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Overhauling vintage Heuer 1553 S

12928 Views 89 Replies 22 Participants Last post by  Bear1845, 
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Does anybody have any experience with TAG Heuer overhauling/repairing vintage watch?

I have a Heuer Carrera 1553 S, which I bought in 1981 in Austria.



After all those years the watch is in rather poor shape, so I decided to fix it and bring it to its former glory. I can see those old Carreras offered for sale for anything between $2500 to $5000, so even if I have to spend 1000 dollars, or so, it will be worth it.

I learned that the only shop which can do the job is located in Switzerland. Info from TAG's own website:

"The challenge for the Vintage Workshop is to restore your old watch or bring it back to life, by giving it all the care it needs to run for many more years. Located in the company's headquarters in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerlnd, is the only workshop in the world properly equipped and capable of restoring your Vintage watch" ( Men's Watches by TAG HEUER - Best Watches For Men And For Women )

So far so good. I visited my local authorized TAG dealer in Charlotte, NC area and told them I need to send my watch to that "only workshop in the world" in Switzerland. They told me that the watch has to be sent to the US shop first and in two weeks or so they will tell me how much this repair will be and then I will decide if I want to do it, or I want my watch back. I said OK, paid 30 dollars and waited. And waited. And after five weeks I visited my local authorized TAG dealer and asked him if he has any news about my watch. Well, they actually had, but they (I suppose) forgot to call me. They told me that I had "a very special piece" (duh!) which... has to be sent to Switzerland for repair. Well... Isn't that something?

Sir, I said, I told you guys 5 weeks ago that this watch has to be sent to Switzerland and today you are telling me, that this watch has to be sent there? Do we have some kind of communication problem? Don't you know that all vintage Heuer watches are repaired in Switzerland? Your own website says that...

My sarcasm didn't help things. I just had to approve for it to be sent to Europe. This time the fee was 75 dollars, but they told me that I had to pay only 45 (since I already paid 30) and actually they will add that to final bill. We'll see. So I OK'd that step and my watch is on its way to La Chaux-de-Fonds. It will take them another several weeks, God only knows how many, before I will know how much I need to spend to repair that piece. I asked them if someone from Switzerland will call them directly, they said: "No, but we check their website weekly and on that website we will find all the information". But if they check it as they checked before, I afraid I may never hear from them again. o|

I hope the rest of this experience will be peachy, but for now I am little scared.

Anybody have any experience with TAG's vintage watches repaired in La Chaux-de-Fonds? Or with the American authorized dealers sending their watch to Switzerland? Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.
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I finally have my watch back. Am I happy? Well... yes and now. I'm happy that it is over, I'm not, because repair was expensive and final effect is well below my expectations.

I don't know anything about mechanism refurbishment, I hope everything is fine. I have problem with case refurbishment, bracelet and watch' hands.

They tried to clean and polish the case, however they didn't succeed. Looks like they stopped half way. Rear (back) side of the case was engraved and they tried to polish it, however they stopped just hundreds of an inch from clear surface. Also scratches and dents on the side of that case were not removed. They replaced second (stopper's) hand, but hour and minute hand is untouched and looks quite bad. I also ask for an original bracelet and they told me they have it, however bracelet I received doesn't even look like the original.

I had one estimate from them, for 862 dollars 50 cents. Someone from Jared of Pineville told me that this sum cover everything. I did suspect that it will not cover bracelet and I was right. what I didn't know it also didn't cover case refurbishment. I paid total of $1186.50: $862.50 for "Maintenance II - Old Watches and Chronos", $144 for that poor "Case Refurbishment" and $180 for regular, generic, rather cheap looking Tag Heuer bracelet.



How do I rate them in the scale of 1 to 10? Not knowing how they fixed mechanism of that watch it will be rather difficult to be fair. But judging just the time, price, treating me as a client, communication between us, quality of the visual repairs of the case and hands - I would not give them more then 2 points.

One thing is for sure - next time I'll need to refurbish my Heuer I would go to independent craftsman, who will be less expensive, quicker and almost certainly he will do a better job.
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W
this is the sloppiest polishing job I have ever seen, would have assumed these were the "before" pics ?
and I'd be mighty pi**ed to have a sparkling brand new chrono second hand and the aged main hands ......
you are being generous with your rating, hope the COA job is competent.
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WatchFred said:
this is the sloppiest polishing job I have ever seen, would have assumed these were the "before" pics ?
and I'd be mighty pi**ed to have a sparkling brand new chrono second hand and the aged main hands ......
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You are right, I am pissed. Especially that I told them I need new, or refurbished hands. And they fixed one of them, ignoring others. Unfortunately I didn't take "before" pictures of the back side of that watch. I didn't expect any issues dealing with TAG Heuer in Switzerland itself. I have only couple of pics of the face of that watch:



Quotations from TAG's website:

"The challenge for the Vintage Workshop is to restore your old watch or bring it back to life, by giving it all the care it needs to run for many more years. Located at the company's headquarters in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, it is the only workshop in the world properly equipped and capable of restorting your Vintage watch."

