As Christian noted in his blog posts (yes we know each other and he is certainly a good guy, and Barry is out to lunch), aside from the ethical situation with repairing fake watches, there is a very practical issue at hand - making a living. Most of these fake or homage watches suck up huge amounts of time for at best mediocre results. And if you know someone won't pay a proper price for a proper watch, what makes you think they will pay you properly for your skills/time in servicing?

We all learn through doing things and getting burned, as Christian did with Barry and his fake AP. I have had similar experiences, not with outright fakes as I won't touch those, but with homage watches, mainly in the style of Panerai's. The only thing I have done on those is to replace the Chinese made 6497 with a Swiss one, and even that sort of job was a nightmare due to the crappy dials, hands, and ill fitting cases (stripped threads that have had screws glued in is my favourite...). I no longer take that sort of work in, and along the way I have also stopped doing other small jobs as they tend to take more time than I can reasonably charge for, even on authentic watches.

I have a watch here for modification and I swear I spent twice as much time answering emails from the nervous Nellie owner than it took me to actually do the work. Most (almost all) of my clients are reasonable people, bit once a year or so I get one that is very high maintenance.

Being a technically good watchmaker is one thing, but you also have to know how to run a business, and part of that is knowing when to say "no" to a job. I fully understand the temptation to "help someone out" and repair something that you know is going to be a nightmare, but that doesn't pay the bills. Sometimes it goes against the grain to turn down work, but you will be better off for it in the long run.

Cheers, Al

 

We call that addition by subtraction in retail. It doesn't take long to spot a future nightmare customer. Best to let them leave without buying and become somebody else's headache and source of high blood pressure.

 

Got replicas? think disposable.

 

The guy that services my watches makes it clear, No fakes or cheap watches. The thing I don't understand is, a proper service will cost more than many of these watches cost new.

 

Bic disposable watches. For some Seikos, it's cheaper to buy a replacement movement, drop some oil on the pallet jewels, and swap out the old for the new.