Watch service ?

miggiwoo

Would anybody be able to recommend where I could get my watch serviced at a decent price ?


I have a citizen Eco drive watch that cost about £150 a few years back and now requires a service.


Citizen have quoted me £94 and have tried I Time within Debenhams who quoted around £170.


Its not economical to pay either of those prices and just wondered if anybody had a watch serviced anywhere they could recommend ?


thanks

sarah1972

miggiwoo wrote: »

Would anybody be able to recommend where I could get my watch serviced at a decent price ?


I have a citizen Eco drive watch that cost about £150 a few years back and now requires a service.


Citizen have quoted me £94 and have tried I Time within Debenhams who quoted around £170.


Its not economical to pay either of those prices and just wondered if anybody had a watch serviced anywhere they could recommend ?


thanks

Personally I would have to think about getting a service on a watch that cost £150, as you have found out, the service is not far off the price of the watch.

I would only ever get a service from the manufacturer so I would only get it done at Citizen.

Sorry, thats not much help really but I would be suspicious if I got a cheaper quote


Edit, just called my local jeweller and they said that they would only send it back to Citizen for the service and add their bit on. They quoted me £125

Geoff1963

I think the only proper way is through Citizen, which will cost £94 plus any middle man charge.

If it was a simple mechanical watch, anyone could do it, but they will need specialist tools that no-one else will have.

justry4n

I had my Citzen watch serviced from my local watch shop, cost £30 and done a excellent job. Might be worth checking your local area for a independent person?

Mr_Singleton

Consider yourself lucky I recently spent £325 getting an Omega Speedmaster serviced.

Brighty

Eco drives are not mechanical watches, so won't need a normal watch movement service. They are quartz watches with a battery recharged by a solar panel. What makes you think it needs a service? Is the battery not holding a charge? Stopping?

Joe_Horner

As Brighty says, they don't need routine servicing because they don't wear like mechanicals do.

With a mechanical watch all the wheels and bearings are under load from the mainspring whenever it's running. With a quartz watch they're only under load for a very short pulse once a second as the stepper motor moves the hands. In a typical movement that pulse is around 1/1000th of a second long, so the parts are only under load (and liable to wear) for 1/1000th of the time they're running.

If it's a water resistant model and you rely on the resistance it's worth getting the seals checked but, unless it plays up, that's as far as you need to go.

If it is showing problems then for almost all of the ecodrive movements it's more economic to replace them than service them. I have a Citizen parts account and typically they can be changed complete for around £50 - £70. That effectively gives you a new watch in the old case with the old hands and dial.

Do you have the movement number? It should be on the back and will typically be a letter (often either E or H) followed by 3 numbers.

Joe_Horner

Geoff1963 wrote: »

I think the only proper way is through Citizen, which will cost £94 plus any middle man charge.

If it was a simple mechanical watch, anyone could do it, but they will need specialist tools that no-one else will have.

Even if it was a case of servicing rather than replacing - normally with an obsolete model - the only tools you need are normal watchmaking ones and a meter (preferably analogue) with 3V DC, 10 or 20k Ohm, and micro-amp (preferably less than 10 microamp FSD) ranges and a normal silver oxide watch battery as a temporary power source.

Apart from the normal cleaning and lubrication, the only tests needed are for circuit and motor power consumption, motor coil resistance, and cell voltage for entering / leaving low power warning mode . Their service manuals are freely available and detail all the tests required.