Paging anne_h

[allycat0303]

Hi anne_h,

I was doing a general search on watch repairs in Montreal and came upon your posts about Gambard (as I was considering them).

My husband has a Breitling Blackbird (watch) which he purchased about 2 months ago. It originally came with a metal strap and he had it switched out for a rubber one. He has never worn it because after looking at it for 1 day, he realized it was ugly. He went back to where he purchased it, La Swiss on Sainte-Catherine, to put the original band back on it, and remove 1 link. They quoted a price of $285 for this work, which I thought was completely insane. This is all compounded by the annoyance that I told him REPEATEDLY that a rubber strap would ruin the watch.

Do you have a suggestion for a jeweller/watch maker in Montreal? Do you know if this is a reasonable price for the work? La Swiss and Paul H are the only authorized dealers of Breitling in Montreal, but I'm wondering if this type of work can be done by any qualified jeweller (and for cheaper.) I know absolutely NOTHING about watches.....

Thanks!

 

[anne_h]

Hi Ally,

No, I'm sorry I don't have anybody to recommend.

I really disliked the service I got at Gambard (it was only that one time); however, that said, my gemmologist says a lot of his clients use them.

I feel sort of lost in the world of watches. I have one guy in the cathcart building who worked on one of my antique watches (not sure if he's there anymore, it's been awhile). Another time I shipped a watch to the US for servicing.

If you just need strap swapping, I'm sure someone local can handle it fine.

I'm sorry I cannot be of more help!

Anne

 

[allycat0303]

Hi anne_h,

Thanks you for your reply. I did not end up going to Gambard. We tried a bunch of jewellers on the south shore. It was a bit of a disaster! We were able to put the bracelet on, but the first jeweller had a REALLY hard time, even though it looked like a simple process.

We went to 2 other jewellers who looked at the pieces of the bracelet and could not figure out how to put them back together. So we ended up going back to La Swiss where we bought it from. They charged us 200$ to put a single link back in. At that point, we were just happy not to deal with this any more and considered it a steal. That jeweller did it in less then 15 minutes....he said it's because the Brietling has pilot bracelets, and made up of multiple pieces, which makes them difficult to put back in.

Lesson learned. It needs to be serviced where it came from. That being said, another friend told me that Château d'Ivoire can service any watches, as they have the largest selection of luxury watches in Montreal.