Restorting? If they are that sloppy with their website no matter they cannot restore cases of the vintage watches.

"Our master watchmakers put all their experience and expertise into restoring your old watch to its original condition. They will return it to you in perfect working order and with the same appearance as the day you bought it."

Yeah, right....

"We always do our utmost to restore a vintage watch to which we know there will be strong sentimental attachment."

Well, sometimes "their utmost" is not enough. Many independence shops would do much better job.
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I find it VERY hard to believe this case was polished by the "Heuer Vintage Workshop", this is just pathetic.
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WatchFred said:
I find it VERY hard to believe this case was polished by the "Heuer Vintage Workshop", this is just pathetic.
Click to expand...
This is my bill:



Under condition it reads:

"Case Scratched, Case Back Scratched, Dents, Crystal Scratched, Hands Discolored, Dial Discolored, No Strap, Bracelet". They informed me that they do not have replacement dial and we agree that they will do nothing with it. Hands supposed to be refurbished, case too. They fixed one hand, did very poor job with the case and overcharged me selling me that generic, cheap bracelet for 180 dollars.

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radger
WatchFred said:
I find it VERY hard to believe this case was polished by the "Heuer Vintage Workshop", this is just pathetic.
Click to expand...
Gotta agree with you there WatchFred, just looked at those pics and I'm astonished.
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I just talked to a very nice lady who is a "Customer Care Specialist" in NJ TAG headquarters. She ask me for a pictures of that watch and later she returned my phone asking me to send my watch back to NJ. She said they will make it right.
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M
As I seem to have been wrong the first time around, I sure hope that you soon see a positive end to this farce.
I would have been ashamed, if a client of mine would have had that low quality from My company.
Put on top of that, that TAG takes the effort to present themselves as the top restorer of their watches, it all just sounds real strange to me.

Magura :)
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I have sent my watch back to TAG in NJ and they sent it back to Switzerland. Below is an E-mail I received from TAG in NJ today:

"Your TAG Heuer timepiece has been sent to Switzerland. I am awaiting an update.
I will advise you once I have further information."

The saga continues...
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kazrich
Hmmmmmmmmm - I have a similar watch , an early 70's cal12 Carrera. It works perfectly and was allegedly the subject of a 600 euro complete service
at a Heuer specialist in Vienna in 2012.
Every time I purchase a valuable timepiece I contact the manufacturer hoping to find a bit of history about it.
Longines are fantastically helpful but most have little or no interest or knowledge of their company history.
My watch is 9/10 condition and genuinely looks like a two year old watch apart from one thing. Some of the small white script where it says 'automatic chronograph'
has been lost. This is only easily seen at x 5 magnification and probably helps to establish the fact that the blue dial is original. I played with the idea of having the letters repainted
and contacted Tag Heuer earlier this month to ask if they knew where the watch was originally purchased and the exact date of manufacture.
They responded politely within 24 hours as follows

We duly received your below e-mail for which we thank you.

Unfortunately, we do not have any more registration concerning Heuer timepieces, we have thus not those information.

We are sorry to not be able to assist you.

Yours sincerely -------------

Nuff said really ;-)
Richard
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Eeeb
kazrich said:
Hmmmmmmmmm - I have a similar watch , an early 70's cal12 Carrera. It works perfectly and was allegedly the subject of a 600 euro complete service
at a Heuer specialist in Vienna in 2012.
Every time I purchase a valuable timepiece I contact the manufacturer hoping to find a bit of history about it.
Longines are fantastically helpful but most have little or no interest or knowledge of their company history.
My watch is 9/10 condition and genuinely looks like a two year old watch apart from one thing. Some of the small white script where it says 'automatic chronograph'
has been lost. This is only easily seen at x 5 magnification and probably helps to establish the fact that the blue dial is original. I played with the idea of having the letters repainted
and contacted Tag Heuer earlier this month to ask if they knew where the watch was originally purchased and the exact date of manufacture.
They responded politely within 24 hours as follows

We duly received your below e-mail for which we thank you.

Unfortunately, we do not have any more registration concerning Heuer timepieces, we have thus not those information.

We are sorry to not be able to assist you.

Yours sincerely -------------

Nuff said really ;-)
Richard
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David and Jeff's catalog collections are far more expansive than anything the company has... I am impressed folks at Longines and their preservation of their history.
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I told my story on Swiss forum and I didn't get any answers for a while, so I try to log in and check it out, however I've got that message:

"You have been banned for the following reason: No Swiss connection, single complaint on old thread.

