FEATURE: TAG Heuer Servicing and Repairs

Way back in February... before the Covid crisis, before I had my right tonsil out, before the F1 season started... I noticed the quick change date on my Senna F1 (WAZ1014) wasn't working. Fortunately, it still had five months warranty left on it and I scooted over to see the guys at Bicester Village and got them to send it back for me. Unfortunately, when I got there, in demonstrating the problem I managed to pull the crown and stem completely out of the watch... that wasn't a good feeling, I can tell you!

Anyway, the watch went away for a few weeks and when I went to pick it up I decided it was time to get my blue dial 2000 Exclusive and my black dial S/EL chronograph repaired. The 2000 worked great, the only problem with it was that when you unscrewed the crown to change the time or date, the crown unscrewed itself from the stem. This meant you could only change the hands backwards, which made setting the time and date an adventure... I did ponder dabbing a droplet of glue on the crown and screwing it in (as some 'thug' suggested on the Calibre 11 forum - it was you Pitfitter446!), but I thought better of it as the glue was bound to end up where it shouldn't and I would be in an even worse situation.

The S/EL had more issues, the main one being that the red minute hand on the chronograph didn't move and jiggled when you tried to reset it as if it wasn't attached properly. Also the lume on the dial and hands was quite badly patinated and I decided since it was going back anyway I would get a quote for a re-lume while I was at it.

When you return product to LVMH you are sent an email with a link to track your items' progress through the system. I think that's quite a good idea as as least you know what's going on and what stage of the process you are at. The quotes came quite quickly, though I must admit that this being my first experience of returning a watch to the manufacturer for service it was a bit more expensive than I had anticipated.

I assumed that the blue 2000 would just be a case of re-fixing the crown onto the stem, or maybe just a new crown and stem, but the quote detailed that the watch needed a service and so the total for that including polishing the case/bracelet and replacing the back and crystal gaskets was £240. The watch itself actually cost me £255, but I figured for a total of £495 I would have a good as new 2000, so I approved the quote.

The S/EL had a more detailed quote since all the hands and the dial were going to be replaced and it had also at some time suffered moisture ingress. The actual service itself was £315. The dial replacement was £130 (I naively assumed that my dial would have it's lume repainted but apparently not) and the total bill including everything was £529. I had bought the watch for just £400, so it was a bit of a shock to be honest, but having seen photographs of someone else's recently serviced CG1110 I decided to take the plunge.

In the meantime I noticed that something wasn't quite right with my WAZ1014...

I'd worn it for a day or two, but it wasn't until I took this photograph that I noticed the lume was missing out of the minute hand. No immediate panic as of course the watch still had a few months of warranty remaining, but what bemused me slightly was that I couldn't see the lume rolling around under the crystal, which meant that it had dropped out while it was being repaired and no one had noticed. To be fair I hadn't noticed either, and actually I quite liked the way it looked! Still, common sense prevailed and I returned once more to Bicester Village (which is always a pleasure anyway) and the watch was sent back to the service centre once again.

By this time it was March and Covid19 was a thing, suddenly Bicester Village and the service centre itself were closed down and thus began the start of a long wait to get my watches back. With classic poor timing I found myself in hospital twice (the last place you wanted to be in March 2020, frankly), first to have my right tonsil removed... and then a week later when blood started pouring from my mouth at 1AM! Oh what fun that was... no sleep, then a full day on a ward watching endless old episodes of 'Top Gear' on a TV that froze for two seconds every thirty seconds, while gargling peroxide solution (which is spectacularly unpleasant by the way).

By the start of July all three watches were back at Bicester and Tom sent me some photos to show me how great they looked. Unfortunately his super duper camera phone showed up every remaining scratch on the bezel of the 2000 which gave the impression that it hadn't been polished at all (anyone who has tried to sell a watch on eBay knows the peril of photographing polished watch bezels) and worse still my S/EL had been returned with a completely different dial.

For those of you who are not aware, the CG1110 S/EL had two dial designs... mine, which was the original and then this one with the silver sub-dial rings. Quite why they decided not to give it a new number when they changed the dial I don't know, but they didn't and this is the result. I must admit it did occur to me at one point to mention this because I did know about this quirk in the numbering, but I thought 'surely no one would change the dial to one that looks completely different and not notice', so I didn't bother.

