Greetings Forum, Up until a few years ago I took my watches to Frank Patten in Hove down here on the UK south coast. He was happy to fix and service many of my watches or pass along to a colleague work he did not feel qualified to carry out. Now that he has retired I'm looking for someone who can service my humble collection. Items that may need attention over the next few years will likely include a 551 Connie, 1012 Geneve and an 1861 Speedy So I'd be keen to hear from any members with recommendations for UK independent watchmakers Many thanks in advance Gareth
There is @ChrisN https://cjnwatch.co.uk/wp/ I have currently a Watch there for repair and so far I'm impressed by the Service.
I can also vote for Christian at Watchguy.uk. He's great with communication and he does not hassle. He just serviced my Omega cal 320 chronograph 101.009.
I’m sure these will come up time and again, but STS as already mentioned and Simon Freese Watchmakers , both excellent as many members here will agree. Simon looked after two of my watches when he was still at STS and the service I received was very good. Simon is now based near Chelmsford.
Ditto for Simon Freese or STS, am sure you can find plenty of people cheaper, but if you want the best...
Because they will replace all the lovely original parts with nasty new shiny service parts. And we all hate that On a serious note, an Omega service on a vintage piece would destroy everything that makes it collectible (for the reasons stated above)
I've not had a good experience with them in the past. I had a Seamaster Polaris multifunction with a cracked LCD screen. I sent it off for a quote and they said it could be fixed with a service. This they carried out whilst in their care they also took it upon themselves to polish the whole thing and ruined the piece. It's not that they only removed the gentle wear the watch had picked up but the buffing put some flat spots on a couple of the gold cap bracelet links. Perhaps I'm partly to blame for not specifying do not polish - but I only asked them to fix the LCD... The next time it needed a battery I took it to my local watchmaker who on opening the back found a broken screw head rattling around inside and the screw thread still inserted. Fortunately it was easy to fix and had not done any damage. Can't really say with any certainty that this was down to Omega but it's a pretty high likelihood that it was either a poor quality screw or due to overtightening.