Reply With QuoteThis could be viewed as totally illegal or complete incompetence at best (but I don't see how). It goes far beyond poor service.
I would ask for TAG's version of events as you/your friend will be reporting it.
Before I start, I'll be clear - what I'll state here is a timeline of FACTS. Facts that have happened over the past couple of weeks with a colleague in work in relation to asking for assistance from the Tag Service Centre in Manchester.
In his own words, here's where it started:
Taken from the PDF copy of the online request form, here's how the problems were described to Tag:Hi John,
I recently sent my F1 Chronograph to Tag Heuer hoping to get an £85 ‘Maintenance Service’ done (http://customer-service.tagheuer.com...ited-kingdom-0). But, as you can see, they claim to have found a blockage within the movement and wanted to perform a full service to the tune of £310. When I phoned up to see what the craic was the girl went and checked with the engineer who said that the battery had leaked slightly causing the problem. I asked them to just do an £85 ‘Maintenance Service’ anyway, but they said they wouldn’t do it as they didn’t believe that it would fix the issue.
Any thoughts / ideas / recommendations?
He proceeded to send the watch in to Tag UK and then, we have this official estimate back from them:
OK... lets talk detail. The watch in question is a quartz CAH1110. Its powered by the ETA G10 movement (G10.711 to be precise). A quick Google shows that this mechanism IS NOT SERVICABLE!
Over on WUS one member asked ETA for more detail and here are a few interesting extracts:
Please find enclosed the manufacturing information concerning this movement. The reason why it is cheaper is due to the fact that this movement isn't made of metal. Also, it's not repairable.So... Tag UK said that they've evidence of a leaked battery. They've evidence of a blockage in a mechanism that CANNOT BE DISASSEMMBLED. How did they see the blockage then?"Principle of construction"
The movement cannot be dismantled.
My colleague then asked them to just go ahead and do a £85 battery change service and they refused.
At this point, I was contacted for advice and I immediately advised my friend to get the watch back NOW! He paid the postage and got a rather lovely service case in the process. On opening the watch, this is what we see - as predicted, a sealed movement! The watch was dead - so I pulled the battery to find NO EVIDENCE of a leak. Nothing. Its bone dry and there's not even oxidisation, never mind battery acid damage.
The battery came up low at 0.94V which would surely cause issues.
£2 and 24hrs later - I have fitted a Renata 380 battery and the watch runs to perfection. It's been running for 9 hours now and is +-0s.
My conclusion?.... I personally think that what they just tried is an absolute disgrace. The burning question is... if he HAD agreed to spend the £310, would their necks be brassy enough to just pop in a battery and bag the cash?
I have much distain for the quartz Tag models (I own one myself btw!). A cheap watch should be just that - but this takes the company to a whole new level for me. If I had one of their higher end watches, I personally wouldn't believe a word they told me about it.
Last edited by JohnnyE; 26th October 2017 at 00:18.
This could be viewed as totally illegal or complete incompetence at best (but I don't see how). It goes far beyond poor service.
I would ask for TAG's version of events as you/your friend will be reporting it.
To be honest I’m not surprised really as I’ve heard other Tag horror stories but this is absolute damming evidence that should be made available to anyone who would consider going to Tag for a service?
I’m guessing they could say that it’s that specific service centre unless they all get sent to a central location??
They are what they are which is a cheap watch maker so as long as you know that before buying then it’s your risk?
I have had a few myself and my wife has one at the moment!
I think they have been overpriced for a very long time even before the rediculous prices that everyone else has reached recently!!!!
The old Heuer stuff for me is pretty nice and right up my street for the most but the Tag Heuer stuff just doesn’t do it for me?? Even the new Autavia isn’t quite right although at least the price hasn’t reached rediculous prices and has actually reduced quite a bit since its release!!
Thanks for posting this anyway as it’s just confirmed what I’ve always thought!!
I for one would never send any watch back to Tag anyway as surely anyone can change a battery??
Chris
Sounds like the firm TAG are hitting hard times.
