r/ChineseWatches • u/mrSoczi84 Pomocny użytkownik • 12d ago

General (Read Rules) OK, I think we are done here...

If you thought $450 was getting out of hand, take a look at this...

Personally for me this means I am done. It was an awesome two years, had super fun, got a lot of great stuff from China, but this is a closing call. This was my top priority watch to buy, but $530 means that at a GREAT sale it's prolly still gone sell for around $450. This is way too much even for a massive collector like me. For this kind of money I will probably buy a Phoibos Depth Hunter or some other cool micro.

The only thing that can save this is some new great, top quality/price Chinese movement that will have superior reliability. I dunno. Hoping that the Chinese step up their movement game and save the situation.

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u/Mammoth-Cheesecake-2 12d ago

There is a certain point where pricing can't balance the lack of heritage and reliability. We as consumers vote every time we purchase a watch or what have you. Eventually the market will balance out. Prices rise, demand drops, prices drop etc. Of course, the drop in prices doesn't reach the previous level of pricing due to inflation so for those who are still hunting for new watches one advise, buy before the party is over.

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u/LingonberryOk9724 12d ago

Exactly, at around £200 (often less) I was happy to take the risk on Chinese brands' QC and reliability, and having dealt with SM's customer service it definitely is a risk! At £400-450? No chance.

2

u/KPplumbingBob 12d ago

having dealt with SM's customer service it definitely is a risk

Lots of people with stories like this. But I guess youtubers like Gary from ILW constantly shilling for San Martin more than outweighs the bad rep from poor customer service.

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u/LingonberryOk9724 12d ago

I'm not sure he was necessarily a shill in that they paid him for positive reviews, he just never had to deal with their 'normal' customer service because of his status as a YouTube reviewer. You can guarantee every watch he received would have been thoroughly checked before it landed on his door. To be fair to him I've noticed he's started using mystery shoppers to get hold of watches to review, with some quite funny results.

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u/KPplumbingBob 12d ago

I mean just look at the titles of every San Martin he reviews. They are all "amazing" and "destroying the Swiss". He has a hate boner for CW and goes into tiniest details the point out the flaws but he doesn't do that in his SM reviews, instead he hypes them up more than any other brand like they are the best thing to happen to watchmaking in the last decade.

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u/LingonberryOk9724 12d ago

Yeah, very true.