Support

Services we provide

ClockSavant provides (1) servicing, repair, and restoration services  (2) sells watches and clocks and (3) buys selected vintage watches.  We offer servicing, repair, and restoration for timepieces. Visit our Service & Repair page to learn more ClockSavant Servicing & Repair. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Please see our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for answers to common questions relating to watches we sell, shipping, purchasing, and servicing. The FAQ is intended to augment, not replace, information provided here and elsewhere on the website.

Warranty applicability and duration

For watches purchased from us, see the specific item description on this website to determine if a particular item sold by us directly on this website carries a warranty and, if so, duration starting from the date of sale.

Watches you own and send us to be fully serviced carry a 12 month warranty.

Contacting us for service, warranty work, or refund

Please visit our Contact Us page to obtain information on servicing, warranty support, or a refund.

Before sending a timepiece to us, please contact us to obtain instructions. It is your responsibility to assure timepieces shipped to us are properly packaged and insured. ClockSavant may, at their discretion, choose to reimburse you for the shipping cost of warranty repairs or returns. If we do so, this does not alleviate your safe shipping and insurance responsibilities.

Protecting your investment and warranty

All mechanical watches, and especially vintage watches, require special consideration in handling, care, and use. In order to obtain warranty support or to return an item, it is necessary that the customer or his/her agents did not cause damage to the timepiece or tamper with it. Protect your investment and your timepiece for our generation and future ones. Know some of the primary perils that can damage, destroy, or disrupt your timepiece: Water, Shock, Dust/Dirt, and Magnetism. We will discuss water and dirt in more detail in a moment. Relative to shock, handle it carefully. Do not drop it, shake it hard, or subject it to strong vibrations. Avoid playing any kind of sports with your timepiece including golf or anything involving heavy swinging of your timepiece. Don't mow the lawn with a watch on your wrist, swing a hammer, or operate a power tool. There is also the risk of magnetism. While often magnetism can be reversed inexpensively, sometimes the watch is so heavily magnetized it may need disassembly and other times the magnetism can be so intense that it damages internal components. Avoid sources of magnetism such as exercise machines in the local gym (a typical rowing machine being one example), USB hard drives, CD-Players, household or industrial motorized appliances of any kind, and even some themepark rides. Some of these rides use extremely heavy magnetism to propel them-- this is a bad place for your vintage watch to be.  

 

None of the watches ClockSavant sells should be exposed to water of any kind unless we explicitly stated in the product description “Water Resistance Tested by ClockSavant.” Even if the watch or product states the watch is a water resistant or divers watch model, do not expose it to water. Exposing watches not described as “Water Tested by ClockSavant” will void your warranty and can damage your watch— for vintage watches they are guaranteed to be damaged. This is because even new watches designed to be water resistant can fail to resist water if they are not tested by a watchmaker on a regular basis. If a watch is described as “Water Resistance Tested by ClockSavant," the watch still should not be exposed to any water under pressure such as a shower or faucet— these water pressures exceed manufacturer specifications, a common mistake made by watch owners is to assume taking a shower with a watch is OK— it never is. If your watch is accidentally exposed to water, immediately fill a plastic bag with dry rice and put  your watch in it. Contact ClockSavant for non-warranty paid service and we will provide further instructions for getting the watch quickly to us. We will need to fully disassemble and service the watch if water penetrated it.

 

 

 

We realize collectors like to see and inspect their mechanical watch movements.  This is why we offer our customers extensive high quality digital photographs of the timepieces we sell, including movements, and as part of servicing we provide you comprehensive photo’s of the watch and movement disassembled and assembled. To keep-out dirt and dust, ClockSavant maintains a cleanroom environment when opening watches and handling them. This includes air suction, high intensity light, extensive magnification and comprehensive testing after a casebook has been opened.  Any impurity entering the watch can cause it to operate improperly and stop. Protective seals we put into place in your watch may be damaged or disrupted when you open it. We see many issues in watches due to collectors opening the case backs and allowing impurities to enter the watch. We advise against opening the casebook of your watch or disassembling it in anyway. If your opening the case back causes damage or impurities to enter the timepiece and movement, this will constitute tampering and will violate your warranty rendering it null and void. 

While under warranty, do not take your timepiece to another watchmaker or clockmaker. Contact us for warranty support. If another watchmaker or clockmaker modifies or adjusts the watch in anyway, this constitutes tampering and will void the warranty.

Understanding Timepiece Performance

Simplified Definitions: (1) Rate defines the amount of gain or loss in time (seconds) over a 24 hour period for the tested position of the timepiece.  (2) Amplitude is an indicator of the amount of “swing” a balance wheel has when running. Amplitude is measured in degrees. (3) Beat Error indicates how “even” the balance wheel swing is and is measured in milliseconds.  Lift Angle is unique to the watch movement and is a measurement of the number of degrees the watch’s pallet stays in-contact with the balance wheel roller (impulse pin) during a swing. Amplitude performance measurements are greatly impacted by the selected lift angle.

On this website, we use the term timepiece “movement” and “calibre” interchangeably.

Test equipment is used to measure a timepieces performance. Equipment may vary widely in its interpretation of performance. ClockSavant maintains a vast number of timepiece testing systems including those made in Switzerland (Witschi, Greiner), the United States (Microset), United Kingdom (eTimer), and Asia (TYMC, Weishi.) If a customer measures their timepiece on their test system, such as a lower cost timegrapher system, their results may differ wildly from measurements on other systems. Also, these timegrapher testing systems must be used, interpreted, and configured correctly. ClockSavant leverages experience to assess the relative correctness of results from test equipment.

