Attention , please read, MOAB

[masterwatch24]

I have dealt with Spin directly with few of my watches and thru my good friend Legend on few of my APs. I have been satisfied with Spin's work and if there was any issue he was been very accommodating, to fix it.

I reached out to him directly first when I bought a broken DW PN Daytona. Few didn't want to touch it with a mile long stick due to its being an a7750. But eventually got in touch with Spin and he took care of the watch and recommend a few more mods to make the watch look awesome. I was really happy with the work. And the watch looks and works flawlessly till today.

Would love to see him back.

[panerai153]

Having been around here for neigh on 10 years, I have seen a fair number off repair/mod folks come and go. Some went gracefully with lots of accolades and tears because they were leaving. Our beloved The Zigmeister comes to mind here. Some left after screwing over a whole bunch of folks to the tune of thousands and thousands of dollars worth of watches, parts and prepaid funds. The worst culprit by far was MD2020, long gone, but not forgotten or forgiven!

Why do these folks come on with so much enthusiasm, only to fade away? I don't think that there is one pat answer to the question, but many reasons. I do think that there are some primary factors that lead to a once enthusiastic individual finally deciding to fold up their tent and move on. First off the repair person/ modder is starting a business. It may be on his kitchen table, corner of his den or a nice shop in his basement or garage, but it's a business. Every business needs a plan, operating procedures, rules and regulations. Generally all of this is ignored. The successful guys have a very rigid scheduling system, they schedule watches in and will not accept anything that is not on their schedule. Others just tell folks" send it to me, I'll look at it. Very soon these folks are inundated with packages.One guy years ago, who was about as disorganized as you could possibly be posted a photo showing a pile of unopened boxes that literally took up half his living room. I bet he had a hundred boxes stacked up in there. Suffice to say, he flamed out and left a bunch of unhappy folks in his wake!these inundated repair/modders are spending more and more time at their bench, the family is unhappy because dad is never available for the family. Pressure builds and soon he's taking shortcuts, or if not the owners of all those watches piling up in his dining room start to raise Holy Hell because he hasn't gotten to their watches. Something has to give and ultimately, the owners suffer the consequences.

Good qualified professional watch repair people have a published price list of their work. They impress on folks that this is the MINIMUM price for the work, and should they encounter more problems the price may be higher. They also require a deposit of 25-50% of the anticipated cost before they open up a watch. What this ensures is two things, the deadbeats( which you would be surprised are many) will have to at least cover the cost of his time and parts before he starts, and also eliminates those who after the watch is finished, decide that the repairs were too expensive and just tells the repair person, "just keep the watch".this happens often enough and even guys like The Zigmeister who had a really sound plan and pretty rigid rules, got stuck with orphan watches. Of course a deposit often deters those who send a watch in on a whim and then decide later they don't want to pay for the work.

Guys who are successful are very careful about what they advertise they can do. If they don't work on sec@12 or sec@6 a7750 movements, they refuse to accept those watches. If relumes are not their forte, they don't advertise or accept relume work. Quite a few folks start out doing one thing really well, but either pressure or their egos send them into areas where they have little or no expertise. Just because you can relume a dial or reshape the crown guards on a Rolex 1680, doesn't qualify you to disassemble, clean, oil and regulate a movement properly. Generally what happens here is owners get watches back and the work is not up to par. People complain, demand their money back, open PayPal disputes, etc. and pretty soon another modder bites the dust.

These are just a few of the things that work to create a revolving door repair/modding network. Not much different from opening other types of small businesses. I'm all for trying to encourage more folks who repair or mod watches to participate here, but at the same time they need to realize that they have a responsibility to the customers who trust them with their watches, and by the same token the customers have a responsibility to do the right thing by the repair/ modder. Do your due diligence, ask questions, read reviews and communicate with the person doing the repairs/mods. If you feel that the person does a fantastic dial relume, don't assume that he can make your broken AP ROO movement work like a genuine AP movement.

Sorry for the long, probably off the subject diatribe, but we all have to work together if we want to have good honest folks making our reps even better.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Champagnesky]

Any news?

[Mike on a bike]

It's a go as far as I know , I guess just need to get area set up which they can do.  (maybe busy or vacation time.)