I notice the movement is about 50 dollars to buy new.
Sound like bloody crooks to me.
Cowboy behaviour there. Very disappointing to see a brand with such prestige playing this game.
It will be very interesting to see this develop if you'd be so kind to keep us updated, OP!
That's all anyone needs to know. I wonder if the same could be applied to many an overpriced mechanical movement service? £300 - 400 for a movement service from the likes of TAG or Tudor when a new movement might be £150.Originally Posted by Bodo
Upselling with a vengeance!
Cheers..
Jase
This is pretty much the same for all the luxury Swiss brands - the cost of materials bears little or no relationship to the selling price or service costs - you are buying into a lifestyle not simply a functional item (no matter how much some people claim different).
A disgrace. Won't ever use tag service after reading of this crookery.
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Exactly... But.. The installing takes around 2 working hours, they change the gaskets...
Its not their Free estimate they have recomended prices and they have to go by the book.
Still 310£ is way too steep.
I've never owned a Tag and never want to. This story just confirms some of the horror stories that I have heard elsewhere. Best avoided.
They're known for OVERCHARGING on sapphire crystals, £100+ instead of a realistic price £20-£45.
JC!
Although this is regarded as an "entry level" watch by most, it's still a lot of dosh for a quartz watch, and not even sticking a higher end ETA quartz movement inside but a non repairable movement from their cheap G series??? A disgrace.
You must be really desperate to buy into all this nonsense.
And that's even without the far bigger disgrace of that service story, which they tried out on my brother's watch as well, back in the Netherlands. He keeps an older style TAG Heuer chrono quartz as a "beater" and they tried to sell him a service for 300,- Euro's. His local jeweller did the trick including a pressure test, gaskets and what have you for 60,- Euro's.
Madness.
Got a new watch, divers watch it is, had to drown the bastard to get it!
It does look like liquid on the battery isolator and contact point, if that was wetness then it was the start of a battery leak. However it could have been swabbed up and cleaned without servicing, but they don't want returns so always if any doubt new movement.
I am surprised just how many service centres, independents etc still insist on saying they are servicing movements that are either not serviceable like this one or are cheaper to replace the movement than service.
Indeed, a search on Cousins' website shows that a replacement movement will be around £50+VAT. Despite personally considering many watches like this to be bad value for money, this instance is a different matter altogether.
They've openly lied about a "blockage" and a leaky battery. They've also lied about a "Quartz Complete Service" which, had the movement ACTUALLY been faulty, would have involved swopping out the movement. They dug their heels in and were actually prepared to send it back for the cost of postage rather than allow him to have that £85 service (battery change and pressure test no doubt). I suppose backing down would have exposed the lies.
What I really can't get over is that in the end, they actually returned the watch with the perfect battery still inside! Surely they knew that the next step was for the owner to go for a 2nd opinion?
I can only conclude that they must get away with this regularly with ease and are never challenged.
Next steps? Its up to the owner I guess, and I've given him a straight account of things as I have done above. My main motivation for posting here was to warn fellow forum members to get their barge pole out if they even think about using the official Tag Service Centre.
For clarity, in case anyone wonders who did this, here is the address on the foot of the official paperwork.
TAG Heuer Customer Service
Duval House
16 – 18 Harcourt Street
Worsley
Manchester M28 3GN
VAT No: 588 6104 08
Tel: 01204 861168
Fax: 01204 424007
Email: customerservice.uk@tagheuer.com
Web: www.tagheuer.com/customerservice
... and here is that "leaky" battery in a bit more detail. Its had its day and is flat, but phsically speaking, its dry and like new:
I did notice that on the picture - but if you look at my post above, you'll see that the battery is dry as a bone. Add to that, the watch works perfectly with a new battery in.
Tag did something similar to me before on a formula 1. The crown fell off while setting the clock by an hour for daylight savings and they would only fix it with a full service which I think was about £310 inc vat. Watch was nearly 3 years old iirc. It was sent back with a bent clasp and had to go back to Manchester for another few weeks. I complained and was given a free polish and a £50 refund but still left feeling short changed. Why was a polish not part of a £300 service? Also you would not have known the watch was polished. I can’t say for sure that it was.
