Hi everyone!

I have a Seamaster that is 11 years old. It was my wedding gift and is an amazing watch. It's in near perfect condition and runs great! I have zero issues with this watch. It has never been serviced, but I know its a bit over due.

I took a look at the Omega website and it looks like its about $550 to have this done. No problem. My question is this.. it appears in that service, that Omega will do everything to it.. (totally take it apart, service, replace parts as needed, re-polish case etc).

That's incredible.

So.. I have to ask then... If this is the case (flat rate of service) then, does it really matter how long I go between service intervals? Example, 5years vs 10, etc. Or even just letting it go and go until I DO have an issue etc.

I know there are tons of thoughts on this, and I am not looking to open a "can of worms". I just wanted to kinda verify that if the watch needs several parts, the Omega service covers it and wont cost more than the $550.

Thanks so much guys!
T

 

From a purely financial perspective, there is some truth to what you say, and this has been noted in previous threads.

 

Thank you. Yeah, this was very interesting to me. For example, I have another watch (Sinn 104) and there is a service rate of close to $450 and then it can go up depending on the parts needed etc. So, in that case it would make more sense to be a little more "proactive" on sending it in etc. So, it's interesting that Omega offers what they do. This really becomes a great value and provides a bit more confidence to just wear the watch and not worry so much, lol.

 

Indeed, I often tell people that with a modern watch, waiting until there's a problem may be the best way to go financially.

However there is one caveat - water resistance. Omega will replace worn parts as part of the service, but if the watch gets wet inside, and parts rust, dial degrade, etc., that no longer a regular service, and the owner will pay MUCH more for all that. So there is some risk, but how much depends on how the watch is worn.

 

The only reason I can think of why I would send in a perfectly running watch, is the integrity of the seals that keep out water or just debris that may work its way into the watch. Also be sure that all the spring bars get changed to avoid a corroded spring bar from breaking unexpectedly on you. So if you just want new seals and spring bars, then you could possibly have this done by a qualified independent. But if we are going that far, why not have Omega service the watch and hopefully it get's returned looking like new. Also any movement updates they have done since your watch was new may be incorporated into the service. That doesn't mean you get a new movement it just means any parts that changed specs while this watch was in production, might be changed out. They usually change the hands, they offer to change the dial, and unless you tell them not to do it, they will polish the case, and the bracelet polish may be an additional fee. The last time I sent a watch to Omega they polished the watch. I recently sent a Tag Hauer for service and they don't polish the watch unless you ask them to. Just verify with Omega Service what is included.

 

I use performance as an indicator of when to service. For example, when I bought my 2254.50.00 used, it had a receipt for service with it, and after my watchmaker adjusted for wear, it was a great timekeeper... until it wasn't. Sent it in for service and as you would except, it keeps time very well now.

That's why I like to get a good baseline for every watch coming back from service, so I'll have an idea when timekeeping deteriorates.

 

Ah! Yes. That is a great point. My god, I never thought of that. 100%. Thanks Archer. You had helped me in the past with other questions too. Really appreciate your help.

 

@imagwai would disagree.

 

Please ask him to show the service documents. It may depend on the reference and caliber number. A different reference they may charge a different fee and offer a different standard level service. In 2021, and in my example I serviced a CV5111 calibre 17, and it was returned un polished and it's going back to be polished, I was told it is a different level of service to get case polishing, which means higher service fee. Please print the service documents for us and post them here. I am sure we would all learn from this experience. Thank you.

 

His word is good enough for me, you can read his posts here;

https://forums.calibre11.com/threads/tag-heuer-servicing-times.125452/page-4#post-1761045

And an offer to re-case further in the thread;

 

have you ever seen the service paper work from the Manufacturer service center? This is not a copy of the service paper work, but thank you for sharing this as it may help some others.

 

Hi, I've always seen the servicing policy of any mechanism as falling into two categories; reactive or preventative, and owning watches that are pretty high on the luxury scale does drag with it the ownership dilemma of which type of service attitude to adopt, a bit like high end cars, like, say, an Aston Martin dealer would insist on the vehicle being brought in by a certain date or mileage is reached for a preventative maintenance and/or service and will replace or recondition parts before they've worn out, just to prevent them from failing during normal use, you pay through the nose for this type of reassurance but if money is not something you factor into your decisions then peace of mind comes next, i've just had a few watches back from STS and they're absolutely perfect in their operation and accuracy (perfect in this case meaning none of them gain more than 5 seconds in 24 hours, setting the time and date feels smooth and solid through the crown, they're all nearing the 50 year mark) which as a non-watchmaker is the only judgement i'm qualified to pass on them, but i'm sure we all know that feeling through the crown of crunching/clicking/stuttering where you know you really shouldn't touch it anymore but get it off to be serviced.
Having said all that i'm still one who has to factor money into my daily decision making so won't be getting the same ones serviced again until they show signs of needing one rather than stick rigidly to the 2 year warranty period and get them done again then.

