The value of trust: priceless

Anyone that follows the WRUW thread will know that today I received the creeper back from service. Ok you say good, you should service your watches when necessary so what is the big deal. Unfortunately the playing field is not necessarily level across this flat world that we live in.

When I lived in Singapore, easy there is a watchmaker on almost every corner and quite a few competent ones so no problem. Move to Vietnam, not quite the same, so send to Singapore? Not so easy.

Vietnam has a law stating that you cannot import used goods into the country unless you hand carry on entry which means that if I did send to Singapore I would then have to fly to Singapore and pick up. Coincidentally I almost lost the creeper due to this very law. When I purchased the creeper several years ago it was supposed to be shipped to Australia for me to receive there and hand carry back with me. However due to shipping delays and my impatience I ended up requesting it be shipped to Vietnam. Sure enough when the watch arrives I get a call from the freight company requesting that I come to discuss with the customs department. The only thing that saved me on the day was the fact that I had the shipper describe as "precision instrument being returned from repair". After much arguing that it was actually my watch being returned and still paying a hefty duty I received the creeper.

One solution was to have my watches serviced when I went to Australia which meant that the timing had to be guaranteed for service completion. I reached out to @watchyouwant and Achim very kindly put me in contact with his watchmaker which worked well until unfortunately and sadly he recently passed away.

During this period whilst I stilled lived in Vietnam I also worked in Saudi Arabia for four and a half years. I continued to use the Australian alternative as I did not manage to find anyone that I trusted in Saudi Arabia.

I moved back to Vietnam permanently mid 2017 and had to repatriate my watches with me that turned out to be an interesting exercise. See below.
https://omegaforums.net/threads/nothing-like-adding-a-bit-of-stress-to-travel.57071/

Fast forward to today. The creeper needs servicing, obviously. A number of my other watches need repair and servicing and now in the days of COVID and Vietnam(world) in lock down the options are few.

Once again I reach out to a fellow member @hoipolloi and ask him if he knew of a watchmaker in Vietnam that he would trust and he suggested @No Mercy. I contacted Dat(hope you don't mind me using your name) and organised an interview to see if he is the person that I could trust to work on my treasures.

He is a lovely guy and his watch makers are very caring and professional in their work and even put up with me watching over them, out of curiosity to see what they were doing more so than checking up on them. One of his watchmakers is Omega trained and I think still does some work for Omega. I have wondered why Dat chose the alias of @No Mercy but I think it is a carry over from his gaming days, I must ask him.

I gave him a few test projects and was very happy and last week submitted the creeper. The creeper has a beautiful dial and I was very anxious about the possibility of potential damage. Received back today and couldn't be happier and I have a standing appointment each week for quite some time to have my watches serviced and repaired.

Downside is that he also sells a number of vintage watches, so whilst I am annoying him picking up or dropping off watches I peruse what he has. It has been a long time since I have purchased something new to play with😀

The creeper before:



And today, zero cosmetic other than clean. Exactly as requested:



The value of trust: priceless.

I thought I’d figure it out, but what’s a creeper?

Hour recorder creep...

Yes, I am sure one day he will kick me out as I am always sticking my nose into all of the interesting things he has there, be it watches or tools😀

That bezel is a great shade of blue. Well done!

Two things that haunt every 321 owner:

Creepers
Top gun watchmakers dying and retiring

My guy is retiring in six months, no idea what I’ll do when he’s gone as the guy is a magician with everything from servicing to part fabrication to cosmetic work. The next best guy isn’t even in the ballpark 🙁

The 321 and 861 designs are virtually the same, so it isn't just 321's. Generally speaking the creeping is not difficult to resolve. There are only a very limited number of things that cause it, so as long as you cover those, it should be solved without any issues.

It’s more so that every time you need to send a 321 off for service you tend to be a lot more careful than with an 861 due to the value involved and the people you tend to trust are rarely cheap while the 861s typically aren’t in the same high risk category where a bit of damaged lume or a mishandled dial can leave you with a lot of loss

Maybe he just has good taste in music 😀

Not enough information to say in my view. What specific damage are we talking about? Did the watchmaker own up to the damage? Was compensation of some sort offered?

Everyone makes mistakes, myself included. Any watchmaker who claims to be perfect is simply lying to you. What's important is first minimizing such things, but also in how you deal with them when they happen.

Just to be clear, I'm not taking sides here. If you follow my posts at all, you will know I have little time nor patience for watchmakers who do poor work, so my first instinct here is not to try to defend the watchmaker. Just making sure you understand that.

Still have to read between the lines here, but it appears he knew he damaged it, and didn't say anything? If that's true, then the loss of trust on the fact alone is warranted IMO. You don't mess up and then just hope no one notices. Now do I understand why someone might do that, out of sheer embarrassment? Yes, but I'm not condoning it. I can tell you that in the few instances where something has gone wrong at my bench, I am as upset as anyone, and having a conversation with someone about it isn't easy, nor should it be. Having had those conversations before, even just a couple, is a strong driver not to have to have them again.

In terms of compensation, unless this watchmaker is also someone who follows collector values for whatever watch this happens to be, then it would be up to you to propose what you think is adequate compensation as start, and then go from there. The primary reason I participate here (other than to educate people) is for me to learn the things that collectors (my customers) value, but no one person is going to know the current market value of all watches, so that's why you would be the one to start that conversation. But I would have expected him to at least ask about what he could do. Refunding the cost of the service would be a good start.


So I'll just remind you of something that you maybe missed in my last post:

"What's important is first minimizing such things, but also in how you deal with them when they happen."

Mitigation is not elimination, so there is always risk. This is why I said everyone makes mistakes - a mistake is inherently a failure of process. As an both an engineer and a watchmaker I understand these things pretty well. It's one reason why watchmaking is taught in such a dogmatic way at times, because it's all about process and habit. But unlike engineering of structures, etc., it's somewhat more unpredictable in nature when it comes to handling of decades old materials - the cosmetics as you put it. And I can say that most watchmaking schools don't bother with this stuff - the focus is on the movement in most schools, although that is changing.

I can tell you that I have had instances where honestly a slight puff of air from my hand blower would cause things to come off the dial - I didn't even touch the dial physically. This is already mitigating risk, by using the most non-invasive dial cleaning procedure there is to remove loose dirt, and yet it does damage. I'm not suggesting that is the case here, because quite frankly I don't know. But the idea that things should never go wrong is just unrealistic. Unfortunately this is not a structure that you can build a safety factor into, so you often don't know how delicate something is, until it's already had a problem, and there's no precaution that can be taken to prevent it, other than not having the watch worked on at all. It's just the nature of this work sometimes.

Again your situation might be very different, and it was mishandling of the dial that did the damage. If that's the case, there's no excuse other than it was a mistake. Good luck with the resolution.

Cheers, Al