Second time around the battery died and I asked for a battery only and it was £75 but came with a new warranty for two years. Second I got it back I sold it. I’ll never deal with Tag again.
A fçucking disgrace, no more no less.
Got a new watch, divers watch it is, had to drown the bastard to get it!
So no liquid at all on the movement? Because it does look like it in the photo.
... and here is that "leaky" battery in a bit more detail. Its had its day and is flat, but phsically speaking, its dry and like new:
Edit: Just saw your post
Battery may be dry but if liquid was on the movement then it had started to leak even if the battery looks perfect. So ideally clean it out if it was the case and not just a trick of light.
I'll take the back off later today and get a decent look and picture to clear this up. It could just be reflections off the cheap qualiy insides of that battery holder.
Plastic fantastic............
Got a new watch, divers watch it is, had to drown the bastard to get it!
It was a trick of the light. As you can see... the inside of the battery holder is just cheap black plastic:
On inspecting with a magnifier... you can see that it is bone dry and as it came from the ETA factory:
Piss takers but are tag service centre like franchises but do warranty ?
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The way to measure if the lubrication has degraded is to check the power consumption, with the chrono running the calibre G10.711 should be 6.5µA maximum and without 3.5µA maximum. However even with figures above this it should still run but the battery life would be significantly shortened.
Has your friend told them of your findings? I’d love to hear their response.
+1. A link to this thread may prompt one. ;-)
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No. He was just relieved to have a bill for £2 instead of £310.
Write to Jean-Claude Biver for his take on this matter.
I thought that, too
Doesn't 'service' on a throw away movement just mean replacement anyway.
There is debris on the last battery pic (6 o clock, 7 o clock and a few tiny ones at 11) so it may well have leaked. They have to completely cover their backside & it may well have been worse before you've seen it.
If one of the larger pieces gets in the train after a couple of months then it's back to them and costing them money. I'd say they'd have replaced the movement.
Guess we'll never really know now but my money would be on them saying they'd have replaced a throw away movement and it's just a generic reply or incorrect and been addressed at repair time.
Disgusting. This should be reported back to TAG, I'm sure it won't make a difference to their working practices but be interesting to hear what they say although i guess not much apart from vague waffle.
I've just messaged him on Facebook. Let's see what happens......
Nonsense, people all over the world are wearing cheap 50,- Euro quartz watches, my wife does, and they run for decades without any sort of service. Debris in the drivetrain???
No use buying an ETA powered quartz watch then, if you have to replace the movement for some invisable debris.
Got a new watch, divers watch it is, had to drown the bastard to get it!
Disgraceful
Now they came up with an seal test every year otherwise they charge a service
It would appear, on the face of it - a blatant attempt to gain money by fraud, on a company level.
When I suspect that a company is "at it" I give them one chance to recognise that they have been rumbled - and after that, I am quite happy to expose them for what they are.
Usually, when given that 'chance' - they commit themselves to the lie - even further.
Social Media is a good avenue for complaint - especially if you keep it reasonable.
Al
There has been NO leak at all. I can see nothing wrong on close inspection. All they had to do was pop in a battery. pressure test it and take his £85.
I'd never send a quartz watch back to the manufacturer for a battery change or repair. They'll massively rip you off and it's basically throwing good money away for no reason.
That said on this occasion Tag have been caught trying to blatantly decive your friend so he should raise this to the highest level. Sending them a tweet will probably get their attention quickly too.
This doesn't put me off Tag watches though, I just would never use their service centre, I've owned a few Tags with no major issues (including a few Monacos).
What a bunch of cowboys!
That's utterly disgraceful at best
I recently did a movement swap on this model - This thread gave me the motivation to document it on my blog, in case anyone is interested to see what is involved.
It is a pretty straightforward job!
