Quality of watch repair / service? What do you look for?
Hello community,
I have this relatively old Claude Bernard automatic watch which is ~15 years old (no papers, but my dad had it for ~8 years + 7 years as my primary watch). It’s a Swiss brand and has an ETA movement. It saw active use for ~10 years, but was not serviced once … it worked, date was changing, but accuracy was low (~5 mins deviation every two weeks) and date was switching ~5 mins before midnight. After picking up interest in watches I decided to service it. Since watch holds mostly sentimental value I looked for some watch master with “golden hands” in my city as I didn’t want to pay more for watch service than watch value itself. I found a watch repair (small, family run. Just repair and service, no sales) with good reviews on google (except couple bad, but I think there’s always at least one dissatisfied customer 🙂 ). I talked with them before handing over the watch just to see how passionate they are, etc. Price was reasonable, too.
Now I have it back and looks like work is well done and all is ok. But still two questions from me:
1) If you’re to repair / service watch -> what criteria you use to select the watchmaker? Especially for cheaper watches (I assume if someone buys 20K Rolex, they are almost certain to visit only AD to take care of such watch)
2) How do you determine if service work was well or poorly done? It’s obvious that if watch or complication is broken and is being repaired -> you can easily test whether issue was fixed, but normally servicing is done on working watch, so there is no way to say straight away if any corners were cut.
Regarding 2 - through case back I see at least one small part was replaced (I agreed they could do it), so it proves they at least opened the case and disassembled mechanism (there’re stories of clients being charged without any work done, as difficult to check really). Movement became way quieter. I think crown became bit more stiff when regulating time (not sure if good or bad). Time will show whether accuracy improved.
interested to see opinion of others. Thanks 🙏
Hello! I am relatively new to hobby and have only few timepieces for now. Collecting direction for me is known - I plan to focus on German brands since this country is dear to my heart. Hopefully in f...
You definitely have to trust your watchmaker. If you’re paranoid or doubtful a service was done, get a loupe and look at the jewels you can see. Look for it to be clean with a film of oil, you can easily google pictures of properly oiled jewels.
Document the directions of the screw heads you can see before dropping it off. Compare that when you pick it up. Look to see if the screw heads seem chewed up at all.
You definitely have to trust your watchmaker. If you’re paranoid or doubtful a service was done, get a loupe and look at the jewels you can see. Look for it to be clean with a film of oil, you can easily google pictures of properly oiled jewels.
Document the directions of the screw heads you can see before dropping it off. Compare that when you pick it up. Look to see if the screw heads seem chewed up at all.
Thanks, this is useful. I had single photo of mechanism before servicing and can see some screws seem rotated and one part is definitely replaced (different color) and movement is quieter overall. I would see if accuracy also improved.
Not paranoid, rather curious how others approach this topic.
It's getting increasingly rare nowadays to find proper people who service watches, and if you find a good set up they're worth their weight in gold. Especially if you live outside a big city, and then there's the cost, and it's a thing with lower priced items,sometimes the repair/service is worth more than the watch, exception is if its got sentimental value like yours.
As for advice on how to find a good one,ask about,forums,local groups etc. Sometimes even going in to a place and talking to them will give you an idea,and of course giving them an item to work on. Sounds like you've found a good set up, if they don't charge the earth and do the work to a high standard, treasure them and use them. Because they are a dying breed and are treasures that look after your treasures.