 

I tend to only send my watches in for service if I notice a change in their running.

I monitor their time keeping against something like time.is online, a few times a year and look for consistency which they tend to always have if running correctly. As soon as I noticed them running fast or slow or not operating or winding correctly, I send them in.

I get them pressure tested every 5 years or so too. Inexpensive.

 

I've always wondered this too. Should you service it even though it runs fine? Or wait and hope you don't do more damage to it and have to pay even more. The consistence out there seems to be don't service it until it needs servicing. Meaning if it's running fine and doing what's it suppose to do, leave it be until it isn't. Just my opinion.

 

Yes i agree, it is a personal choice as well, i don't think there's a wrong servicing policy to adopt, (as long as you don't wait until the crown feels like a pepper grinder when you set the time)
if it's a tool type watch that you rely on to make decisions then probably having it serviced just before the warranty of the previous one has run out is a good idea, dive tool-watches (or is it tool dive-watches) these days are rarely relied upon by divers to indicate the bottom time remaining,
i'm not sure if some pilots still use wrist-mounted chronographs as part of their in-flight decision making, if so then they might use the preventative servicing method, ie service before it's needed, to ensure reliability, but then i'd expect that would fall into the pilot's equipment maintenance schedule category of commercial, military or civilian which i'm not familiar with enough to comment on, but even used as a back up in case of aircraft equipment failure then it would be a hell of a safety net, so still worth keeping in good reliable condition, but maybe a pilot could correct me and i'll get back in my box
and if it's a nice watch to just enjoy wearing purely for wearing's sake then the reactive service is fine, keep an eye on it's accuracy, just like Bp1000 said, and when it starts to lose or gain significant amounts of time, then have a service

 

The thing I try to get across to people is that there is no one size fits all policy that will get you the best result. As I've said many times, it really depends on a lot of things. So to take 2 extremes...

1 - Modern watch, you plan to use the brand service center, and they charge you a flat fee - in this case, again as long as you don't end up with catastrophic water damage that will cost you a lot, then waiting for a problem to develop is often the best way financially to go. All parts that wear out are included in the flat fee.

Some people are fine doing this, and some who have more of what I call "mechanical sympathy" will not like the idea of parts grinding themselves to death inside, so there are considerations other than financial here. Also, what people consider a "problem" varies greatly. Some will want to get it looked at as soon at it no longer meets factory, COSC, or METAS timing specs. Some will live with it being out a minute a day and still call it good...I say this because I've had people hand me a watch to service saying "runs pretty good, about a minute a day out."

And then the other extreme...

2 - Vintage watch where due to brand policies you are getting it serviced with your preferred watchmaker. The movement is no longer made, parts are hard to find, and when you do find them, they cost an arm and a leg. In this case, you will want to do whatever you can to preserve the parts inside the watch, so letting it develop any problems is potentially a very bad move from a financial standpoint. I regularly service vintage watches where the cost of parts far exceeds my labour charge. In a modern Omega watch a typical train wheel for the movement might cost say $18 from the brand. For a vintage wheel, that's now up to $47 for most of these, again buying from the brand. If the parts can't be bought from the brand, I now have to go out on the open market to find them, and then things can get really silly. Train wheels costing $150 each are not uncommon for many calibers, and in a very extreme example I was looking for a new fourth wheel for this recently:



An the only one I could find was $550 for a used wheel...I ended up sending the wheel out to be repivoted instead, which was much cheaper (about 1/2 the cost o9f the used wheel) but took a very long time. I also had to replace a second wheel in the movement that was another $150, so just in two wheels those parts were $400 of the final bill...

I would say at least 95% of the watches I get in are watches that already have a problem of some kind, so they have either stopped completely, have poor accuracy, poor power reserve, water inside, some function doesn't work the way it should, etc. I do very little in the way of "preventative maintenance" style servicing.

Of the 5% that come with without a known issue, many of these the owner has just bought it with no service history, so they send it in to have that first service done so they have a baseline to start with. There are very few of these that don't have some issue in them also in my experience (these are often vintage). So I get to see the result of "don't service until there's a problem" pretty much daily.

I've always concluded that saying that running it until there's a problem could be very smart for one watch, and not very smart for another.

Cheers, Al

 

Well, that may be conceptually true and yet not literary true since it is the looks what is not covered by Omega's standard fee.

Excepting polishing, hands and crown, they don't include aesthetics so dial, case, bezel, bracelet... the parts that most notably impact the "like new" perception... are not covered.

And then, polishing depends a lot on the hands that will do it and it's not something that can be repeated forever, so no wonder some people will explicitly ask not being done.

Even regarding hands things are not black-and-white. Vendor's rationale is that they can be damaged on servicing but then, you either end up with hands that don't match up with dial appearence or they do, but then they fail the "like new" test.

