Took a swim today with my daughter, just some splashing around in local pond as weather was hot, pretty innocent activity so I thought. Was wearing my much beloved Railmaster 1957, but after returning, to my horror, found that not only was there condensation under the glass, the watch also stopped working altogether.

When I now -ever so gently!- try to wind the watch, I can feel resistance that normally isn't there. I fear the worst.

I'm 100% confident that the crown was properly secured before diving in, I deliberately checked for that.

Surely this will be covered under warranty as the watch is rated for 60 meters and this shouldn't happen?

Best to go back to an official Omega boutique with the watch and warranty card and just explain the situation? Will that be enough to get Omega to initiate a full service, which I image will be done at Omega HQ in Switzerland? Assume no costs are charged as covered under warranty? The fact that I bought the watch grey market (more than a year ago, have the original purchase receipt) won't impact the product warranty surely?

And what can I actually expect, will it be returned to me as good as it was, or will there always be some 'debt' build up in the movement? Will they perform the same METAS tests again, and will I receive the results?

Apologies for flurry of questions!, hoping for some comforting words as feeling quite downcast about this :-(.

 

That sucks.

Yes, at least I would expect them not to make any fuss because that would be terrible service.

Yes and yes, although it may not be taken back to Switzerland if they have a watchmaker on the premises or at nearby boutique. Should be at no cost. Gray market doesn't matter as along as you have a valid warranty card. If you have a purchase receipt and a warranty card, that's even better in case you have to deal with somebody being difficult.

I assume they would overhaul the whole movement. I don't know if that would involve re-certification though.

 

If you take it to an OB to get it serviced they will make it as good as new with all service parts replaced included in the cost. Therefore there will not be a ‘debt’ buildup as you put it.
They will perform all the tests required to show the watch is properly sealed and keeping time within their parameters.

If you have damaged something that isn’t covered by the warranty, such as a chip in the glass, you will have to pay extra.

You can specify that you do not want any additional polishing done on the watch, which I have had good experience of, but I know some members would not risk that and would prefer an unaffiliated watchmaker to do the repairs instead.

More of a pressing issue is you ‘proving’ that you had the crown properly screwed down before swimming.
You might have some trouble with that, they will have to choose whether to believe you or not. Buying grey market potentially means that that supplier/customer relationship might not be there.

 

I'm not sure why they would ask. This isn't a Seamaster with a screw-in crown where it can be loose but still ticking. It's either in or out on the Railmaster, and nobody is going to be using their watch with the crown out because the watch won't tell time. So the reasonable expectation is that the crown is always going to be in the correct position.

 

The other reasonable expectation is that the watch is waterproof for 60m so...

I would hope they wouldn’t question it, but you never know.

 

Thanks for the extremely speedy reply janw23, genuinely much appreciated as the piece has special meaning to me and worried about the damage done and whether this can be rectified.

And that is indeed comforting to read, surely this is not normal product performance with depth rating qualified up to 60 meters.

Any idea what caused this, as haven’t had issues in the past, although admittedly not often have worn the watch in water other than maybe hand full of times.

 

I agree, it makes sense that the likelihood of the crown not being fully in > likelihood of water seal on a relatively new watch failing when you put it like that. I haven't had to deal with a fault like this, but I would hope the company assumes that customers with active warranty and original purchase receipt are acting in good faith, at least on the first instance of something like this occurring.

 

Also massive thanks SG90, will def request for no polishing, good tip

 

If you are certain the crown was in, then you got a dud watch basically. It was always going to fail at some point. If everything was put together properly, there is no way water should be breaching the seal. The situation may however be different if for example you were already using the watch in water quite regularly, in which case it would be normal to have the seals checked annually to ensure the watch is still rated for immersion.

 

You will have to check to see if it is covered under warranty. I recall a thread where the OP reported that an AD refused to cover water damage under warranty for a Seamaster.

Here it is: https://omegaforums.net/threads/omega-seamaster-warranty.78322/

 

Welcome to the club. I mentioned this in another thread: I finally got a Railmaster 60th less than two weeks ago. Was on vacation last week wearing it. Was fishing on the boat just this past Saturday (three days ago), got caught in a rainstorm for 10 minutes. Watch got wet, along with the rest of me. Next day, noticed condensation inside the watch. From a damn rain shower. The watch was never submerged in water in any way. It just got drops on it in the rain. After I owned it for a whole nine days (and it was a new unworn watch that I purchased). Just two hours ago I dropped it off at the west coast Swatch service center (I happen to live near it in L.A.). I expect they will take care of everything and hand it back to me good as new. But it sucks to even have this happen, and to not be able to wear the watch for weeks now.