Date the ban will be lifted: Never".

Wow! I'm a criminal now in Switzerland. I didn't know it is prohibited there to criticize anything Swiss. :-/
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The Guvnah
polonus said:
I told my story on Swiss forum and I didn't get any answers for a while, so I try to log in and check it out, however I've got that message:

"You have been banned for the following reason: No Swiss connection, single complaint on old thread.

Date the ban will be lifted: Never".

Wow! I'm a criminal now in Switzerland. I didn't know it is prohibited there to criticize anything Swiss. :-/
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Hell's bells! Well this fiasco instantly strikes Tag off the list of prospective purchases on principle alone. I note with some annoyance that there have been no further posts from the poster known as "Tag Heuer"
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D
So it took roughly 6 months and $1200 from sending the watch out to getting it back in unsatisfactory condition?
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bobbee
"Caveat Emptor" never before has been so apt.
Sorry for your trials and tribulations, and this is only one case we know of.
Does anyone have any experience of this "company" and their so-called restorations? It would be good to get more input about them, as this horror story seems to show an extremely bad side to Tag Heuer.
Bob.
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bobbee said:
"Caveat Emptor" never before has been so apt.
Sorry for your trials and tribulations, and this is only one case we know of.
Does anyone have any experience of this "company" and their so-called restorations? It would be good to get more input about them, as this horror story seems to show an extremely bad side to Tag Heuer.
Bob.
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I have used my contacts (I also mod the TAGHeuer Forum) to wrangle a tour next week of the US Service Center. (It took well over a year to arrange...) I'll be doing a report on the TAGHeuer forum.

In general TAG is no different than any other service center as far as I can tell. If you have enough customers you will eventually irritate some of them. And they will go onto the Internet and complain... it is the nature of the beast.

TAG does monitor satisfaction and has recently dumped a bunch of money into service. (They have already achieved turn around times that are about the best in the industry (the biggest complaint).) I'll see if I can tell how the money has been spent.
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dexvd said:
So it took roughly 6 months and $1200 from sending the watch out to getting it back in unsatisfactory condition?
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Even more than that. I left my watch at Jared of Pineville in November and received back in July, so it was almost 8 months.

Eeeb said:
If you have enough customers you will eventually irritate some of them. And they will go onto the Internet and complain... it is the nature of the beast.
Click to expand...
Are you suggesting that I rather should keep my mouth shut? That's what they probably pray for.

Eeeb said:
They have already achieved turn around times that are about the best in the industry (the biggest complaint).)
Click to expand...
Hmmm... 8 months that's "best time in the industry"?

I, however, have no problem with waiting. I have several watches, can wear the others when this is serviced. My problem is with them shamefully charging me high price for something they didn't do. They agreed to certain job. They are promising on their website, that "they will return it to you in perfect working order and with the same appearance as the day you bought it." And later we have what we have. I could do better job in my garage, using sandpaper.

I would understand if they would tell me that case is damaged to much and they would not fix it. They told me that they will not do anything to a dial of that watch and I'm OK with that. However they promised to fix the case and hands after examining my watch and charged me for it and that was totally unprofessional and very childlike on their side.
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Eeeb
polonus said:
...
Hmmm... 8 months that's "best time in the industry"? ...
Click to expand...
Just for the record I was referring to normal watch repair, not vintage work at the specialty shops in Switzerland. But from what I can tell 8 months may indeed be one of the faster times. Vintage work is way backlogged everywhere. Some vendors report 2 years.

The next time I am in Switzerland I will see if I can visit that facility. That would be fun! But they hate visitors. If I wasn't one of the WUS TAGHeuer mods, it would not happen... might not still. Who knows? Oh well...
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bobbee
I think Polonus has a very valid complaint. Not only have the intermediaries badly let him down, Tag have done shoddy workmanship, kept him in the dark, made false promises and taken far longer to return than he was promised.
He has been let down at every turn by all parties involved, and if it was my watch and hard-earned money, I would be looking for a full refund.
Deplorable and inexcusable. And shocking. Vein in temple throbbing, eyelid twitching!
Bob.
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JohnGo
Polonus,

I just read the whole thread. Absolute horror...
Fact is, they have ignored you the whole way through the process, and you got a sentimental piece 'butchered' by 'craftsmen'. I also would be angry if they did that to me and my watch.
I hope now they 'll do things right since you sent it back to them. Concerning the new bracelet, I would try to sell it and source a Heuer-N.O.S or good vintage one on the bay or so...

Anyway, I'll follow this thread because I'm very interested to see how this one goes further...

Good luck with the Heuer Polonus, hope that they can fix the poor polish and the hands-prob.


Grtz,

Johngo
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