Quote:
Originally Posted by kscarrol
Just curious, have you confirmed this with Movado? The Authenticwatch website explicitly warns that watch makers will not honor warranties so they (Authenticwatches) offer their own warranty in its place...
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The warranty status of watches found at GMSes is one of the murkiest things you'll find this side of swamp water. Some GMS' watches are purchased from the manufacturer and/or manufacturer's boutiques. Some are purchased from ADs who sell them to the GMS in order to meet performance quotas or to free up what in retail parlance is called "open to buy." As a consumer, it's unlikely you'll be able to find out how the GMS came by the watch.
I've heard tell that if the maker offers a different warranty term than the GMS does for the same item, it's likely that the watch came from a GMS and the GMS is going to provide. The same folks tell me that if the warranty period matches, there's no way to tell. I don't know how whether either line is true. I do know that if the GMS won't warranty the watch, you shouldn't buy it from them.
"Open to buy" is essentially a line of credit provided to a retailer by a financing company. It's what allows most retailers to be able to purchase inventory to sell. In the car business, the same exact thing is referred to as "floor plan." If a seller has a $2M line of credit and they use it to purchase $500K of inventory, the creditor will pay the maker for the inventory and the retailer makes payments on the $500K, which is secured by the inventory itself. (Thus creditors to watch sellers who go belly up may also sell to a GMS.) If the retailer sells $1000K of merchandise, s/he pays the creditor and the open to buy goes from $1.5M to $1.6M.
When a new season comes along or a heavily promoted new model/style comes out, retailers want to carry that one not the old one. If they have enough open to buy, they will just carry both models. If they don't, they'll act to free up the open to buy and carry just the new one.
So now, back to the warranty. Some manufacturers are more concerned about the goodwill relationship with folks who have authentic, not stolen, pieces that they produced and they will perform warranty repairs regardless of how you came by it so long as it's within warranty period. Others are less big picture oriented. Some are big picture this month and not next month. What stance the maker takes depends on a number of things, all of which won't be known to you the consumer.
The short of it is that if you buy from a GMS, the sole expectation you can legitimately have is with regard to the warranty the GMS provides.
Considerations that you may not have explored:
- Does the GMS have a reasonably well skilled watch repair person on staff? Normally, if they do, you can talk to them and get as sense.
- Just ask the guy what he thinks about the watch you want to buy. Ask him if he's worked n them before. Ask what difficulties he's had dong so with that watch or with others. If he's got a lot of good detailed answers, odds are very good he's a capable fellow and you can rely on him to take care of your watch if the GMS has to cover your warranty repair. I probably wouldn't put too much trust in the guy if he has nothing but vague or empty answers. One exception is if s/he clearly doesn't have the nation's language as his/her first language. Sometimes in situations like that, folks say less just because they aren't sure of themselves in that language. The one thing I've found though is that if they say the don't know something, or haven't worked with a brand/company, they aren't lying.
- Ask the guy how long he's worked for that company and how long he's been repairing watches. If he's been there for 30 years, he could retire at any moment. If he's been there for 7 years, but also been working with watches for about 10+ years, he's far less likely to go anywhere. You get the idea? It's a judgment call to be sure, but unless you ask the guy if he plans to leave -- you can ask, but I can't say what answer you'll get -- it's as good a sense as you're going to get.
- How much access does the GMS have to proprietary parts if God forbid such a thing would be needed (super rare with good watches, but it's happened even to the best of them at least once). FPJ uses proprietary screws, for example. Some watches requires unique tools that may have been custom made for that watch company, in which case, it may take special skills/training to fix the darn thing, and that's assuming (for warranty work) that it can be fixed rather than having to be replaced. You can find this out by speaking with the maker and speaking with external repairmen. If the watch you are considering is such a watch, I'd strongly suggest buying from an AD. Do your best to haggle the price down, but don't screw your self over by buying from a GMS when you know up front that if something happens, the only recourse they can offer you is replacement. I can tell you now, the GMS will be looking for everything they can find to ensure they don't have to replace a watch, much less a very expensive one.
- Is there a local watch repairman in your town who could do the job if push came to shove? You'll need to do your own homework/legwork on this. I have my own "watch guy," but I have enough trouble getting hold of him because he's too busy as it is. Regardless of where you buy your watch, it's always a good idea to find a local watch repairman who knows his stuff, and it's best to find the guy while your watch is still working. That way you won't be pressed if/when you need his help and you can show him the watch in question while it's still working fine and he can look at it and give you the best input.
- How "uncommon" and or esoteric is your watch? Bear in mind, this is a question that needs to be answered from a watchmakers/watch repairman's perspective, not a consumer's. You won't seem a lot of VC or PP watches on folks' wrists, but to a watch guy, their movements aren't anything they can't handle, at least the simple ones. Similarly any brand's, say minute repeater or sonnierie or multi-complication watch. Or, hypothetically, if the guy has to replace a beveled cog wheel, he may know how but not have the tool to do so.
(Those sorts of things should give you some ideas about what you want to discuss with a repairman. In the past, or when I'm away from home, I will ask questions of that nature not because I want to know, but to see how he handles them. It's another way to get a good sense of the guy's integrity as well as knowledge and skill.)
Hope that helps you figure out for yourself if and for which purchases a GMS is a comfortable option for your and for which a GMS may not be such a good option. Obviously, these are the types of things one'll do if one is serious about their watch, but one doesn't have to be that serious. It's really just about how much you give a damn and what level of risk you can endure.
One thing I can fairly easily say is that the considerations of warranty repairs and servicing are why a whole lot of folks are perfectly happy to buy an expensive and fancy ETA-based watch instead of some in-house creation that only three people on the planet can work on. Ease of ownership is one reason folks like Rolex. It's why I don't push folks hard to buy "out there," expensive, in-house movement watches.
Fancy watches are like fancy cars, although they usually cost a bit less to buy. The maintenance costs are for many of the pricey ones almost the same. Fancy watches are in many ways no different, but the service costs can actually be higher.
Last words to the wise: of all the top brands, AP seems to cost the most to maintain and they are the fussiest about warranties. VC seems to take the longest to get the watch back to you. Rolex's policy is to restore the watch to "like new" condition when you send it in, so there's no telling what they may find that needs fixing that they'll just fix and bill you for it, which is why watch guys get a lot of Rolex work.
All the best.