Servicing vs repair...cost of ETA parts is skyrocketing...

[RWG Technical]

During 2008 I have had 3 price increases for ETA movements and parts.

If you don't need any parts or movements, then this price increase doesn't really matter to you. How you avoid needing parts is to practice preventative maintenance of your ETA powered reps. By preventative maintenance I mean servicing the movement, before something wears out and needs replacing.

Some are of the belief that you don't need regular servicing to keep your watch running. As with any mechanical item, regular cleaning and replacing of dried gummed up oils and greases with fresh stuff will ensure long life. You wouldn't run your car until the oil light came on and the engine seized, and then expect an oil change to fix everything, so don't think your watch movement is any different and doesn't need regular attention.

All our reps with ETA's for engines are surplus movements, even good ole Boob Frei at Ofrei sells used surplus movements. Surplus can mean pristine fresh never used, to well used, worn out, with dried oil and dirt.

As the watch owner and the one person who handles your watch everyday (or couple of days if you rotate your reps) there are things you can do to help avoid a costly repair:

- Handwind only enough to get the movement running, slowly and carefully, feel the crown and pay attention to what is happening inside. Is it smooth and silky as you wind it? or do you feel resistance now and then, or does the rotor start to spin as you wind (always wind with the watch flat in your palm). If you feel jerkyness or the rotor spins, this means that your click (reversing wheels) are gummed up and probably being damaged. Time for a servicing.

- Does the watch keep accurate time? Has the time keeping accuracy changed? Normally as the oils dry out and gum up, they increase the resistance of the pivots and this causes less power to be transferred to the balance, less power = smaller swings, which = running faster. If your watch starts to run faster, time for a shop visit.

- If it's been 3-5 years since your watch was last serviced, you should consider sending it out and having it done as a preventative measure.

What does it cost for replacing parts over and above a simple service? As an example, replacing the click wheels, the rotor (the bearings can wear out) and the mainspring and barrel, which are the most common wear points as they are under the most stress, will cost about $100. Add this to the servicing cost, and the price of preventative maintenance becomes apparent. Cleaning parts will always cost less than installing new ones.

I know there are some who will swear that they (or someone in their family) has a watch, that is 50 years old, never been serviced, keeps COSC time, etc, etc, etc... I have no argument to that line of thinking, although I am sure they get the oil changed in their car's on a regular basis. The information supporting regular servicing is readily available, including the British Horological Institute paper which you can read by clicking on this link:

http://www.bhi.co.uk/Documents/Tech/PractLub.pdf

RG

[freddy333]

I know there are some who will swear that they (or someone in their family) has a watch, that is 50 years old, never been serviced, keeps COSC time, etc, etc, etc...

In my experience, these cases do occur, but they are definitely the exception rather than the rule.

As a rule, if you run your mechanical watch for more than 5 years without a proper servicing, your movement is probably beginning to wear at the metal-to-metal interfaces within the movement. If you have watches that you plan to keep & are unable to service them yourself, you should probably be making an appointment with Ziggy or a local (rep friendly) watchmaker to head off more costly repairs.

[P4GTR]

Copied that and sent it to my father. Maybe you can get through to him because I can't. He loves his automatic Seiko from when he was 17, but has yet to service it. *cringe*

Always the optimist, he's of the opinion that if he does take it for service, they'll just break it.

[freddy333]

Always the optimist, he's of the opinion that if he does take it for service, they'll just break it.

That is always possible, considering the quality of workmanship (in all industries) these days. But a good, professional (& conscientious) watchmaker should be able to sort things out without adding any additional problems.

[Noel Fleischer]

i have ended up servicing nearly all my eta reps over the past year. i must admit not on a preventative basis;

they ususally break down. some even have come DOA. i used to be [censored] off but i have factored in about $100

to these purchases. for example- $220 rollie DJ= $330. still not bad when then gen is $5500

[Krayfish]

The man speaks the truth!

