Swiss/German made or Made in China?

Tools and equipment for a watch shop are not cheap. Buy a Swiss name brand and you're paying 4-5x the Chinese equivalent.

I recently bought an ultrasonic cleaner from Alibaba. The manufacturer claimed they did R&D for a known Swiss brand. To be honest, I'm fine if it is just half the quality of the comparable original.

Price was 10x cheaper. Nothing to lose. Worst case, I file a quality claim.

Surprisingly, the cleaner is very good. Quiet, strong vibration, does the job well.

Made in China doesn't automatically mean it won't be good.

→ Yes, you give up warranty and support → But at a fraction of the price, just buy another one

Still on the fence, or philosophically set on 100% original swiss made? Go for it if you have the money.

—FZ

The Trust Account

Every warranty claim is a deposit or a withdrawal from the trust account. Most service operations don't know which one they're making until the client stops coming back. The two scripts When a client walks in with a warranty question, there are essentially two opening lines:

What Breaks When You Do

My dad ran his watch shop for years on memory and paper. Job statuses, promised dates, parts on order, callbacks pending. All of it in his head or in a pile on the bench. Then a client called on a Thursday. His anniversary. The watch was done Wednesday. My dad

FREE battery service?

A colleague once told me how he handles customers who can't afford the store they walked into. Client comes in, looks around. Budget is tight. SA notices his Citizen quartz is running behind. Offers to set the time, and finds out the battery is dead. Client gets embarrassed.

Some watches aren't for sale.

Not because of what they cost. Because of what they mean. A dealer can price a reference. He can't price a memory. He can't price the feeling of putting on a watch that spent decades on someone else's wrist before it landed on yours.

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The Trust Account

What Breaks When You Do

FREE battery service?

Some watches aren't for sale.