 |
PM |  | |
Quote | | |
Reply | | |
Full Topic | |
| Joined: | Sun Feb 26th, 2006 |
| Location: | Oregon, USA |
| Posts: | 2897 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
You may recall back in mid November I received an Orange Mako.
I was quite excited to get it as it wasn't and still isn't available in the US market and it was even hard to find in the Asia markets but one obscure eBay dealer in the UK had somehow got his hands on a few of them and had them for sale.
It took me a couple of days to realize that there was actually something wrong with it, the screw down nut on the day pusher would not tighten down against the case. Instead it would thread down and off the threads in the pusher assembly and then spin freely against the case. There are a number of problems with this though it wouldn't immediately effect water resistance it would eventually cause problems.
I a friend of mine (aka Garwal) made a phone call to the US distributor of Orients (aka Mark Chang Kim) and he offered to fix it for me even though I had not bought it from a US AD.
He did ask me (through Garwal) to provide all the information about the eBay seller that I bought it from which I was happy to do since our US distributor clearly doesn't have any say in how orients are distributed anyway it certainly won't hurt to feed his delusions of grandeur.
I should note that I haven't' ever talked to Mark personally though he has suggested I do so It feels like violating the chain of command for me to call him personally.
At any rate The Orange Mako stayed in LA for two months, I sent it on 11/28/07 and received it back on 1/31/2008 what I got back was My Orange mako with the screw down day pusher just as broken as when I sent it in. It did come back with a white sticker on the back and in the package was an internal work order slip with the problem written in English and Spanish. I am left wondering how many ways a repair can go wrong when there are at least three languages being spoken in one repair center.
After receiving my Orange Mako back still broken I chanted “fool me once” and promptly bought a rubber strap Black dial/bezel Mako from eBay (for less than our US distributor sells them for by the way) to use for parts if I actually needed to replace the pusher. When the Black dial Orient arrived I quickly swapped the Orange dial and movement into the new case and put the Orange dial caseback on the new case (just in case the gibberish on the case back is model specific) to complete a perfect CEM65001.
With my Orange Mako back in operation I took the bad pusher assembly apart and quickly discerned that all it needed was for the pusher tube to be seated further into the case so that the screw down nut would reach the case before it ran off the threads so with the tap of my hammer on a piece of steel round stock that fit the shoulder on the pusher tube I had it fixed. Within 10 minutes I had it fixed and all back together and the black dial and movement assembled in the original orange case with the now fixed day pusher.
I know you are asking “If I could have fixed it to begin with why didn’t I?” The answer is I am lazy and it was during the holiday season and I have a real job that was keeping me busy at the time too so sending it in for repairs seemed like a good idea at the time.
The moral of the story is, people suck ass, and if you want something done right you have to do it you self.
