The dent on my watch that reminds me of the best day of my life
Ricardo SimeI remember it all like it was yesterday. It happened so fast. One second, I was securing my Black Bay Steel to my wrist. The next, it slips out of my hand and I watch it take a four foot drop towards my kitchen floor tile. So many emotions stirred in me in that moment. Especially that feeling of dread I felt as I picked it up, not knowing how bad the damage would be. Or how expensive that watch-servicing bill would get.
Lo and behold, I pick her up and she’s OK. No dents except for that special one. The seconds hand isn’t stuttering. Just to be safe, I figure let me give her a wind. But it’s at that moment, I see the minutes hand. And it’s now skeletonized. With a piece of luminous paint jumping around the dial. In the second after, I know the drop was so bad, the forced reverberated through the movement, reached the hand stack and broke the paint.
Whether I’d have to get it serviced was no longer the question. Now it was a matter of where I’d get the work done.
After a few days thinking it over, I decided to go to Watches of Switzerland to get the watch serviced. I dropped the watch off, filled out the necessary paperwork and thought nothing of it. If I was lucky, I’d get it back in two months. If not, maybe three. So when I finally got the service quote a month later, I wasn’t surprised. Well, that was until I went over the line items and saw something called 60MIN INSERT. That changed things.
Remember that dent I mentioned earlier? It’s located on the 40 minute marker and is a special beauty mark from October 17th, 2019, in the wee hours of the morning. The results of a nervous father to be, taking a seat at the head of his wife’s surgical bed, hoping she and his son would be just fine. One of the scariest and happiest moments in my life. And that dent is a constant reminder of just how much the both of them mean to me.
So to see the change of this bezel being listed as a repair was not good.
I emailed Watches of Switzerland back and told them this part didn’t have to be changed. Just give me the service and the other repairs. Their response? Tudor considers the repair as required. Once my blood pressure went back down to a normal range, I responded back and said “no”. The bezel was functional and I hadn’t had any issues in the year and a half since. Do not change it.
I had heard from other members in the watch community about these repair quotes. Brands will ask you to repair the kitchen sink, either for liability purposes or to maximise the service bill. Whatever the reason was in this case, I had to make sure the bezel wasn’t replaced.
Luckily, the representative I used at Watches of Switzerland went into bat on my behalf. A week later, Tudor accepted my request and the repair commenced. My anxiety on the other hand didn’t subside until the watch was back in my possession two months later.
View this post on Instagram
That whole experience woke me up to a world I hadn’t thought of. As this was my first watch service, it never crossed my mind how much a dent would mean to me. Or how I’d have to make sure a brand didn’t “fix” something during watch servicing I didn’t want fixed. So many brands try to return your watch to its pristine, just purchased condition, that as collectors, we have to be on the look out for services we don’t want. In this case it was a bezel. Next time it could be polishing away scratches we want to keep.
It’s important to remember that you own your watch and have the right to service it the way you want. Get a list of what the brand is going to do with your watch before moving forward with the service. That way there are no surprises and you get your watch back exactly the way you want. Dent on the bezel and all.