The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Hi,

10 years ago, for his 40th birthday, we splashed out rather a lot and I bought my husband a breitling watch, something he'd been wanting for a long time. It is a self-winding model, the Avenger. For the first 4 years it didn't really keep proper time, and eventually we took it back to the jewellers. Long story short, it was serviced and continued to not keep proper time and then stopped intermittently, resulting in another trip to the service shop. This seemed to do the trick for 2 years, then it stopped again. It is now back in the workshop. Having not had experience of the brand, I was not exactly impressed by it's reliability. Admittedly, each time it was returned, after some debate, work was done the watch for free or a reduced cost. Currently we are looking at a bill for £400, with a 1 year warranty.

My question is, is this really what we should expect from Breitling? Breitling UK says take it or leave it; have we been unlucky with this watch? Is there anything else we could do to ensure that it works properly for more than a couple of years at a time? My husband is a careful owner and massively disappointed at present. We are happy to pay for the service, but since Breitling will only warranty the work for 12 months, we are undecided what to do.

Any advice would be appreciated

Kate

Well a mechanical watch needs servicing every 5 - 7 years so that's the service interval that you should expect and the costs and warranty that you are now facing are for a standard full service.

In terms of accuracy, the watch is COSC certified so should be accurate to between -4 and +6 seconds per day, if it's not then it's not performing to spec, and within warranty that should be addressed. In terms of stopping, the watch has a 42 hour power reserve and with daily wear and average activity that should mean that the watch doesn't stop, with a sedentary lifestyle and / or non daily wear it may need occasional manual winding to stop it from stopping.

Tough to comment on the specifics of your situation without a little more detail - how inaccurate, under what circumstances did it stop, etc.