Many factors can impact the performance measurement of a timepiece. It is not practical for ClockSavant to document all of those here. Representative considerations include:  (1) The level of wind— all ClockSavant provided performance numbers, unless otherwise stated, are for a fully wound timepiece (2) Positions a watch is worn-in and stored at night— this is of significant importance and varies by individual, we recommend all timepieces be stored dial-up or dial-down while sleeping to obtain most accurate timing results. (3) The engagement of watch “complications” wherein complications are features and functions beyond the telling of the time of day such as a chronograph or date change; such complications can significantly impact timepiece performance when engaged.

Each timepiece has its own story to tell and unique character. Many factors go into a timepiece’s performance include  age, wear, past watchmaker actions, wearing habits, temperature, level of wind, complications, and timepiece movement design.  Collecting mechanical timepieces and selecting them for your collection should not be a performance competition; however, you should wish that they perform their functions correctly and can be enjoyed. When servicing a timepiece, ClockSavant seeks a blended balance of amplitude, rate, and beat error across positions and in-consideration of the timepiece’s complications. It is not always better to have more amplitude for example if doing-so overpowers and destabilizes some other aspect of the watch. It is not uncommon for ClockSavant to reduce amplitude for a given movement design in order to address manufacturer limitations, differences in watch movement manufacturing runs for the same movement model, unique wear and past work done to the timepiece, or for some other reason. Timepiece manufacturers often design and sell their movements in different grades. Lower grade movements do not always perform as well as higher grade movements. Add the components of age, wear, and past watchmaker actions to this equation, and we can have quite a variability in performance. For example, some watch movements are simply not adjustable in some aspects or were never designed for a certain level of accuracy, even when new.

There is considerable misinformation on the Internet relative to mechanical timepiece performance expectations. This misinformation can be traced-back to many causes to include lack of experience or knowledge, or an “expert” proclaiming an observation that, in reality, only relates to their limited experience working on specific grades of timepiece movements. Expectations around watch amplitude, beat error, and accuracy are some of the largest areas of misinformation. It is unrealistic, for example, to assume that your average vintage watch will provide 270 degrees of amplitude or more in all positions— it just won’t happen. If you are fortunate, and not always, you might get this dial-up or dial-down, but for the kind of vintage watches dating-back to the 1940’s etc, it is not going to happen too often. Likewise, some vintage higher high grade movements simply operate with lower amplitude because they tend to “overbank” (lose control) when more power is applied. The cause of this is sometimes design. Certain versions of the Omega 321 for example are known amongst watchmakers to be prone to overbanking. A look at the manufacturing history and documents from Omega for this movement tell the story of parts changes and modifications, just like your car has recalls, to address things they saw in the field. As committed watchmakers, we have a large-scale internal proprietary database with this kind of information which allows us to help guide the repair, address past watchmaker errors in mixing parts not meant to work together, etc. Regardless, two examples of the same watch movement may have very different performance numbers and expectations due to these factors and others. All of this is one reason why watchmakers tend to avoid discussing performance with their customers. Pehaps they don’t want the customer to hassle them about performance, don’t have the cycles to explain it, or they simply don’t worry too much about performance when they work on your watch and set the bar low. Whatever the reason, there is some argument for avoiding the topic with vintage timepieces but at ClockSavant, we’ve chosen to “go there” and embed performance into our processes, overall quality control, and communication with the customer. But because these performance numbers can be subject to so much debate and understanding, we don’t warrant specific performance numbers.

Warranty Terms

For watches and clocks sold by us, reference the purchased item’s product description for a description of its return policy and warranty if any.

During the duration of the warranty, ClockSavant warrants that the timepiece will keep time and correctly function in-consideration of its age, age-related wear, and its original design. ClockSavant will be the sole determiner of what constitutes a timepiece keeping time and correctly functioning for the purposes of this warranty. ClockSavant will make its determination in accordance with customary workmanship standards. While ClockSavant may provide performance reports and metrics for the timepieces we sell and with timepieces we service, ClockSavant does not warrant that your timepiece will perform in accordance with these performance reports and measurements.

This warranty excludes misuse, tampering neglect, accidental, intentional, or unintentional damage caused by the customer or their agents. This warranty is for the original purchaser only and is non-transferable. 

When returning a timepiece to ClockSavant for warranty service, it is the customer’s sole responsibility to assure the timepiece is safely packed and insured for shipping. Any damage to the timepiece or loss occurring during shipping of the timepiece to ClockSavant for service or refund is the sole responsibility of the customer and is explicitly excluded from this warranty.

When performing under the warranty, ClockSavant may, at its option, repair your timepiece by installing new or used components or may choose to fully refund your timepiece purchase or servicing cost. If the timepiece was serviced by us but not purchased from ClockSavant, we may, at our sole discretion, refund the price you paid us to service your timepiece. In the event ClockSavant chooses to issue a timepiece purchase refund under this warranty, ClockSavant will take ownership of the refunded timepiece purchased from us. In the event of a refund, ClockSavant will have no further obligations of any kind under the terms and conditions of this warranty.

THIS WARRANTY AND THE REMEDIES CONTAINED HEREIN ARE EXCLUSIVE AND IN LIEU OF ALL OTHER WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR PARTICULAR PURPOSE. CLOCKSAVANT IS NOT LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES.