Rolex Reliability & Refinement: Service Issues?

The image: Rolex may not be the „highest horlogerie“, but is able to produce extremely reliable products of the highest quality and in high quantities in every phase of the production cycle. They are constantly working on improvements and registering new patents.

That is what I always read and still want to believe. However, this belief has taken a slight dent. I am unsettled.

My wonderful brand new (!) Rolex GMT II Rootbeer in RG (bought about four months ago and only worn a couple of times since then - with caution, as always; the rest of the time it spent well protected in a safe) has a problem.

Last Tuesday I picked it up to wear it again. I was really looking forward to it. While setting the date (as is well known, this is done using the hour hand) I noticed that the hour hand was not clicking into place correctly. In the end the problem was obvious. On the full hour (minute hand at twelve) the hour hand was always between 2 hours.


(Please excuse the poor photo quality. This is a screenshot from a video that I made of the AD).

On the same day I took the watch to my highly valued AD. It was immediately taken into the care of the master watchmaker and will probably be ready for collection tomorrow or the day after tomorrow after being repaired. I will then go into detail about what the problem was.

One thing is already clear, however: unless something happened at the dealer (and I rule that out with high probability, as they are extremely reliable and I have bought much more delicate and more expensive „calibers“ of watches from them with no issues and problems at all; the watch was also completely in its original packaging and I was apparently the first customer to hold it in my hands), then Rolex has a quality assurance problem.

In any case, I will keep you informed.

All the best
Thomas