Bottom line, both are right.
No different than taking your Porsche to an Authorized dealer vs and Indie. Porsche wants the car serviced to Porsche's standards, and Indie will be much more flexible and defer to the owner. Both are right...from their own points of view.
To bring this back full circle, I have decided to take it back from Rolex and give it to my regular watchmaker to service. Appearance-wise, I am certain it will be appreciated as is and there is no risk or extra cost this way.
Thanks to everyone who chimed in!
It’s actually very different. People’s lives depend on a car being serviced properly so that nothing goes wrong. Leaving old parts on a car has very different implications than for a vintage watch. Yet another automotive analogy that doesn’t really work.
I would also suggest that an owner of a vintage Porsche wouldn’t be any more pleased if a service done had devalued their car either.
I know for some Rolex can do no wrong, but they can and do on a regular basis.
I guess we agree to disagree. I don't know anyone who can do no wrong. Doctors and hospitals kill thousands of people every year with simple medical accidents and mistakes.
If you are gifting it to your step-mom it should be in excellent mechanical and cosmetic shape. This is not some sort of classic watch, it's a steel and gold Rolex made 25 years ago in the millions. Send it to Rolex and have them do a full proper service. I just had my wife's 2007 steel DJ serviced for the first time by Rolex in Dallas, it was in well used condition and scratched and marked all over. Rolex did a fantastic job on everything and it came back looking like new, as it should at this point in its life. Wife was not interested in getting back the same scratched up watch she sent in. I doubt your step-mom wants a gift that looks used.
Have Rolex do the work, everyone will be happier in the end product. And I'm always amazed at how many vintage Rolex's still have the original green sticker on the back with all the wrist cheese and bacteria that will accumulate after 25+ years. That's the first thing I'd clean up.
I'm not sure Rolex will do partial work, they give you an estimate and you either say Yes or No. I could be wrong but I don't think you can tell them to do the overhaul on the movement, touch up the case, but don't do anything else.
Reading some of these posts is makes me more impressed (or lucky!) with my own personal experience with RSC King Hill, London. They have always adhered to my instructions and on the occasion where they gave me no choice my watch was returned to me exactly how it was when I sent it. They have always been happy to speak to me over the telephone and seem to have an understanding and respect of my wish to retain the originality of my watch. On the one occasion when a dial was removed and replaced without my agreement Mr Henry Hudson (who was the manager at the time) intervened and the issue was resolved to my complete satisfaction with the return of the original dial and hands. On another occasion there was a problem with the operation of the crown (this to was resolved). There is always a possibility problems will arise with any service - be it watches, cars, wood burning stoves (I have had issues with very well respected independents in the UK) but the acid test for me is how the problem is dealt with and on all occasions I have been fortunate in so far as resolution was reached. Perhaps the consumer protection laws in the UK are favourable too.
My caveat to the above is that this is my experience only (I could just have been very lucky) but for longer than I care to remember be it very vintage or simply neo vintage I have always been able to find service/repair that suits my own personal needs for a particular time piece through the use of both RCS, Swiss Time Services and some fantastic independents (who I have to say have a wealth of knowledge and a true passion in what they do).
May the choices you make be the right ones and most importantly have a great day!!!!
4 45rpmhow much was your service? I just did mine last year in Sydney with rsc, and they screwed it up and it spent 9 months in the repair shop and in the end I demanded a new movement which they replaced..... absolute disaster but I wonder what other service is like overseas
These threads always devolve into the same type of conflicting anecdotes. Frankly, it doesn't surprise me that some people have good experiences, that is after all what one should expect when one sends a watch to the manufacturer. However, I would expect that close to 100% of the customers would be satisfied, and that is never the case on this forum and others. Every time a thread starts, new stories come to light, some very disturbing.
Especially concerning to me are the large number of consistent stories where various Rolex RSCs replace parts and/or require the replacement of parts for no good reason. The inconsistency of whether they will return parts (sometimes for an extra fee) is also troublesome.. So the occasional favorable anecdotes really don't do much to assuage my personal concerns, and to the extent possible, I will continue to avoid Rolex service.
As for the argument about whether companies like Rolex have a right or obligation to refrain from certain practices or inform customers about the effects that their practices might have on things like value, I think that may be wishful thinking.
Positive anecdotes are often presented as proof of the standard, when they are actually the exception to the standard. That's the primary thing I try to get across. There's risk in using the brand for service of a vintage watch, but if people want to take that risk, as long as they know the risk going in then the result is on them.
I would be the first to praise the brands if they actually respected the vintage nature of the watches that were sent to them, but generally they do not. Even when there are clearly ways to preserve the parts if they are too risky to keep on the watch as they are, their only option is to replace them with new parts (or as in one case here, tell people that the warranty is void if those parts cause a problem - a cop out solution IMO).
No one is suggesting leaving parts on the watch that are going to cause a warranty issue, as every watchmaker wants to avoid that, myself included. It's the solutions presented by the brands that are problematic.
Cheers, Al
I am not presenting my own experience as "proof of a standard". Just my own experience. The exclusion on the warranty from damage cause by lume is not an issue and from my point of view not a cop out IMO and seems fair as an alternative to new parts. As you say there is indeed a risk in using a brand for a service and that I guess is where passionate independents come in. Good health all.
I didn't say you were doing this - but people often do in these threads.
On the "no warranty" issue, we can agree to disagree. When there's a way to stabilize lume and still provide a warranty, this is in my opinion a cop out. But if you are satisfied, that's all good.
It is Rolex's right to not approve of that particular technology for use in their watches. That's not a cop out, that is just a company setting the standards they do business by.
A claim that there is a way to stabilize aging lume is "a claim", but one that the maker of that claim isn't warranting on their dime.
