Quality issues at Rolex and Tudor?

Not trying to , but I have recently had some of my relatives and other friends who have had issues with their relatively new Rolex and Tudor watches. Case in point:

- my brother owns his Sea-Dweller 126600 "red" since October 2017 (Mark 1), and it suddenly started to gain more than three minutes a week. He brought it back to the AD in Basel today, and after a quick check on the timegrapher, it was established that it had to be shipped back to Rolex as the movement was clearly not keeping proper time.
- one of my best friends who got a Tudor Pelagos LHD just over two years ago, recently started to notice that the watch is sometimes stopped in the morning when he wakes up. Of course he wears it all time, so there is no valid reason why the power reserve would be completely down after one night of sleep... despite what the ignorant sales person kept telling him when he went back to the AD and who insisted that he should wind the watch every morning to avoid this issue!! 🤦
- on top of these two examples, I know of two more people who had to send back their Pelagos under warranty after movement and power reserve issues.

Now, in comparison to the thousands of watches these two brands put out each year, this is obviously a minute sample population. But given how hot these two brands have been lately, and also how unhappy some of their employees who feel overworked have been in the last couple of years, I am now wondering if these resulted in Quality issues in production at the crown and its sister company.

Any other similar experience(s) out there or are the examples above real "flukes"?! 👎

Not a fluke from what I gather. Both models use movements are were relatively new at the time the models were introduced. From what I remember, both the 3235 in the SD 43 and the MT5612 in the Tudor, were unveiled in 2015 and ramped up production in 2016. So both examples from your personal anecdotes would've been equipped with early production runs of their respective movements.

There are dozens of threads on TRF of SD 43 Mark 1 owners, reporting their movements beginning to keep time sporadically after almost 2-3 initial years of exceptional accuracy. More recently, many owners of the Tudor GMT's reported issues they experienced in common with that movement.

I have also just read a thread in another forum about a bb58 movement having some issues...
Overall it seems that there are indeed some problems with the Tudor movements at least although most of them are kept under wraps with the press refusing to even acknowledge that they exist...
every publication seems to still rave about the BB’s GTM amazing movement without a mention about the date issue...

Pretty sure the date wheel on the GMT was discussed at length. I doubt there is a conspiracy. However also don't think there is a large free press covering the watch industry. Most of the watch press is online, I'm what is a glorified blog (which I appreciate and love). These guys gotta eat so I doubt they are going to bite the hand that feeds them. They need to keep the watch companies sweet.

Also the vast majority of people that buy watches probably don't frequent forums such as this and therefore probably just get watch serviced where they bought it if it's not running accurately

They are not out to get you (probably not)

Not saying that they are, but it begs the question about journalistic integrity...

I don't think you should expect journalistic integrity from people who aren't journalists. redzer007's post above yours describes the situation well (don't bite the hand that feeds you). I don't mind too much as long as I understand what I'm reading may be little more than an extended ad for the watch. If I want other takes on a watch, I can always come to a forum such as this and see what people have to say.

Yes, which is why owner & fan forums such as these are such a valuable network to have in this hobby.

Personally, I've found ABTW to have the most candid content when it comes to reviewing watches. When they find something they don't like about a watch, or a design feature, or the execution to be lacking in quality for a watch's price-point, A Blog to Watch typically doesn't hold back in articulating their opinions.

In comparison, Hodinkee is basically just an advertising company now, and have lost all of their journalist integrity in my eyes. They don't shy away from it either, and I applaud how open they are about being an authorized dealer for 'X' brands, when publishing articles related to those brands. I still enjoy their content in the same way I enjoyed seeing adverts of Rolex or Omega in National Geographic magazines... because that's all that Hodinkee really produces these days: beautiful & long-form ad copies, occasionally disguised as watch reviews.

Thanks, I haven't really followed ABTW's output but might give it a go based on your observation.

Hi guys, in summer 2019 my father got a sub 114060 brand new, after few weeks when He woke up in the morning the watch was not running for 4 -5 times. We took it to the Rome boutique, watchmaker said it was working correctly, he mentioned it may need few more weeks of wrist time to get up and running correctly. The watch stops again in the following weeks, so we went back to the shop, we insisted to send the watch to the Italian main service center in Milan. The watch was returned to us after 2 months (november 2019 )and after many phone calls to costumer service, They sent a e mail stated that the watch needed a few adjustment. Few days ago I got a phone call from my father "it s stopped. again". we are very disappointed, it' s a pain to deal with the service center, i called the costumer service, explained that we already had this problem, and because of that if they would speed up the process to check what's wrong the watch. The lady said it doesn't matter, it would take more o less 2 months once again to get the watch back. Very disappointed.

I have no issues on my end but since I rotate my watches I seldom notice time keeping issues.

a good friend of mine has the current ceramic Pepsi GMT and he just had to send it to service because it’s running ahead significantly.

No issues on my end with both. I have a tudor pelagos with the in house movement and a sub 11610. I wear the pelagos as my daily for almost 2 years and still good although I've also heard problems from others with regard to movement problems with tudor..

bought it on 2020 I believe, straight form there AD. Maybe it was late 2019.

No he got it either late 2019 or early 2020

Rolex and Tudor sell hundreds of thousands of watches every year. Two can never be a representative sample. I have owned 2 Rolex and 3 Tudors (still have one of each) and all have been faultless.

I agree, my BLNR has also been flawless... but it has the 3186 movement.

I don’t wear the DeepSea ALL the time, but time will tell if the 32xx from 2021 is less reliable or not. 😗

do you mean to say, whether the 32XXs from 2021 are more or less reliable compared to the 32XXs that were sooner out the gate?

sorry for being dense, just trying to follow the thread