I.e.: I recently sent my Speedmaster Mk40 for service; they of course replaced the hands but, given this model has been out of catalogue for quite a long time now, I suspect the hands are also NOS from back then and their lume, while not bad, is no better than the one from the hands they retired (and quite lower than when the watch was fresh new).

Also, the most beaten-up looking part of the watch was the bezel and the steel outer ring that protects it... the bezel was not covered and the steel ring is part of the main case and so thin they couldn't polish it without making the remedy worse than the disease. I have to say the polishing work on case and bracelet was, to my eyes, outstanding and yet, because these things the watch certainly doesn't look "like new".

Again in my case, case and bracelet polishing were included, but I never heard about dial being included. Movement updates I think it's great, except for maybe those most interested in the "historic value" but visible parts, it's a different issue, since they don't usually get upgraded because of quality reasons but economics/stock reduction which usually means they are less valuable than originals, i.e.: you won't get the "Naiad" poligonal crown on your 60's connie but a generic one, or the arrows will look slightly off-looking since they won't be the ones designed for the watch, etc.

Finally, about the main question, I was gifted my Mk40 brand new in 2007, and it went without revision till 2020 because it started to behave "funny" (for most of this time it was almost exactly 3 seconds slow a day and in few months it progressively started to lose more time: I took it as a hint the watch was asking me for service). But starting some two~three years before that I was starting to worry about its water tightness (I used that watch in any condition, including showering, bathing, "light" free-diving...) so I got a diver's for "heavy-duty water-related activities".

Makes it "economic sense" waiting for so long (forgetting about water-tighness)? Well, I think there's an important hint I took from my watch's servicing. They returned to me the parts they alledgelly changed (I think that's mandated by EU regulations) so, after 13 years of faithful and basically constant service, how many parts they updated from that caliber? Exactly ZERO.

I got back arrows, some bracelet pins, crown and stem, chrono buttons, seals... but not a single part from the caliber itself so, they either get "sloppy" and don't pre-emptively update parts unless they go out of spec, or the parts are sturdy enough that under standard use conditions they can last much longer than their advised three-five years standard service intervals, in any of these cases I don't see the value of paying 600+ bucks any time sooner than when the watch starts acting funny for the privilege of... nothing.

 

Preventative maintenance is much more expensive and frequent than reactive servicing, so usually only an option for those who don't even see their bank statements but have meetings with their retained accountant once a month, so they're more likely to choose an authorised service centre who employ a department of technicians,
the rest of us normal folk will use the authorised service centres for reactive maintenance when the watch starts to run slow or fast (assuming we have a history with the watch and know it's normal behaviour), and want it back perfect because they have the parts account with the necessary manufacturer, although this only means they can order genuine parts that are still made, "Omega vintage SM120 135, 136, 165, 166 and so on...bezels looking at you)
maybe a normal watchmaker is good for a budget service, but you get what you pay for and the authorised service centres do charge a lot more for their fancy little pouches and warranty cards etc, but with that you get a perfectly operational vintage back, there must be exceptions obviously and they have their limits but i'm yet to find any, whereas independent watchmakers with all the goodwill in the world can only do so much within their ability, so will charge a much more attractive fee but you'll get their best effort back with excuses, which is fair i think, they can't work miracles and for what they charge neither should we expect them to, one i've used for a few years is a good honest watchmaker who learnt the trade from his father, and is open about what his limitations are, but does the odd small job for a very small fee, which is great, but a full service on a vintage i'd go to an Omega authorised centre with a parts account

 

I wish my local guy was budget! He is brand-trained and holds CW21 certification and is a real enthusiast himself. It is not unusual for the first service to cost more than the watch. On the other hand, he charged less than the estimate for my 30T2 because it required little work for him... "it just went together."

Now with a box full of ten watches I'll wear in a semi-random fashion, I probably won't even need one a year for service, and the modern Omegas go to Nesbit's anyways.

 

These comments are simply naive. In fact, I think that few serious vintage collectors use factory service centers for the majority of their watches, certainly not for their best watches.

Not all independent watchmakers were trained by their father. Some were trained at the top watchmaking institutes in the world, receive ongoing and updated factory training for multiple brands, maintain certifications, continually purchase expensive tools and equipment in order to maintain parts accounts, etc. Many worked at factory service centers for a portion of their careers and then opened their own shop. When you work with a skilled independent watchmaker, you have the opportunity to communicate directly with them, and you know that a single skilled person is working on the watch from beginning to end. They will generally keep you abreast of things and give you options. This is really the only way I am comfortable having someone work on a vintage watch that is important to me.

In contrast, if you send a watch in to a factory service center, you will get one quote, and then you just have to hope for the best as the watch goes through the assembly line. You never know what you are going to get back. But as mentioned above, if it's a generic modern watch, then who cares. Let the service center go at it. Even if they hack it up, you can send it back again and they'll replace more parts until it works right.