I sent a Rolex Day/date for service requesting the day wheel be changed to English from the original Spanish wheel. After 6 months I got it back, unserviced, and was told “NO. It was made with Spanish and must remain so.” That cost me half a year and they charged me shipping before I could get it back.
Then my uncle sent in his (now) vintage Rolex he bought in 1958 for a service and they changed the dial from silver to a light green, and swapped the hands for a slightly different style. He protested but they had thrown out the old parts so he was stuck.
NOW, true confessions as to what damage I have done in servicing watches:
I was cleaning a watch and put the sapphire case back into cleaning solution, not noticing there was a small band of writing on the inside of the glass. The solution removed 1/2 of it, so I had to clean off the rest. It was marketing speak, like “100 years fine Swiss blah blah”. It was one of a group of watches from the same customer and he never mentioned or noticed it.
Another time I had a pocket watch and it was very very dirty. So I ran the movement through our cleaning machine twice - not unusual, and no problem. Then I cleaned the gold case in our ultrasound cleaner. Again this was standard procedure. When I took it out to rinse and dry it, I got distracted and left the big onion crown in the machine. The next morning I fished out the gold crown - no damage done, but the steel stem had been eaten away to the tiny sliver the thickness of a hair.
I showed it to my mentor at the shop - he glanced at it and said “left it in too long, didn’t you? Happens more than you’d think. Don’t do it again!” Pocket Watch stems aren’t too hard to find but it wasted a couple of my hours. It was a toss-up because the customer got a new stem so didn’t hurt his watch any.
Finally, my shoe repairman gave me his son’s Seiko Solar Watch to fix. After cleaning and reassembly, I propped it up by a lamp to recharge the solar cells. An hour later I checked and the multi-level plastic dial had melted and warped. I was horrified. I removed the dial, put the hands back on, and it was running fine. So I started looking for a parts watch on eBay... I took it over to him and explained I’d get another one for him. The son said “No, this is cool, I like it without the dial because I can see the solar cells and the guts”. His dad said, “no problem, I know how it is - I can’t tell you how many pairs of expensive shoes I’ve done worse with just one second’s inattention on the buffing machine...”
Don’t take it in unless you have to.
Cheers,
Cazalea