so much for good inentions

[cellio]

Last night my watchband broke (one of those metal expanding/stretch ones, my preferred style). It looked like it might be fixable with the right tools and know-how, which I lack.

There are three watch-repair places in my neighborhood, opening no earlier than 10AM and closing no later than 5PM. There are none near where I work, though I tried the lone jewelry store (no luck).

So after work I went to a local store to buy a replacement band. They refused to put it onto the watch for me for liability reasons (!), and would not accept my offer to sign a waiver. I declined to buy it without that demonstration that it was in fact the right size (hard to really tell in the packaging), and I can't really see well enough to do that myself. (I could have taken it home to Dani, but then I'd have to go back if it didn't fit, and...bah.)

Watches (in this class) are not much more expensive than the band. I just mail-ordered a watch from Amazon.

Sorry, planet. I tried to do if not the right thing then at least the less-wrong thing.

If anybody local wants a scratched-up but functional watch, let me know. Getting it to stay on your arm is your problem.

Comments

[fauxklore]

This seems really bizarre to me. Usually they want to put them on the watch themselves, in my experience. (Personally, I hate the expanding metal sort of watchband, but that's another matter.)

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

My wife bought a pair of watches on sale 40% off at the drug store where we pick up our prescriptions. When she took it out of the package and tried to set it, she discovered the batteries were dead. When she tried to refund them, the manager came over to tell her no refunds. They were 40% off BECAUSE they were useless. She changed our prescriptions to a different drug store that night.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

That's worth a complaint to the city -- licensing board or something.

OTOH, that's a helluvalot of trouble. Which is how they keep getting away with it.

Like the dollar store that sold me counterfeit batteries ... as I discovered when one exploded while lying on my son's desk (and not connected to anything), and a piece of it missed his eye by an inch. The text was misspelled when I looked closely.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Try sending it to The Watch Hospital in Boston if you still want it repaired.

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

The "liability" issue is they don't want the grief of a customer claiming their expensive watch was damaged by their peon replacing the band. Of course, they could train their people to do it properly, but why on earth would they bother to do that? (My mom used to work in the watch/jewelry dept of a a K-Mart clone chain.)

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

How weird. I've never seen a place selling watchbands that didn't put them on as well.

[scaharp.livejournal.com]

I used to work in a department store at the jewelry counter. Granted, we weren't given the training or the tools that watchmakers or jewelers have, but we dealt with changing bands, resizing, etc.

Metal expanding bands were a real pain to deal with. We pretty much didn't even try to repair them. I did a couple of times, experimenting, and it was just about impossible to get the repaired part to look perfect with the rest of the band. I suppose a jeweler would do better.

Depending on the watch, even replacing the band could be problematic. Very fiddly job. We dreaded when someone pulled out an expanding metal-band wristwatch.

Don't feel bad about replacing the watch. It sounds like you've had a frustrating time!