Over the last couple of days a touch of OCD/paranoia has kicked in regarding my recently purchased Glycine Airman 18 and I became convinced it was running too fast. There is a dearth of watchmakers (apart from the mall kiosk types) where I come from, so I wandered in past an upmarket AD who, I remembered, had a watchmaker in-house. After discussing my concerns, the manager said he would get the watchmaker to put it on their timing machine and I could call back in a couple of hours to get the results. He also warned me that if something serious showed up, as they had no access to Glycine parts, my best bet would be to make a warranty claim. As it was bought from Jomashop and I’m in Scotland, this was not a route I wanted to go down, but if I had to, at least I’d have evidence

So having a couple of hours to spare, I wandered around town, idly looking at pawn shops (more Tags than anyone could ever want) and a couple of mid to low level Ads and eventually ended up in what I’d classify as a mid to upper level AD called Chisolm Hunter. I’d been there a few times before, and the manageress recognised me. For some reason, she immediately turned to one of her staff and said something along the lines of “You really need to speak to this guy”. Now whether it was just so she could avoid my WIS ramblings, I don’t know, but I spend a pleasant 10 minutes or so chatting about watches in general with the staff member It also turned out that her ambition was to be a watchmaker, with the result that this forum now has a new member who will be digesting @ChrisN ’s fascinating thread https://omegaforums.net/threads/watchmaking-with-the-bhi.39076/ for starters.

My WIS work/recruitment drive done, back to the original AD I trotted. The manager handed over my watch and showed me the timegrapher results. My watch was running at an average of +20s a day over 5 positions. “Bugger” I thought. Then he pulled out a second timing record after the watchmaker had demagnetised my watch. The average over 5 positions was now +7 seconds

To put this in context, the only money I have ever spend with this AD has been to send a couple of watches through them for refurbishment (before discovering I could deal direct with STS) and I’ve had an integrated bracelet resized by them. So I hardly count as a premium customer. When I asked how much I was due to them, the answer was no charge.

Too often all we hear about is bad customer experiences, so kudos to the AD, Jamieson and Carry Aberdeen for exemplary customer service.

All in all, not a bad way to spend an afternoon

 

Good service and nice to know there are others moving into watchmaking, or intending to. If she has any questions about the BHI, I'd be happy to try and help.

I'm not sure where you are in Scotland but there are BHI meetings, probably just in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and I know of one person in Edinburgh (I think, need to check) who is on the course.

Cheers, Chris