Back in March I started wearing my favorite 2500C PO again after about a year or so. At the time I noticed it was not keeping good time, so since it had never been serviced so I took it to my local OB in Florida. The technician there ran a few tests and indicated that it was significantly out of factory specs. So off it went for a complete service.

Yesterday it was returned to me via FEDEX as I am now up north for the summer. The watch looks great and seems to be keeping good time. As usual, I received a small plastic bag with replaced parts, including one in a small plastic case.


To those more technically knowledgeable here, do these replaced parts tell a story? I might add that the crown and the helium escape valve were also replaced, but are not showing in the photo.

 

Glad Omega took care of your watch for you!

 

Your watch needed servicing and Omega actually respects that your watch is yours unlike Another brand that returns nothing

 

I recently had new brakes installed on my vehicle and didn't get the old parts back. No big deal to me, whether car parts or watch parts.

 

Was to the member that paid nearly $1000 to have a Datejust dial changed to black and they didn’t give he’s old blue one back......

 

Well now...that's a horse of a different color

 

You should at least ask to see the old parts to make sure they actually replaced what they said they did. Returning the old parts with a watch service is confirmation they actually did the work and good customer service.

 

Omega always returns the old parts. I expected that. What I am curious about is whether these parts are typically replaced, or is it unusual for one or more of these to need replacement. I'm not talking about the seals or bezel spring, of course, more the gears and the mystery part encased in plastic. Perhaps I will try to open the small plastic case and get a better pic of what is in it.

 

Yes they do, they tell a story of incredibly wasteful service center procedures, and the eventual death of watchmaking. Yes that sounds dramatic, but let me explain...

Here is your photo, modified slightly to allow better lighting and I've added labels to all the parts:

​

A - Intermediate escape wheel
B - Reversing wheel
C, D, and E - all parts of the HEV
F - Mainspring barrel complete
G - Two seals - green hard plastic one is from the crystal, and the other is the NBR case back seal
H - Click spring for bezel
I - Balance complete

So I take no issue with most of these parts being replaced, as they are often replaced in a full service. The two that I find wasteful are the barrel complete, and the balance complete.

For the mainspring barrel complete, it is an assembly of 4 parts:

Mainspring
Barrel drum
Barrel cover
Barrel arbor

For the most part, the only part that really needs replacing of those 4 is the mainspring. Yes there are times when the barrel drum or barrel arbor could be worn and need replacing, but it's not terribly common in my experience, and in this case they didn't even check - to do so would require disassembling the barrel, cleaning the parts, and inspecting them for wear. But instead of doing any of this, Omega replaced the entire barrel assembly with a new one - this saves the watchmaker a couple of minutes, but ends up throwing away perfectly good parts.

For the balance complete that one is a bit more of a mystery. It could need work for a few reasons:

Balance staff broken
Balance staff worn
Damage to roller table or balance spring

Since this watch has shock protection, the most likely scenario (other than the watchmaker having an accident with the balance) is that the balance staff is worn. Unfortunately Omega continues the dumbing down of watchmaking by not making balance staffs available as a new part, so a simple worn staff (a part that would cost maybe $10) now requires the entire balance to be replaced. The same goes for any individual part of that balance - none of the parts are available as individual parts like they used to be, so replacing the entire assembly is the only option.

Watchmakers are becoming parts replacers, and this is a deliberate strategy. A lot of the work done to your watch wasn't done by a watchmaker, but by people who were hired off the street and trained to do specific jobs (technicians). So the watch was initially disassembled by one of these "technicians", so the movement was removed from the case, the hands and dial removed, and the movement was sent to be worked on by a trained watchmaker. The case was refinished and reassembled by technicians, and then it met back up with the movement after it was serviced, and then technicians installed the dial, the hands, and did the final casing of the movement, mounted the bracelet, and did the final quality checks.

It's been this way for some time, but now some companies are going further and are training people to work on movements in an assembly line fashion. Only the final oiling and adjustments will end up being done by a watchmaker in the end I suspect, so they will only very briefly touch your watch when it goes in for service if things keep going the way they are now.

Sorry this is probably not exactly what you were asking for...but to me that is the story that is told by your parts.

