Watch Winders are mechanical instruments which operate 24x7 and sometimes they break.
Real Watch Winders are repairable. Like a car!
All mechanical things need maintenance and sometimes they break. Modern Watch Winders are made to be maintenance free, but making them like this compromises the trouble free operational life time line. If Watch Winders were made in the volume that cars are made and sold you would be able to walk your winder over to your watch winder dealer, but alas we are a super small niche market. Dealerships are expensive, mechanics salaries are expensive and this is why cars are expensive. It is also why Quality Watch Winders are expensive compared to cheap watch winders.
Quality Watch Winders are made with quality parts and are repairable. Speaking of Cheap Watch Winders, we do not carry cheap watch winders. Period.
Please do not call us asking how to get your Steinhausen Watch Winder repaired. We do not carry Steinhausen, and to the best of my knowledge they are not repairable, but we do not carry them. I am simply reporting what former customers have said to us when they order a replacement watch winder.
We do carry 3 products all of which are repairable and one product line which is replaceable.
Eilux Watch Winders bought from us are easily and cheaply repaired right here in the USA. If you bought from some other dealer, then you are out of luck. Eilux Watch Winders are manufactured in China, but their single Authorized North American Dealer can repair them in house, right here in the USA.
Now, the market is being flooded by non-Authorized dealers, (the sales price tells you if it is legit or not!) and if you buy from them and your unit breaks you are plum out of luck! The USA dealer is instructed to confiscate and report for prosecution the purchasers of counterfeit merchandise, because without a buyer the seller of Fakes would be out of business. Likewise the illegal importers also would be out of business. Did you ever watch the show "Law and Order"? The detectives are forever going into pawn shops and the middlemen are claiming "I didn't know it was stolen" yet they paid pennies on the dollar! Both the pawn shop owner and the ultimate customer end up being prosecuted for buying something they could easily afford. (Sorry I digress, it just gets old seeing these fake websites online, and otherwise respectable people buying from them!)
Orbita Watch Winders bought from us are easily repaired. Orbita is excellent to work with and they also offer extended warranty services when you purchase your Watch Winder from us ask us about the Extended Warranty Service and we can put you in touch with the Warranty Department at Orbita. Orbita is an American company, with good old fashioned American Service values! Likewise the same problem is happening with Orbita, with any quality product now a days seems some factory in China or elsewhere is willing to make a fake and some one is willing to buy a product at a ridiculously low price, then it breaks and they find out what they got. So, buy quality, buy from Authorized retailers at fair market prices not deep discount prices. Deep discount pricing only works in high volume industries or pawn shops. I already mentioned
the watch winder industry is a small niche market, so pay fair market value and get a product that will give years of service and protect your expensive automatic watches!
Buben and Zorweg watch winders are also repairable. In face last month a guy contacted me about his 12 year old Watch Winder, we ordered him a new motor (through the distributor) and he was able to replace it himself!
Why? Because quality products are made to be repairable.
Why? Because quality parts cost more and it is better to repair than to replace an expensive item.
Finally Winder Warranties and promises are only as good as the person making the promise. I see competitors promising forever warranties and return windows of a million years and yet, I am all the time getting customers who call since they got burned in the past and talk to me about their problem with this or that cheap watch winder and how the Internet company that sold it to them will not answer or return their calls.
I actually empathise with this customer, but when I read the website they bought from and see it written in all caps and words liked "spinned", I just cringe that they, the customer, threw caution to the wind! To good to be true always is!
On the upside, selling this cheated customer an expensive high quality dependable Orbita Watch Winder or a Buben Watch Winder is a much easier sale! What I love about these guys, (always a man, women seem to understand shopping better) is they are so honest. I guess that is why they were so easily duped. They are of the old school, where your word is your bond, and your reputation means something. Here at WatchCases.com that is still true, as it is at Orbita and Buben! Orbita is owned by a "retired" business man Chuck Agnoff, and Buben is a family name going back generations! I am a former Algebra teacher, and my reputation always was important to me, and still is.
Wolf Designs Watch Winders are
very good Watch Winders, especially when compared the the cheap watch winders which we refuse to carry, but Wolf Winder are not readily repairable. Wolf is excellent about their warranty work however, if you buy a Watch Winder from us they will replace it if it is within warranty coverage. Wolf probably will alter this model for their winders to a repairable version so they can gain market share in the large multi-head watchwinder field.
People are always asking how long a watch winder should work. We have a hard time giving an exact answer,
the Watch Winder industry is really small and really young. But you can correlate life span and price paid. Buben and Zorweg seem to last the longest, followed closely by Orbita Watch Winders, they both use a similar long lasting Swiss or German Engineered servomotor and high quality fasteners and other such seemingly trivial parts. A penny more here a dollar more there produces and expensive watch winder that lasts typically for a couple Presidential Tours. Your mileage may vary....
Eilux Watch Winders, are also made with quality inside parts, however not quite as good (not European Swiss watch quality engineering) and likewise an Eilux Winder is not quite as expensive as the Orbita or Buben Watch Winder. So maybe the life span is only one term? We have been selling Eilux for 5 years now, no wait 6 years now. We have had only a handful of requests for information on servicing them. Though from time to time we do get a call asking for the service center. (Time to time, meaning maybe every 4-6 months a call might come in.)
I am always shocked that the thing is claimed to have stopped working and I contact the service center, but typically the caller does not follow through, with the so called repair, so I suspect it is the competition trying to discredit the brand. I have not personally seen any such problems.
Or maybe people do not think they should pay to bring their product in for servicing?
You spend money to drive your car to the mechanic right?
Or maybe you pay the tow truck right?
So, I doubt this is the issue. In the past year I have dealt with 3 legitimate issues of warranty for Eilux and all 3 happened immediately.
If memory serves, one was a bad circuit board, it was replaced free of charge, and
the other 2 were simply loose wires, which were re-soldered and were better than new!
I have gotten similar calls from so called customers castigating Orbita Watch Winders, saying this or that, and yet my 6 years experience never matches these so called claims. Oh I should mention, all these complaint callers I mentioned call in on blocked numbers! Our customers simply do not block their numbers. They dial straight in. They know we do not spam or sell their information. So, that is the story on Watch Winders and also I hope it lets you understand the price structure a bit better. No one calls about Buben Winders. I suspect because they are not a market threat in the USA, they are so expensive very few units are sold.
A final note:
When you walk into a store and the light fixtures are broken do you buy?
I hope not.
Likewise when you browse the Internet check the website, look for "broken light fixtures"*.
Donald Geib
President WatchCases.com
* Broken Light Fixtures: Lets see on the Internet this would be things like:
No toll free number or contact information hidden deep in the site, or not available.
Bad grammar and or lack of security features or consumer business affiliations like BBB, the Better Business Bureau, Yahoo! McAfee Internet Security etc...
Anyone can have a website business running in a day using a free service, but to do a web business correctly one must spend thousands of dollars in design and hosting and security. Anyone can appear in a google search in the top 2 or 3 sponsored links or along the side sponsored links but appearing down lower in the "free" natural search area takes work and a real business presence.
Labels: Donald, Quality Watch Winder
by: WatchCases
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