There's another thread here on OF from a member who swam in his trilogy Speedmaster and had the same thing happen as you did:
https://omegaforums.net/threads/speedmaster-60th-waterproofness.69120/
Omega made it good as new for him.

This is wack, though. What's with these trilogy watches having water-tightness issues? Bad batch of seals, or are the three of us just the three unlucky guys who got faulty watches while all the rest of them are fine? Ah well, don't sweat it, man, you'll get it repaired and it'll be like it never happened. In my case, it's a weird positive in a way because I had already managed to put a noticeable scratch on one of the bracelet links that was irritating me. Now that I took it in, I'm having them remove it. So it'll definitely be better when I get it back LOL

 

Sorry to hear this! That is especially bad luck to have this happen within the first two weeks, an abrupt end to what should have been a long honeymoon period. Hoping you don't have to wait too long to get it back.

Thanks for sharing your story, hope this doesn't become a recurring theme for the Trilogy series, that these faulty products are isolated incidents/anomalies in an otherwise unaffected population..

 

i use to work for breitling's sister company. they would always try and put fault on the watch owner. most of the time it was true. you would be amazed how often non watch peeps check their crown to see if it's tightened.

 

Yes I believe you, I was speaking from experience that I had with an OB on an unrelated issue where they accused me of causing the problem, I felt like I had to really argue my point and in the end they agreed to re-service my watch at their expense.

 

Sorry for this trouble. Omega Boutique staff always told me that the railmaster 60th and the speedmaster 60th were designed to tolerate shower and gentle swim. Not diving or crawling. Of course there is no technical or theoretical evidence for this as these watches are supposed to tolerate pressure up to 5-6 atm. But empirical evidence shows that these watches are not very much resistant to water. I know one person who had the same problem with the speedmaster;

 

If boutique staff say this then they are misinformed.

If the technical specification says it's rated to 60m, that means as long as the seals are maintained, you should be able to dive with the damn thing to 60 m. Anything less is blatant false advertising. If anything, I would expect 60 m to be a conservative estimate. Sort of like the crush depth on a submarine - yes, the specs say X, but the real crush depth is even lower down, because the calculation assumes the worst case conditions.

Anyway, thankfully all this is academic, because I'd rather die than have 60 m of water above me .

 

Yeah, at first I thought there was just a smudge on my crystal from sunscreen or something and tried wiping it off, then realized it was actually water inside the watch. At first I couldn't really process what I was seeing LOL. I would have swam in it, too, without giving it a second thought. I guess at least I discovered something was wrong fairly quickly into owning the watch. Now I'll get it sorted out and she'll be good to go. The service center today told me they are running at about 4-6 weeks turnaround time but also said warranty work gets somewhat prioritized. What that means, I have no idea. I'm just operating under the assumption it's going to be 4-6 weeks and if it's sooner, great. It sucks, but hey, I went more than a year before acquiring the damn thing, so another few weeks is just whatever in the grand scheme. I'm wondering if they are going to have to replace my dial and hands, as the dial at least appears to have two or three little darker black spots on it now as a result of the water getting on it. But I do have to say, I'm pleased as punch to be getting that annoying scratch polished out. No idea how I even managed to put it on there. So there is an upside to the whole debacle LOL

You should totally be able to swim with any of the three. As @Archer has said many times, the rating is the rating. I've gone in the pool many times with my Speedy Pro with no issues. I know some on here find that to be a terrifying thought, but when it says 50 or 60M resistance, that's what it should be. It does remind me, though, that before I take the Pro into water again, I need to get the seals checked. But when I get my Railmaster back, with the documentation that it is back in-spec, as far as I'm concerned it should be more than fine for going in a pool or a lake. Whatever is going on with these leaking ones is not normal and is not up to snuff like it is supposed to be.

 

I am not sure I would even tell them about swimming. Why throw a variable like that into the equation? Just tell them you looked down at one point in the day and saw condensation inside, and you had winding issues the next morning.

 

Because they'll know when they open up the case that this is a lie? Why would you lie about the watch failing under conditions for which it is rated by the manufacturer to operate anyway?

 

I wouldn't lie, either. The watches are rated for swimming, it shows as much right on Omega's own water resistance chart. If I'm not supposed to swim in a watch, then don't tell me in your official materials that I can do so. Paying $5/$6/$7K and up for watches and they can't even go in a pool? Eff that LOL