Link
I must stress that Tag Heuer do quite a bit more than I did here as part of their service, replacing all gaskets and crown. They should really be clear about what they do with the movement (swap or service), as already mentioned above the G10 is not serviceable. There is a lot less labour associated with a swap than there would be with a full strip down / service.
^^^^
Thanks, this gives a good insight in what we are actually discussing.
Got a new watch, divers watch it is, had to drown the bastard to get it!
A few years back I had a TAG Monaco that had picked up a scratch on the crystal. I was wearing it when I popped into my local Goldsmiths to buy a GMT2c. I asked if they could sort the scratch, they told me they'd have to send it to TAG. I let them do it and left with my shiny new (£3,600!) watch. When they called with the estimate they told me the crystal could only be replaced as part of a few hundred quid's worth of service it didn't need. I asked them to get it back again and when I went to collect it the cheeky buggers tried and failed to charge me £20 for the pleasure. That's when I'd just joined here and discovered Polywatch. Took about a minute to remove the scratch.
That was the last time I sent anything to TAG or used Goldsmiths (I realised they'd kept the spare links when they sized the Rolex). Nowadays I'd not use a manufacturer to service a watch unless none of the private repairers like Olli could do it for me.
"A man of little significance"
Invisible??? (Enough question marks?). Was just trying to offer a flip side as to what they might say. The debris on the battery will usually be from a leak of a battery, doesn't just grow in there.
Just out of interest have you serviced many quartz watches? A piece the size of the bit on the battery could stop a quartz movement. Unlikely? Yes, due to chances of it getting in the wrong place but. It isn't impossible (or should I say nonsense). I think maybe people are expecting to see some form of moisture from a battery leak but you end up with these crystals.
I have serviced a few quartz watches that have stopped due to tiny debris from old battery leaks.
I'm not disagreeing that they're taking the Mick but I'd say their answer will be they'd have replaced it seeing as that's not uncommon practice on throw away movements. As I say though, we'll never really know.
Last edited by jameswrx; 26th October 2017 at 12:28.
A few months back one of the boys in work was asking me where he should send his quartz Tag for service. I asked him why it needed a service, was it losing time, stopped etc. His reply was that when he'd bought it he'd been told that these watches just needed a service every couple of years and they would run forever. He was dumbfounded when I told him not to bother unless it wasn't running right and even then i'd just pop it into one of the watchmakers in the city.
I guess it's as one of the other posters mentioned. Tag are selling you a lifestyle. Sell a cheap quartz watch with a decent mechanical price tag attached then keep the money coming in with needless services which also convince the owner it's a high end precision product.
Wow what an absolute disgrace and how unfair that they can get away with it and probably do on so many occasions where people trust "in the brand" and think that their watch is worth so much money and therefore the price quoted is ok to pay out. Such a shame.
A friend of mine took her (6 year old) Gucci for a battery change at GOLDSMITHS. they "sent it to Switzerland" and some weeks later gave her a letter from GUCCI to say the watch is not working and obsolete and can not be repaired. They offered her a percentage discount off a new watch.
Thankfully the owner of the watch took it to a local independent jeweller who tested the old battery which was flat... inserted a new battery and it has been going perfectly for many months now. How can GUCCI and GOLDSMITHS get away with doing this to the general trusting public?
Hence my comments on another thread about Rolex wanting toi service an 18 month old Deep Sea because the glass was scratched and I wanted just a glass they refused . All the companies are at this game . It is tantamount to fraud especially on watchmakers work on these cheaper movements as the labour costs far outweigh the cost of just plugging in a new one . Time for watchdog ..
It happens everywhere though. Think about somewhere like an Audi dealership where they sell you a 1.6 diesel Skoda Octavia wearing an Audi frock and get a man called Justin wearing a black polo shirt with an Audi logo to charge you £300 for a service when 100 yards down the road Dave in his oily overall would have done just as good a job for the price of a few pints.
So true but it needs to be exposed more often. Consistently negative publicity is the only strategy to improve the situation.
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