Speedy 3861 weirdness - BUYER BEWARE

Davey2024

Great post. And clearly you have professional experience in QA, but you have not qualified your statement about Omega failure rates.

My rudimentary Google search result numbers relating to 3861 and 9900 are demonstrable, but albeit coarse and likely wildly inaccurate, how do you support your statement that 3861 is not in 4 digit failure rates?

I suspect the rate is much higher (see previous statement about google search results)

I know I said I would stop posting, and I'm not looking for an argument, but I think it's important to be able to back these kinda statements in some way shape or form. So, please tell me how you have concluded failure rates are in the 3 digits range?

Thanks

Scarecrow Boat

I think the biggest one yet to come is when the OP inevitably tries to sell this due to the extreme disappointment he and his social circle are experiencing from this, and sees just how well a standard modern speedy holds its value. Specially when purchased at full retail.

Foo2rama

The fact you think B stock is released by a Swiss watch company and your inability to take a little ribbing is rapidly creating a very unflattering image of you and your critical thinking skills.

Scarecrow Boat

I think the biggest one yet to come is when the OP inevitably tries to sell this due to the extreme disappointment he and his social circle are experiencing from this, and sees just how well a standard modern speedy holds its value. Specially when purchased at full retail.

ExpiredWatchdog

@Davey2024, how does your boss put up with you?

Foo2rama

The fact you think B stock is released by a Swiss watch company and your inability to take a little ribbing is rapidly creating a very unflattering image of you and your critical thinking skills.

Archer

It depends how you define failure. If a watch owner rarely uses the chronograph (which is quite common as people just like the look of chronographs and don’t use them much) then they may never see the problem, and it can still exist.

For that watch owner, there is no problem. But the same watch owned by someone who uses the chronograph a great deal may fail after 7 months. This is why Omega (or any other manufacturer) is not going to recall watches. Doing so would flood their already overwhelmed service centres, and cause watch owners who are not affected directly to have delays in their watches being serviced. Omega would be servicing watches that otherwise wouldn’t have the problem even show up to the end user, and aggravating a whole pile of other customers in the process.

If you really want a horror story, try the Rolex 3235 movement family. Multiple design issues that Rolex didn’t admit even existed, so certainly no recall, and owners having to send their watches in multiple times with the same problems coming up again and again and Rolex saying nothing to them about what was wrong or if it was really fixed properly. Of course no word that it has been solved more generally because they would never admit that there’s a problem. Even their own watchmakers were kept in the dark (in contrast Omega has been publishing updates to the service network on the 3861 issues since they started).

As a watchmaker I can tell you that every watch company makes mistakes in their designs. Watch movement designs are being updated all the time because things show up over time that they don’t see in whatever short term testing companies do. When I went to Omega for training years ago, the instructor told us that the 8500 movement had been made and worn by employees for a number of years before it was put into production for sale to the public, but despite that, it had to have design issues resolved after it was in widespread use.

As another poster mentioned, it’s possible to test things before production, but there’s only so much you can do with a wrist watch to accelerate testing, so there’s no equivalent to the data you get from widespread use by customers.

In the end this is not so much of an Omega problem as it is an industry problem. This sort of experience comes with the territory. As a former Jag owner you get to understand that high end and reliable don’t necessarily correlate the way you think they might. 😉

Evitzee

Yeah, but he hasn't even turned over the watch to Omega, lots more dramas are probably coming up. 😁

This is one of those times that the Kid Creole & the Coconuts song "There's Something Wrong in Paradise" is apt. And like the catchy tune says, "Someone's got to pay the price"

texasmade

My Snoopy 50 broke a few weeks ago. At least I got a solid 3 years of wear before it broke. Watch wouldn't wind, chrono wouldn't activate, hours/min hand stopped working, reset pusher stopped working. Currently being repaired under warranty.

Jakeys

I thought you'd had enough?

Davey2024

putting more words in my mouth.

Davey2024

I've had enough of this now