.

well i am happy to chuck in my 5 bucks a month to keep the forum independant.

this of course has not happened yet here, but i see it there, and who knows, people get ideas. - so, for whatever its worth, i wanted to go on record - and do it here, where i consider home.

-

to many long years of - our current system hurray

to end on a positive note - this is clearly the golden age of reps - it won't last forever. i am super happy - i am super poor and I LOVE RWG!!!!!!

once again find myself jumping on the bandwagon. Great post.

[eddhead]

I'm not going to comment on RWI and the reasons they do this, but RWG will not be endorsing any particular dealers, as this will most likely lead to suspicions on the reasons for doing this, no matter what your reasons are. Like the previous posters have said, there is no doubt that both Joshua and Andrew are great dealers, but the opinion of a dealere is all in the eye of the beholder. We all have our own personal opinion about who is the best dealer and this forum is here to provide information so that people can make an informed decision on who to buy a replica from, maybe even buy a replica and then decide who is the best dealer for them. What is a 5 star dealer to you might be a 2 or 3 star dealer to someone else.

And just for the record: At RWG we have a dealer section where every dealer pay to have his own section. But just because they pay a fee, does not mean that RWG endorse these dealers. The fee is there to fund the operation of RWG, like the RWG supporter fee. Since they pay a higher fee, they get their own section here, and they can do all their advertising there.

If a dealer starts to get a lot of bad feedback, the dealer will be removed. This was the case with puretime a while back ago. Puretime had some personal problems and could not keep up with his obligation to his customers. So he lost his dealer section here at RWG. Because of our policy of only allowing 12 watchdealers, he has been in line for a spot here ever since he came back and had all his problems sorted out and all his "old" customers had received everything he owned them. This is also the reason we only allow 12 dealers; we try to only have dealers that you can trust. If we wanted to, we could probably have 20-30 dealers here. I get at least 1 PM/e-mail every week from somebody who want's to sell their watches here. But the dealers contacting me have the same watches we already have access to here. Nothing new. So why let them in? Sure, they might be able to offer you a slightly better price, but I think we all know by now that most of the time it is worth paying the extra $5-10 to the dealers we have here. We know them, we know they will deliver and they deliver beautiful watches. And if something is broken or wrong, they will take care of you.

I realize you guys get a lot of crap from time to time, but this really is a VERY well run board. Your dedication and that of the moderators really comes through, and is highly appreciated. I normally resist making posts like this b/c if you are not carefull, it can sound like butt kissing, but i think you should know how well regarded you all (EDIT) are.

[Devedander]

I didn't see this post at RWI (but will have to go look) but I tend to agree with what Phoband says (thanks for including me in your post... I feel special now! ) especially about how ratings may lead to corruption...

I disagree about the golden age of reps... I think we are in the silver age... I think the golden age is still comming with good end links, AR coating, reliable movements with correct subdials for almost anything... basically good dept store watch quality, with luxury watch appearance at dept store prices.

@Admin it might be good to advertise that fact that RWG does not support or endorse any dealer or offer any kind of backing for them... what with all the talk of "stick to OUR dealers and you will be ok" it might be very easy for noobs to walk in thinking that OUR dealers are somehow a part of the site or that the site vouches for them somehow...

I know that's what I thought when I first came in...

Edited November 29, 2006 by Devedander