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Price vs. customer service


pfran42

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A lot of people have complained about Andrew/Josh's prices being a little higher than some of their competitors. I too was considering jumping ship and a finding a new dealer but my latest experience with Andrew has done nothing but solidify my loyalty to Trusty Time.

I purchased a SSD V2 a couple of months ago, and lately the rotor had gotten very noisy. A few days ago it stopped keeping time, so I opened the caseback, took off the rotor, and discovered that I had a 2836 Asian copy movement. A lot of you are probably thinking that I should have gotten a gen movement to begin with but we are dealing with the rep world, drop shipments, and horrible QA. I am judging my experience using these facts as a baseline. After my watchmaker confirmed the clone movement I was a little upset. I wrote to Andrew explaining the situation and he responded saying that I should send the watch back for a replacement. I imagine that there are other dealers that would offer the same thing.

What set Andrew apart is that when I informed him that I had already modded the bezel and crown guards and did not wish to send the watch back, he quickly responded that if I could prove via photograph that the watch movement was indeed not a gen Swiss ETA 2836, then he would just send me a movement free of charge.

After the pictures had been sent, Andrew told me that the movement would be on its way the next day. I ordered an Omega SMP Planet Ocean rubber strap at that time and he included it with the movement.

The package arrived in three days with a shinny new ETA 2836 movement and my strap! I am very pleased by the way I was treated and I am also impressed with the speed at which Andrew addressed this issue. He could have put this on the back burner as it is not a revenue generating transaction, but he took care of me as if I had ordered 10 watches from him.

Needless to say, I am going to remain a customer of Trusty Time.

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The point is, it is definitely a lack of QC up front, which is what you think that you are paying for. And you ARE paying for it.

In actuality, you are the QC and it's up to you to discover the problems on your own time and at your own expense.

Once you do that you may have several e-mails before you are asked to send back a watch back to China at your own expense which: never kept time, had parts falling off.

At that point the customer service kicks in which should have been provided pre-shipping and pre complaints.

That's my experience with this highly regarded seller.

Carl

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The point is, it is definitely a lack of QC up front, which is what you think that you are paying for. And you ARE paying for it.

In actuality, you are the QC and it's up to you to discover the problems on your own time and at your own expense.

While I can only say I've also had good experiences from the Cartel... Well sometimes not so good up front but always corrected and resolved. I pay for this. I know I'm paying for this because I know where I can find the same watch for cheaper from other board listed dealers. Often times I'm ordering for a friend and I don't want to chance anything. Now I'm wondering how many of those submariners have swinese movements? How much insurance was I really buying?

My point to all this is most people don't have the means to track down the swinese movement. Often times it doesn't fail until allot later leaving us a$$ed out. Think about all the money that's saved if only one out of every ten buyers actually complains. It's cost effective to service the crap out of the one person, send them whatever to keep them quiet. Make the profit on the other easy marks. Here in the US contractors have done this for years. They use subpar building materials. Payoff inspectors. When stuff eventually has an issue it's long after the fact. In the small percentage they do get caught they simply fix the problem no questions asked. At the end of the day they are still money ahead. This is the same thing I feel the cartel is doing.

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To some, it's worth paying a little more and having quality control done before shipping

each dealer has their strengths and weaknesses - to each his own

One thing is for certain - you won't get screwed by Josh or Andrew - customs may screw ya though ;)

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