Rocinante Watches Service and Repair Policy

Service and repair of Rocinante watches is even simpler.

DON’T COME TO ME WITH THAT!

You are on your own for service and repair. I won’t service the watches I make under any circumstance. Ever. If you bought a watch from me that requires you to send your watch to me and only me for service, you’re stupid for having bought such a dumb watch, and I don’t want you as a customer. Further and more importantly, I don’t deserve to have you as a customer. Shame on us both!

See, here’s the deal: Watchmaking as an art and trade is experiencing the greatest crisis in all of watchmaking history. You’re no doubt familiar with the Quartz Crisis. The threat right now is even worse. Watchmakers are aging out and dying. I’m the youngest watchmaker I’ve ever met at a spry young 40. Not saying there aren’t younger guns out there, I just haven’t met them. I mentioned this to some watchmakers on a Discord chat just yesterday (seems like something that would self-select toward a younger audience, right?), and the next youngest was 58. See, the Quartz Crisis did a lot of damage, but the biggest blow was to the future of the industry by way of preventing new blood from entering the trade.

That’s not even the worst part though. As I’ve said elsewhere on this site, in discussions with probably every client at least once, and yelled at strangers on the street without the good sense not to engage a wild eyed watchmaker, the industry has been consolidating, and vertically integrating, and marketing “in-house” movements for the last twenty years or so in a cynical effort to maximize short term after sales service revenue at the expense of the watchmakers that will be required to keep them going into the future. The big OEMs are refusing to sell parts or publish literature that is required for your local watchmaker to be able to service your watch and keep it running. In some instances, they’re even making them intentionally unserviceable, and just swapping movements out when their customers return them for what is supposed to be maintenance. They want you to bid farewell to your watch for an extended period of time, unnecessarily inconvenience yourself, and spend far too much money to keep your watch alive under their monopolistic purview. A quality watch should have no trouble lasting generations, but if future generations can’t stomach the inconvenience and expense, there is no future for that watch. It’s just sock drawer art.

So here’s what we’re going to do about that: Your watch may need repair. It will definitely need service. When it does, support your local watchmaker. Find them. Sniff them out. Track them down. Befriend them. Buy them a beer. Keep them in business. Hand your watch to a fellow watch-loving human whose name you know, and with whom you have a long and fruitful relationship. Come back in a few days or weeks, exchange some currency, and bid your good buddy farewell until next time.

Everything about Rocinante Watches is geared toward using workhorse movements for this exact reason. I like money as much as the next guy, but I’m doing pretty OK making the watches. Supporting local independent watchmakers is paramount, and failure to do so will make owning watches too expensive and onerous (making them probably won’t work out too well either). If we have to spend hundreds of dollars and jump through all the hoops to send watches out for lengthy and expensive service that costs as much as a new watch every few years, watches become a genuinely stupid thing to own.

So there you go. Make sure watches make sense far into the future. Support your local watchmaker. Once it leaves my shop, I don’t ever want to see your watch again! (Unless it’s on your wrist, with a smile on your face!)

PS – If you need help finding an independent watchmaker near you to service or repair your Rocinante Watch, don’t hesitate to shoot me a message, dredge up an old email, or hopefully you kept my phone number. I’ll help you find a good one!