After a long eighteen month legal fight in which it appears Seiko had all the cards and a few more decks stuffed up their sleeves, I think I have got close to the truth over the matter.

Firstly, it was never about the watch I bought, it was about every dodgy watch Seiko USA were exporting via unapproved dealers on respectable websites like Amazon UK.  Having spent weeks trying to track down more details about were and when Seiko watches were made on the far side of the Atlantic I found some little clues that made me start thinking like Columbo.

You see sir, Seiko USA is the only web site in the whole world that does not carry a warning about buying Seiko watches off Internet traders. Can you believe that sir? Why would this be unless they were exporting watches that would not meet the rigorous inspections that would make them fit for the American people with their ‘lemon law’.

The supplier I ended up getting the watch from, Mr. Watch had clearly obtained thousands of Seiko watches from somewhere and as I had contacted them once again about Seiko’s attitude, they stated ‘these were not obtained from grey sources’. Which I interpreted to be that Seiko were supplying them on the understanding that they would only be exported.  They then contacted me again offering to repair the watch for me ‘free of charge’ if I returned it to them with a handling fee of $30 to cover post and packaging. A bit on the steep side if you ask me as the original p & p was just short of £5.

Why the hike in price? Well a jeweller in the Jewellery Quarter noticed that the working were composed of small sub-assemblies held in place by small plastic pins. He said that this was probably the cause of the play in the movement that resulted in the fault. He also stated that this was not the way they were made in Europe. Sadly he hadn’t got the bottle to make a court statement, but this was still helpful.

It all began to fall into place. I had found that Seiko watches were made in South America, believe it was Brazil and Mexico where there is a vast amount of unskilled labour and little  in the way of a skilled workforce.  Going back to my assembly foreman days at H & L Appleby, I recalled that I had used the more intelligent to make up the more difficult components and the unwashed masses to finish the assembly.

So the theory forms that there are probably around 20% of the manufactured bulk that fails to make the final inspection because the unskilled labour has failed to align the plastic fixing pins correctly or maybe simply because being a soft material and reliant on temperature to fix they had been fastened at the wrong temperature. Without getting access to the company production records I will never know for sure.

What then to do with a mass of sub-standard watches? It would probably not be cost effective to take them appart and replace the faulty fittings  and it would definately not do to scrap them all.  Here it is pure speculation but, my theory was not challenged in court by the Seiko representatives so I must have been pretty close to the mark.  The watches are offered to retailers and a low price (here I would suspect it is the $30 mark, thus the free repair) on condition that the only sell them via the internet and export them. They also have to undertake to run the guarantee on behalf of Seiko  and I could believe that the solution of charging $30 would cover the cost of replacement should anyone ever kick up a fuss about being sold a duff watch.

This was the basis of my case at the hearing today and I had found a website two days ago that claimed to be able to date the year of manufacture of the watches and when I punched in the serial number it came up with 2000! This I thought just gets better, they are flogging old stock for export as well.

However, this fact was challenged by Seiko who claimed that the watch had in fact been made in 2010 and was new when I bought it. This  made the judge question why a new Seiko watch, as identified by them, was not covered by the guarantee.

The main guy Mr Powell was lying through his teeth and I made a point of exposing a couple of his lies by referencing the high volume of correspondence we had undertaken before putting the dispute in the hands of the law. The ‘expert’ witness also cocked up quoting the wrong warning on how to set the day and date on their watches and I got him to give a definition of how much force would have been needed to break the mechanism. He informed the court that it would be considerable and it would have been noticeable that the mechanism had jammed. I pointed out that this was not the case, but rather it had rotated freely without making any alteration.

When they maintained their stance that the mechanism had been accidentally damaged I asked them how many people at Seiko had handled the watch prior to the inspection for presentation as evidence. They had to admit that it had been in the hands of a few employees before getting the full Monty. I also pointed out that the clause in the warranty that excluded any ‘accidental damage’ could be evoked to exclude any repair. This provoked a weak response that they often repair watches that are running fast or keep stopping, which I pointed out were adjustments rather than repairs.

Well you can never tell how a court case will turn out and I was prepared for the worse, having already achieved my goal of causing as much cost and trouble for Seiko as I possibly could. However, what is morally right is a far cry from what is legally right. I had been told on the last visit to the court that I had cost Seiko over £600 so far and they wanted to end it. Sure I said, fix my watch. Today they had two of them back in court so I guess we can add another £200 to that bill so I was pleased enough to lose knowing that my costs would be limited because of my low income.

The judge, went through all our arguments in summing up and asked me some questions about the amount of watches I’d had and previous experiences of Seiko watches and I answered them as directly and shortly as I could, just wanting it over. After about an eighty minutes hearing he announced his verdict and you could have knocked me down with a feather. I won 🙂

The judge said that; he could not believe anyone who had owned Seiko watches since 1971 would alter a date in a manner that it would cause a breakage and that it had been admitted by Mr. Powell that other employees had handled the watch before the major inspection and that he must conclude it had been damaged whilst in Seiko’s hands. He then gave me the option of having the repair completed or a full refund of the purchase price and court costs.

I chose the repair as I knew this would really piss Seiko off, and they were given a month to complete it. They were also given two weeks to pay my court costs in full.  Result 🙂 Seiko left the court without speaking to me, but they had mentioned in passing that one of the people involved with the correspondence no longer worked for them.