Servicing Affordable and Luxury Watches?

Cost of entry. Some watches can go much longer, some shorter. I try to avoid disposable and Chinese movements as the service will cost more than the watch, if you can even find someone willing to work on it. Otherwise, accept that they are disposable and enjoy them while they work.

More often than not, you simply replace the whole movement with an NH35. Much cheaper than full service. Seagull, other Chinese movements you might as well toss them.

@AllTheWatches has really nailed it on the head.

• This is precisely why I prefer "workhorse movements" to this whole, ridiculous in-house idiocy.  The only reason we're being told that in-house is the bee's knees is because Swatch Group stopped supplying ETA movements to everyone, and so everyone's had to scramble to create their own awful, expensive to maintain and service, and unreliable movements
• Watches with NH35 movements are the best, because you can very simply, and cheaply just replace the whole darn thing when the time comes
• I have a bunch of Grand Seiko and Omegas...  I genuinely don't plan to service them unless and until something goes seriously wrong.  Talked with my watchmaker, and heretically, he said, "Both companies' newest generation of movements have such tight tolerances, and such complexity, that they'll either last a lifetime or catastrophically fail.  They were built to be lifetime service free, but obviously neither company can say that, nor offer that kind of warranty"

Like I said, heretical...

Thank you both for clarifying. I was thinking: why service if it runs without any issues. And I guess that’s about the essence 

thats why grand seiko is way to go it has very long servicing interval

In some cities you can find the equivalent of a "shade tree mechanic" for watches.  If your watchmaker asks you "how often do you wear this watch?" then you have found such a person. That kind of watchmaker will get a $20 watch running reasonably well for very little money.  I don't recommend this, but I can say that it is useful from time to time with pieces that don't bear a lot of investment.

I only buy what I can afford to service and that even applies to my choices of cars. I can't afford the service cost on a Mercedes, so therefore I just won't buy one. 

So as much as people put down movements like the NH35 or the Miyota movements, at least you can replace them instead of forking out your hard earned cash to service them. It's all relative to your budget, including future out of pocket service costs, you need to factor this into your choice of watches.  

I find that most servicing estimates are generally not realistic. Many brands and major watchrepair centers will advise getting a mechanical watch serviced about every 2-3 years. Honestly, I don't think this is necessary given the high-quality, synthetic lubricants used in modern watchmaking, and especially with the use of silicon components in the escapement in certain new movements. Examples are the Oris cal. 40x series with servicing intervals recommended every 10 years, the Baume & Mercier "Baumatic" at every 7 years and Omega's Co-axial movements at every 8 years. 

You can probably get away with servcing a watch once a decade as long as the amplitude is high enough and the beat error is low. 

 Another with an incredibly long service interval: Vostok. I’ve a very rare Vostok Europe Kosmodrom ( VE is based in Vilnius) powered by a Russian Vostok 2426. I’ve had it just over 10 years and asked R2A if I should consider getting it serviced soon and who they’d recommend. Essentially they said if it’s still keeping good time, just keep using it (it still keeps incredible time btw). So that’s what I’m doing ☺

Also, what’s all this talk about ETA not supplying movements? My Glycine GL0195 that was made last year (received for Christmas) has an ETA 2893…