Never,,,,never Never Let Any One At A Mall Watch Repair

[chris5264]

I really blame myself for this one. I just got a schaumburg, it's 44mm and the bracelet is the thickest I've ever seen. In fact, it was too thick to remove the pins using my press so I made my first mistake. I was impatient. I wanted it done today, so while at the mall I dropped it off at a quick fix watch repair place. My second mistake was to hand over the bracelet to a guy wearing a timex. So, first, the guy attaches the pins to the part of the bracelet that is closest to the end links. I explained that the pins should all go together by the bracelet. Ok, so he says no problem. He gives it back with a few nice scratches and I'm like ok, I need to get the hell out of here now. I get home to see that he reversed the segment of bracelet so that now the spring bar will not fit, the wider holes which allow a spring bar to fit are turned around and are now inside the bracelet. I must be maturing to some degree, I know how useless it would be to try to show this guy what was wrong with his work. No one can show a person these things.

[rbj69]

well at least u can say u gave the guy the benefit of the doubt, sry for your troubles

joe

[marrickvilleboy]

a word of advice, always ask the watchmaker what experience he has. My local mall watchmaker back in sydney had over 30 years of experience and has worked on all the big brands - only then can you feel safe.

Never give your watch to those do-it-all shops, where they fix shoes/fix watches....they have no experience and bare knowledge on watch repair.

[vmena]

You have to be very careful. Many watchmakers are no very experienced in working with mechanical movements or complex bracelets. Recently I won a bet with a watchmaker (mainly experienced replacing batteries in quartz watches) about the size of a crown of a datejust. A customer left a datejust (very old) which had installed (for whatever reason) a 5 mm tube and crown, for a model that had to have a 6 mm crown. He insisted the watch was like the original. And another watchmaker tried to remove a crystal from a 1680 rep without removing first the retainer ring. A disaster! So be careful my friend!!!

[launchnukes]

agreed...they ruined the screws in the band on my first rep (a yachtmaster) and this was just resizing it

but now i have my own tools and i'm learning every day

[cornerstone]

I made this mistake too with impatience. I figured a mall place would have no worries resizing a band, and that it would be a job done while I was waiting around anyway.

They made a total hash of it. The watch later fell off as a result of it too - I was lucky that it fell onto a desk rather than onto concrete say.

[marrickvilleboy]

@ cornerstone

PM sent

[Devedander]

Yeah... if it's one of those little booths in the mall NO FRIGGIN WAY... if it's an actual store that sells watches, I have had good luck with things in the past like simple resizing and battery changing... but I really wouldn't trust them beyond what you can do yourself with a $20 basic toolset...

Sorry to hear this... I am very afraid of any kind of mall store service.

[chris5264]

this seems to have the same ending as so many other similar stories. I would have done this myself, but I didn't have anything to properly hold the bracelet while I worked on it. This morning, I decided to just try it myself. I fixed it in about ten minutes. It reminds me of part of "zen and the art of motorcycle maintanence" where he takes his bike to a similar shop, i.e., people not paying attention to what they were doing, loud music in the backgroud, etc. They also messed up his bike. Keep in mind, this was my first time doing this and I did it without scratches and it is correct now. There are times when having an investment in the work is actually more important than experience. what good is experience if you've done it the wrong way a hundred times?

[cornerstone]

What good is experience if you've done it the wrong way a hundred times?

I like this. In fact, I may save your turn of phrase for my car mechanic next week

[Ozzy]

A few months ago i also ran into abit of trouble at one of these 'quick fix' watch repair places for two links to be taken out of my rolex Sub. I was in town at the time and i just though i would drop it in there and pick it up after i had a bite to eat, he said that would be fine and give me this ticket.

When i came back after my sandwich, cookie, and coffee, it seemed strange he asked me to come back in another ten minutes, despite him saying half a hour ago that it will be "done in five". So i thought 'okay' and went for a walk. When i came back to pick it up i was in quite a rush to get home so i gave it a brief look and went. When i got back home ,to my surprise that a the bracelett had been quite badly scratched, one of the screws had been damaged and the other was totally stripped!

[Torques]

I took like one of my first replicas (scammed) to one of those little places in the center of a mall to have the band made smaller (before I learned how to do it myself (rediculously easy)). She said something like 12.00 and when she saw my watch, she said, oh it's 30.00 to do it on a Rolex. Sheesh, idiot.