The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Do we all get our watches serviced at the recommended intervals?

I service my watches when 1. Something fails obviously...recently I've had a second hand come loose and "free spin" and I've had the top pusher stop working, 2. My watch gains or loses significant amount of time per 24 hours.

I love when my watches are +/- 1-2 seconds a day, I will "live" with them say 10, 20, 25 seconds usually at the end of its service "life cycle" but once it gets past that I find that I won't wear them so I end up shipping them off...

So to answer your question I do not follow "service interval recommendations". Breitling, Omega, Rolex...none of them.

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Mickey® 

I'm generally with MickeyWatch on this one, as I'm always of the opinion that it doesn't take much wrong with a watch to noticeably affect it's timekeeping. So all the while a watch is running OK and keeping good and consistent time, then I'm not too bothered about service intervals. I'm a true believer in the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", so I personally like to avoid having a watch opened up any more than it strictly needs. There is a case to say that sometimes you may get stung for a slightly bigger bill when you eventually do send a watch in, but the jury's out on whether 1 bigger bill would be higher than say 3 or 4 potentially smaller ones, so my opinion is to only send a watch in when you need to.

That said, a watch's WR is worth getting checked regularly if you use your watch for swimming as gaskets can fail over time, and obviously the first you will know about it is when your watch floods when you take a dip!

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Driver8

Site Moderator

As is said in a previous post my crown broke and they have to replace the internal part and the crown itself so I was sent a bill for that along with a service bill which in total is very hefty.
They said they will carry out the repair without the service which is about half of the total price with the service included.
If I do that though obviously nothing will have a warranty.
I don’t know what to do.

OK well that's a different question to what your first post in this thread was asking.

If you're having a repair done, and Breitling will only offer a warranty if you have a service done at the same time, then personally I'd go for it. I don't know how old your watch is, but at the end of the day the watch is being opened anyway for the repair, so you may as well get the service done now. Plus a warranty is always a good thing to have. Obviously all that depends on how much you can afford or are prepared to spend... and only you can answer that.

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Driver8

Site Moderator

It’s a 2013 and the bill is £1044

As I say, only you can decide if you can either afford (or want) to spend the money or not, but in terms of age, the watch is 7 years old so a service certainly isn't going to hurt.

If it was mine then I'd absolutely be having the service done at the same time because the watch is going to be opened anyway for the repair. Basically it will save a potential additional trip back to Breitling in a couple of years time, and you'll get a new warranty. But from what you're saying it sounds like it's a financial decision rather than a convenience/what's-best-for-the-watch decision.... and cash priorities are something that only you can decide I'm afraid.

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Driver8

Site Moderator

I didn't know that part of the story either...My Old Navitimer II was the watch I mentioned the second had mysteriously came loose...it was keeping PERFECT time and I had zero intention of getting it serviced. Sent it to Breitling and this happened...02/10/2020




In my mind I hoped they'd say "here ya go Mate it was keeping great time and we saw no issues so we just popped the hand back on, minimal charge of $59.50....your good to go". (Joking...)

I didn't mind b/c I honestly didn't know when it had its last "real" good service as it was bought used - so I really didn't mind...I keep telling myself.

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Mickey®