I'm reminded to write this review of "service" that I received here over a year ago, because today,…read moreI went to a watch repair store where they undid the "repair" that Danforth Jewellers effected on my watch.
I first went here because I wanted to support a local business where I could regularly get my watches repaired, cleaned, and at the time, I was also looking for an engagement ring. I wanted to see how they handled my watch business, before I gave them my other jewellery business. In short, this is how they struck out with me:
Strike 1: I brought in an expensive watch, described the problem of water seepage into the interior, and asked them if they could repair it without me having to bring it in to Birks for a more expensive repair. The owner, Jim, said no problem. He said that they wouldn't supply original parts so I accepted that that was the reason for the lower repair cost than Birks. However, the replacement parts that he and his watchmaker did use were a crown and stem that stuck out so much and didn't fit properly, that you'd wonder how people who call themselves "professional" jewellers could accept this as a job well done. See photo: the crown juts out about 2 mm and doesn't close flush with the side of the watch. I thought, well, I've already committed myself and paid almost $700 for this repair, but at least the repair will stick. (Yes, that much! Read on to see if I got my money's worth.)
Strike 2: Not more than 6 months later, I saw condensation under the watch face. I brought it back to Jim, explained that he guaranteed his work for a year, and asked him to repair it, as the seal should have been repaired so that no moisture got in. He held on to the watch for over a month, and when I called, he said, "Oh yeah, it's here." Thanks for remembering to call your customer back.
Strike 3: At just past the year-mark, the watch just completely stopped working. The second hand wasn't even running--nothing, nada, zip, zilch. At this point, it was past the year warranty on his labour, but frankly, I just didn't want to deal with Jim anymore. I called it a $700 write-off, and figured I'd write my Yelp review at some point. I never wanted to deal with Danforth Jewellers again.
Oh, wait, there were more than 3 strikes with this place:
While I was waiting for the original repair to be done on this watch, I brought my daughter's Swatch watch in one day, asking if Jim knew what was the problem with it no longer running. I had seen some Swatches in his display case, and he *claimed* that at one time, he was "Canada's top-selling retailer of Swatches", so I thought he might know a thing or two about Swatches. Figured it would save me a trip downtown, since he was such an expert, right?
Strike 4: He told me that someone had sold me the wrong-sized battery. They had not. (I checked with the official Swatch store at the Eaton Centre later, and they said the battery was fine.)
Strike 5: He told me that it was a well-known fact that Swatches stopped running if sunscreen was transferred from the skin to the back of the watch and then to the interior. I asked at the Swatch store. They said no one at Swatch had ever heard of such a thing. They looked at the watch, tested it, and said it must have been a one-off defect on that watch, so they gave me a brand-new replacement watch, since it was within the year warranty. So Jim's explanations about the wrong-sized battery and the sunscreen were interesting, to say the least.
So what did the two watch incidents tell me?
A) Expensive watches do not fare well here; $700 buys you the bare minimum until the warranty runs out.
B) Even less expensive Swatch watches don't get a good treatment here. Whatever explanation is given here, even trained Swatch representatives have never heard of.
These incidents showed me that I could never trust this place enough to buy my ring there. Since then, I've used my energy to tell my friends and neighbours (and Yelp) to also take their jewellery-buying $$ elsewhere.