I like the car analogy, its true, I change my oil every few thousand (much more often that I should) but it runs beautifully.

Its only when you leave a watch for YEARS then get it service, you realise the difference when you wind it, gently shake it or just generally

feel it working, it will be silky smooth and muck slicker.......

[RobbieG]

What a surprise. And meanwhile I was told by all the "experts" during previous discussions that the upcoming changes in ETA were only going to effect the Ebauche business and nothing else in the chain, including availability of rep movements and cost of replacement parts. At the time I was ridiculed for daring to say that I thought ETA would take advantage of the public perception of ETA's changes and how they would effect things - even if there was no real reason to. Now I found out both the parts prices have increased not once but multiple times, and dealers/factories are claiming supply crunches effecting movement availability and cost in China. Go figure...

Yes, do get your watches serviced if they need it. Seems like that should go without saying. Although I have often wondered what would happen when parts and labor for repair and service eventually reach these types of crossroads. In the rep world, the complete watches are so inexpensive, maybe one will eventually justify just buying two complete reps of a watch that he likes and putting one away for future parts use. I mean, there are still ETA reps in the low $200 range - the DJ's come to mind there. Meanwhile, the movement and its parts in total with eventual labor meet or exceed the whole watch. I wonder when critical mass gets reached there. In my business we would call that an outlier or an inefficiency yet to be corrected.

One of the certainties about mechanical watch movements is that the timelines between service are relatively long and one can never really anticipate what future service costs and/or parts availability will really be - even when we have become used to a giant like ETA doing exactly what we expect them do do year after year. Life is like a market - forever changing, unpredictable, and unlike experts, is always right. LOL. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the ETA saga as it relates to parts and the rep world will unfold. I still think the best move for the rep industry for the long run is to stop dependence on "Swiss" to sell reps. It is a bit like how we feel here in the US regrading dependence on foreign oil. Just bad business and we could operate much more efficiently to the contrary. But unlike our oil crisis, the sillyness of the ETA and how it fits into the rep world is the easiest fix in the world. A little marketing and a little show and tell aimed at showing the life of a typical rep can be just as faithfully and more efficiently served by "lesser" movements. Look at the success of the A7750. For purposes of most it is more than adequate, has been a huge success and is dirt cheap. They should learn from that. Yet it is compatable (kind of), and people who must have a Swiss movement simply transplant them. The fact that they still rely on ETA for the 2836, 2824, 2892 type stuff is crazy. They should have an admitted forgery (yeah without the ETA stamp on it) and move on showing that it is a high quality movement that need not be "Swiss" for the purpose of a replica watch. After all, how many of us really treat these things as heirlooms? They need only serve most of us for a time before we move on, and as I said if we intend to love it longer, we usually take more than just the movement upgrade step to make it permanent anyway...

.02

[paulw]

When ever I receive a new watch it goes on to the wrist for a day to confirm I actually like it, then into the box and not used again until Ziggy has done a service.

Last piece I sent was a less than 3 months old UPO with a Swisss movement which was all gummed up.

When I put on a watch I like the confidence that all is operationg as it should.

Part of the appeal of a mechanical watch is knowing you have a precision instrument on your wrist and the fact that it could all

sieze up or wear prematurely doesn't fit the philosophy.

[rangers158]

Ideally, I like to think that I should send it for servicing regularly. But the chances of the watch getting "damaged" asthetically is very highly even if you send gen to authorised servicing agents. The problem is the lack of a capable and highly merticulous watch repair/servicing professionals. Someone you can trust to do a really fine job. Most just do not have the patience to clear the dust, good eye for details or even worse handle it carelessly causing scratches (it will be a nightmare if it is on the dial). But can we blame them when they have to service hundreds of watches each month?