Cheers, Al

 

It would be useful if Omega and others would provide a written report when returning the watch (together with the replaced parts) after a service with a details of the work done.

It is standard practice in other industries, I can’t see why that can’t do it in the watch industry give what it cost for a standard service.

 

Archer,

Thanks for the informative post. Do you believe this is the watch company's answer to the shortage of qualified watchmakers, or just an attempt to increase profits? Or both?

 

So this is an interesting post and made me think back many years ago... Back before I became a watchmaker, I took my Rolex to the AD to get the service done, and being an engineer who rebuilt equipment often as part of my job, I was hoping/expecting the same. Some sort of narrative about what they found and what they replaced. What I received was a bill that only said "Service Rolex model XXXXX" and a single line item price. Since Rolex steals your parts and doesn't give any replaced parts back, I didn't even have the clues that the OP here had about what might have been done, so it was a tremendously disappointing experience. I did ask the sales lady at the AD what they had done, and she simply gave me a blank stare...

So when I became a watchmaker, I decided that no customer of mine would have the same level of disappointment. As a result I take photos during the services at all stages, and create a servicing document that shows each step and explains what was done in some detail. The members here who have one know it can be quite detailed, and depending on the watch and the complexity of the service, it can run to 100 pages or more, with typically 2 photos per page. I sometimes include videos where appropriate also. It's a time consuming thing, as each photo is processed, the document is compiled, and I eventually burn it all on a disk to send back with the watch.

Some other watchmakers have done similar things since, posting a few photos on a blog page, but I'm not sure anyone documents things to the level I do. I know there are some customers who never read these documents, but many do and many send me comments about how much they learned from them, and that is why I do it. For many a watch service is just a black box, and all they know is that something was done, but no details are given. I find many people who are sending me a family heirloom of some kind are very appreciative of this sort of documentation.

So there are people out there who do this to either a greater or lesser extent...

 

Probably both. But doing this instead of investing in the workforce that your company will need in the future appears to be the strategy many brands are taking.

 

Sounds like when I go to the dentist. The techs do the cleaning and poking and prodding. The dentist comes in for the perfunctory exam of 2 or 3 minutes and is off to the next patient.

 

Perhaps some these service steps don't need a fully qualified watchmaker anyways? I think this happens in many service industries. You don't need a qualified mechanic to change the oil in an engine. When you go to the dentist, you spend 95% of the time with the teeth cleaning lady who takes the pictures as well. The real dentist often only comes in for a few minutes and does the real dental work when needed. I imagine this is the same when you service 1000s of watches and only need an expert for the real repair work.

I read about watch servicing where the original movement and other important parts may not even end up back in the same watch. That's lot more disturbing.

 

At least with the dentist you know what is being done... that is, unless you are given a sedative.

 

But this is where those policies end up. Send you Speedy reduced to Omega and they will swap the movement for one that has already been refurbished, and yours goes back to the factory to be serviced and put in someone else's watch.

Same thing with new Tudor movement in the Black Bay - they don't service these in the service centers, so if anything more than a timing tweak is required, the movement gets swapped out.

Less work for trained watchmakers leads to fewer watchmakers, and the cycle repeats...

 

Two points on this for me. First, I trust the people who service my car and the watchmaker who has worked on my watches. Maybe it's naive, but I trust that the work will be done correctly, and haven't been burned yet. Second, as far as receiving the old parts of a watch service, I have no way of knowing if the returned parts are from my watch, or parts that the watchmaker had laying around.

In the end, I have trust in the people who service my car, boat, motorcycle, watch, etc. As I said, maybe I'm naive, but so far so good.

 

As an official anal retentive of the OCD variety, I can appreciate this detail and care. However, it makes me wonder, if I sent you my watch for a typical service and I said, "yo, Archer, don't bother with all of that, I'm on a budget" how much (assuming whatever you 'allow' yourself as an hourly wage) would I save?

In other words, all of that time and care has to cost something. Which is undoubtedly why Omega and Rolex and (I presume) the other mass production manufacturers are commoditizing their repair procedures. It's a tougher sell when the AD says, "don't forget to send in your watch every 5 years for a service. It shouldn't cost much more than what you just paid for your new watch."

 

Excellent - super informative.