Seiko Service > SRPA21 Crown Issue

[ddaly12]

I recently acquired a Seiko PADI SRPA21. Love the watch. Ordered it via Amazon in December 2016 (from seller Vanity Watches). One of the features that I loved about the SRP series was the hacking and winding movement. I felt like this was an upgrade from the non-hacking, non-winding movement in my SKX007.

Time keeping was excellent over the first month (+1 sec / day, wow!), but I noticed in January that the crown became VERY difficult to turn. Not just screwing down and unscrewing, but difficult to turn in the winding, day/date setting, and time setting positions.

I decided I should send it in to Seiko to investigate. I assumed any work that needed to be performed would be covered under warranty (1 month old watch). I mailed the watch in with its documentation, and heard back in about a week that the crown and stem was damaged and would not be covered.

I'm not sure how I would have damaged the crown or stem. I did not put the watch through any kind of tough love, but I did wind up the watch every so often to keep it running and monitor timekeeping. I have a bunch of watches that take hand-winding, so I feel pretty comfortable that it was not a "user error" situation.

Anyway, pretty disappointing, but I'm going to pay Seiko to replace the crown and stem. $61. It's not really the $$$ that gets me, I honestly expected Seiko to step up here. Seemed like a defective crown and stem set-up. If I dropped the watch or something or put it through the ringer, fine, that's on me, but literally nothing out of the ordinary happened to the watch.

I guess I could ask for them to send me to the watch back without any repairs (estimates are free of charge), and have my local watchmaker look at it. But I have no experience with my local guy (or know what he would charge) and I'd rather just have it fixed. I should get the watch back in a "week or so".

I feel like I just got unlucky. At least Seiko is being responsive and it was a relatively modest watch and repair bill. But I love Seiko and the reliability and build quality, so this is disappointing.

What's TRF's take on this situation?

Thanks,
DD

[PJ S]

There’s every chance when you noticed the difficulty in turning the crown, and persisted to continue using it afterwards, that you’ve unwittingly damaged the components.
I agree that a month old watch shouldn’t be like that and it’s one that slipped through QC (presumably randomised batch test as opposed to individually tested) and it would’ve been nice had Seiko sorted it under warranty.
Maybe you didn’t press the issue enough or ask to speak with someone higher up the ranks – even if the cost is immaterial, there is such as thing as the principle.

Equally, as Amazon has such a good reputation for customer service, you could’ve made contact with them about returning it as defective, and exchanging it with a replacement.

[GEORGE505]

Sorry to hear. Yeah unfortunately Seiko won't warranty any watch sold from a 3rd party. Most if not all watches sold on Amazon has no manufacturers warranty, they give you their own warranty. I would have just sent it back to Amazon for the repair or replacement. At least it's getting fixed. Unfortunately I had a similar problem in the past and that is how I found out about the hole 3rd party warranty deal with Amazon.