Again to be fair, the root of the problem lies with the person who decided to keep the original catalogue number and dial number when the dial design changed 25 years ago. But at the time I was a little irritated by it, especially as I thought they'd probably thrown my dial away or possibly damaged it getting it out (they hadn't of course, but I didn't know that at the time).

On the positive side, the bezel and bracelet looked great, and I tried my best to persuade myself that it was a good thing as I already had the old style dial on my white faced, two-tone S/EL... but to be honest I wasn't really buying it. When I went looking for a CG1110 to buy I quickly realised that there were two different dial designs and I always wanted the original version - I just never liked those thick silver subdial rings.

Thankfully, Tom got straight on it and came back to me very quickly with a response from the service centre. Unfortunately it was not the best news; a replacement for my dial was not available so the option was either keep the new dial or have my old one put back in. I opted to have mine put back in and they apologised profusely for messing me about and promised to get it back to me as soon as possible. In the event it was slowed down a bit by Covid and the need to quarantine the watch for two days each way, but it came back within a week and they credited my card straight away as well.

As it happened I had ordered a strap for my Pilot watch in the meantime and then when that came in I ordered a strap for my red F1, and when that came in I ordered a strap for my yellow F1, and then when that came in I ordered a black F1 strap, so I didn't actually end up picking up my watches until half way through August... but it was worth the wait.

I had a lovely time picking up my bounty of goodies (I will post about the straps another day as this post is already getting quite long) and it was so nice to finally get my watches back. The Senna F1 particularly as I had only bought it in December so it was away for more than half the time I had owned it!

Happily the 2000 Exclusive looked much better in person and they clearly had polished it as well as they could. Sure there are still some light scratches, but I'd rather they didn't polish it too much as I've seen one of these that's been overdone and you lose the sharp edges on the over-riders and that looks pretty dreadful.

The S/EL looks fantastic too, and it finally works properly. It's amazing the difference a sonic clean makes to the bracelet, it looks so fresh and I'm really glad I sent it in. The hands look so much better than they did before; I was a little concerned that the they would look too new with the old dial put back in, but the worst of the patination was on the hands anyway so I think it looks absolutely fine.

The bezel on my S/EL is super-crisp now, as they obviously replaced the bezel spring as part of the the service. The 2000 isn't quite as impressively clicky but maybe they just never were? The service centre send all the old bits back with your watch as well, so you can see all the gaskets, hands and other parts that have been changed. It really makes you appreciate just how tiny the chrono hands are on the S/EL!

I now have three more watches that need attention, my silver dial 6000 chrono and my blue dial Kirium chrono both need servicing as the chronographs on both are not working properly. My blue dial Kirium probably needs a lot of money spending on it, it could do with a new bracelet for a start, and maybe a new bezel as well. That's not going to be cheap, but on the other hand I'd have a minty new Kirum, so it might be worth it.

The other issue I have is that the crown on my WAY208C Aquaracer needs attention. When I unthread it it winds the watch as it should, but when I pull it to the first position it either does nothing or it moves the second hand(!). If I pull it out a tiny bit further it changes the date, but it doesn't feel like it's connecting properly. Fortunately I still have about 9 months warranty left on this one. I could have taken it back when I collected these watches but I just wanted to have all my watches back together for a little while.

All in all, Covid19 delays and dial mix-ups aside, I am very happy with the service I received. My watches look great and knowing that they've been serviced and that I have a year warranty on them is a good feeling. As always Tom and the guys at Bicester were great, none of the problems were of their making and once the service centre was open again they resolved the problem very quickly and efficiently (thank you to Catherine at the service centre).

As far as I know there are only two particular watches in the history of TAG Heuer where they changed the dial but kept the catalogue number the same, it's just typical that I would have owned both of them (the WAH1110 is the other). As such this problem isn't going to affect you unless you have one of those or an original dial S/EL chronograph (it would also affect the other dial colours, not just the CG1110 by the way).

In closing, Tom assures me that the service centre is fully up to date now, all the backlog caused by the shutdown has been cleared, so when I take my Aquaracer in it should only take a few weeks to come back... I just need to decide how much I'm willing to spend on my blue dial Kirium I guess!