Calgary Omega customer service issues.

Hello,

I reside in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and when it comes to finding difficult parts or having my vintage omegas serviced I continue to run into a number of issues with omega official dealers, ie. the Omega Boutique and Calgary Jewellers. Oddly I couldn’t even get Calgary Jewellers to state that they are an authorized Omega dealer.

I normally look for vintage parts online but some parts, like the omega 196.0242/396.0938 mariner iii, crystals can be impossible to find but omega still stocks them. Unfortunately I believe now the watch has to be sent to Switzerland for just the crystal to be replaced even though they have an official omega service centre in Toronto, Ontario.

This poses an issue for me, I’d like one of the official retailers to simply contact omega and ensure that crystals for the marine iii are actually available before shipping the watch from Canada to Switzerland. I consider this a fair request but neither retailer is eager to make the attempt. Am I asking too much of them?

Also neither retailer seems to know anything about vintage omega watches. I’m not talking about a ton of knowledge but they don’t even know the process to order/check part inventories or how to have a vintage watch serviced. The omega boutique actually told me they really prefer to deal with modern models but that seems a bit crazy to me.

Is this the new norm? Is this how omega does things now? Does omega know this is happening? Do they care?

If omega will no longer sell replacement parts and I now have to go through one of their boutiques or authorized dealers how exactly does this all work if they don’t know what they are doing?

Has anyone else run into this?

It seems that modern omega and vintage omega are two very different classes now and my vintage omegas are now second class. I wore an omega 176.004 big blue into the boutique when I asked about replacement parts and they all but snubbed the watch. In fact the woman at Rolex asked if she could see the big blue while I was looking at a submariner, I literally received more interest from a Rolex employee that anyone working at omega.

If this is the new customer service I guess I can just diversify out of omegas.

Wow, you cannot even contact head office in Switzerland anymore and all emails are redirected to the USA branch. This is a brutal recipe for losing customers in droves.

So you are telling me that I should ship an 11k watch to Switzerland and take the risk that they don’t have stock for what I need done and then have it shipped back un repaired?

Not at all.

Omega does in fact check part availability for you, every time, it’s now only become a problem due to the absolute laziness of the staff and omegas disconnect between vintage and new watches.

I guess you didn’t read my whole complaint but thanks for the unknowledgeable response.

I have attempted to reach archer but without any results. Is there a better way to contact him than dm on here?

So you are unhappy because salesmen who are only trained in the most modern of watches aren’t able to give you specific watchmaking part information about your vintage watch. The process can be frustrating and you want what you want. But remember, your query isn’t an everyday occurrence for them, they aren’t trained on the watch you are questioning about, and every business wether it be omegas processing of repairs or a warehouse had processes and a scope of business. Once you do something outside of that scope, you become liable and generally loose something. They are following process. They have a watch that requires part replacement. Switzerland.

The fact that you had a the audacity to drop a snide remark to a moderator tells me that you have t been around here long enough to “cut your teeth” and learn something and that you will be a absolute pain for omega to deal with.

Good luck