When new, gens are assembled in clean rooms. But getting it service after that, you probably do not have such facilities locally in your country. Dust and other smudges are common complains from WIS who are generally anal about perfection in their watches. As many can testify, you should have come across many such horror stories in forums. So when sending in a watch regularly like a car, you are also taking a huge gamble each time if it will turn out fine after the servicing. For car service, most parts are easily accessible and aesthetic damge is not really seen most of the time as it is hidden under the hood. For wtaches, it is a different story, working on watches is like micro surgery to some extent. If the dial or hands are not handled properly, damage is very prominent and can ruin the whole experience of owning the watch. That is why I believe some watch company will simply change new hands for you sometimes. Watches are just too fragile and requires very skilled person to handle.

Coming back to Reps. Althought it is not the same as gens and most are not as perfect as gens, it is also an issue, because of the availablility of good watchsmiths to work on it. As most of you have found out, it is not easy to get someone to work on reps. And once damaged, replacement parts such as hands or dials will be quite a pain to source sometimes, without buying another watch again. So, in most cases, replacing the movement or the entire watch might be a better option since asian movement is cheap and newer and more accurate models will replace the old.

So it really depends on other factors as well. Its up to the owner to think if at the end of the day, the benfits of servicing outweighs the costs and the risks involved.

Edited January 1, 2009 by rangers158

[RobbieG]

Truer words have not been spoken. Very well put Rangers. It is sort of a toss up due the inherent low cost of reps. To fix or even service or to just replace? This is further exacerbated by what you speak about substandard watchmakers and service costs. If you can get a guy to work on reps, then the question becomes how good is he at his job and/or is he the real deal. You get what you pay for in life. You can find guys to service chronographs for under a hundred bucks, but you have to ask yourself, what is he really doing to it. So many are just doing the "dunk" and not even disassembling it. So that was kind of the point of my OP - sincesomeone doing it right is going to charge you at least half the cost of the rep to do a high level service, do you do it or get a new watch - or at least a new movement which most dealers will sell you for cheap? With gens it is easy to justify higher service costs relative to the watch cost, but most reps - I gotta tell you for my money, I had better really love that rep and have a lot of faith in that movement or the is just no way I'm going to spend half its value on service...

[RWG Technical]

@ rangers

Well said, you pointed out my biggest complaint over the years - unskilled Modders who haven't a clue as to what they are doing.

I have seen my share of previously worked on watches, and the larger percentage fit your description of the poor workmanship quality, and horrible lack of any watchsmithing skills. Simple things like not leaving finger prints, or blowing off the dust before you put the caseback on, which takes little skill to do, escape these hacks. My solution to this particular problem is that I don't accept any watch unless they are virgin ones...I especially don't take in watches when the explaination of the problem starts with "...my local watchmaker messed up XXXX....and I was wondering if you can fix it...".

There are good watchsmiths out there, but as you correctly pointed out, are hard to find. With no slow down in the production of mechanical watches, I wonder how the manufacturer's are going to cope with the after the sale service. It's one thing to throw out a $300 rep and get a new one when it stops working, but another totally different thing when your into a few thousand dollars for a gen.

RG

[lanikai]

I have learned the hard way ... through modders that have literally destroyed my reps. .. so if Insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results...

I can count myself quite sane (in some regards)

Ziggy is the only one I can rely on to do an honest "superb" Job !.. PR last longer .. gears feel smooth as silk .. but best I feel 'confident" that it was handled by someone who takes pride and perfection in their work... a hard trait to find these day's ~"Old School"

[jeff g]

We on this forum are EXTREMELY fortunate to have a man like Mr. Z to care for our watches.

The past 4 or 5 watches that I have purchased (reps) have all gone to The Zigmeister. The extra money spent to have it serviced, lumed, etc., insures that the piece will most likely run for years.

Rob has said often that even the standard Asian 21j, much less bonafide eta's, will perform adequately if properly serviced. Only makes sense to spend the extra money.

When spending money on 'Super reps' that cost 4-5 or 600.00 (plus dollars) and not have it serviced is pretty foolish and is still a crap shoot compared with the 200.00 models that might die at any moment. Ziggification turns a good watch into a GREAT one.