Your comment about these watches being unlikely to last five years is interesting. I've never bought a decent watch, just fashion watches. I've got 8 of them in my jewellery box although only wear 2 regularly, one with a gold coloured strap and one silver. A couple of them are from M&S and cost around £40.
I've had many of them for years and they all work. I just take them to Timpson for a new battery, generally £20 for a year guarantee or £30 for a lifetime one - they just replace them for free.
Hi Muttley! Thank you for being interested. I’m referring, in the first instance, really to the IW automatic watches -their ‘bread and butter brands’. These invariably (not so much the VE ones and one or two others) are made with exceptionally cheap Chinese mechanisms, fitted in press-fit plastic spacers (so they can fit different case sizes). These mechanisms are made of stamped parts, assembled to meet a very low price, often complete with tool marks and hairs (which can easily stop a watch), usually vastly over-lubricated (the lubricants in any watch dry up and turn to black gunk over time, so too much can stop a watch).
A Swiss watch will have a mainspring made of pretty exotic metals - and no wonder as they often have to power a mechanism beating at 28,800 beats per hour. Their Chinese equivalents are made to the budget (it’s not that the Chinese can’t do great work of high quality - of course they can, but no one can, at the prices they are being paid).
All automatic watches need a service every 5 years or so. And at that point the cost of the service on a cheap Chinese made mechanism will often be more than the mechanism warrants. Oftentimes I could source a brand new mechanism and I usually charged a small sum to just drop it in (fit it) and test it. But not always. A full service would involve dismantling it completely, cleaning everything, replacing the mainspring, the crystal, and any worn parts, and reassembly, timing and adjustment.
Quartz watches are different. They have vastly fewer moving parts, and can therefore last longer without TLC. Essentially, the quartz mineral when excited by a battery has a fixed vibration frequency. Count 32768 vibrations (you just need a counting circuit) and you have a very accurate measure of a second. And 32768 per second gives better accuracy even than 28,800 per hour.
But any watch will need a service at some point- even a quartz one. Some will gamely struggle on, fighting against friction, but a service will bring it back like new - and costs less than for an automatic.
IW did sell some real, quality, Swiss brands in one of their incarnations - I remember Eterna (who invented the automatic winding mechanism) at one time. They could try that again - and then they really would have a decent product to match their claims.
As Hammy says, if all IW claimed was that they are selling fashion watches to last a few years until you get bored and fancy a change, and at a reasonable price - perhaps, say twice the Ali Express price to allow for having to give guarantees, then I’d not be the least upset. It’s all the talk of heirlooms, and selling them at a profit. I think they have a responsibility to their (sometimes vulnerable) shoppers. But, it seems, they don’t. They aren’t the only ones, and they aren’t the first - shopping tv has always been aware of the potential profit they can make from them. But it leaves a sour taste.
Sorry to have gone on. I promise not to ramble so much next time!
And IW. We don’t want you to lose, or to go bust. We just want you to be a bit better!
