murcielagoboy
33
Patek Service and Lessons from Ferrari.....
No-one is doubting the quality of the workmanship and the productive limitations of Mr Stern's business. But ultimately, as a customer of PP, I must attend to my own business and not Mr Sterns.
No, the greater point I have tried to make in all this is that PP specifically went out and "pitched" the servicing of their watches. There was a dedicated digital advertising campaign where owners were asked to "send back their pieces so Mr Stern could oil them" (metaphorically speaking of course). This marketing simply DOES NOT connect with a situation where a piece will remain untouched for 3-4 MONTHS before a single bit of work is done on it. In fact, I consider this marketing a type of deliberate misinformation.
P.S. Oliver - as much as your posts and your insights of PP have been and remain wonderful and informative, I think your "re-welcome" of me was disgraceful - especially given the posts I've contributed to this forum myself. Murcielagoboy is my son's nickname. Thank you very much.
a) People's whole lives change in 6 months. Why market this service if, you're clearly unable to cope with volumes in an acceptable time? (and may I remind you we're talking about a 3 year old 5170 which has a few light external marks and where the movement is in continuous current production - we're NOT talking about the full restoration of 1950's one off). And I can confirm my piece was sent to Geneva...
b) why not queue pieces for service which remain in the hands of owners until a "slot" of work becomes available?
c) Warranty repair falls into the same category of waiting and that is even less acceptable. Putting aside the cost of a piece at this level, a loyal customer is "rewarded" with 6 month wait to correct a fault which should not have occurred in the first place....
d) I am concerned that there is are three assumptions here, that
i) Typical customers do not wear their pieces very much, so will not miss them for 6 months.
ii) the customer has no choice.
iii) We are Patek and the customer will forgive the family-owned company's, let's say, "logistical, inefficiencies"
These complacent assumptions led to very poor reliability and dreadful service for decades at Ferrari to the point where, in the early 90's, the company was on it's knees. Slowly Luca Di Montezemolo smashed all of them. Most of all he wanted people to USE their Ferrari - this is the critical difference he made. When your product gets used it necessarily MUST be reliable, it must get serviced, and therefore aftersales must be efficient. Which means that now, owners purchase a much better made and reliable Ferrari and receive a far better quality service for such a low volume car manufacturer. Now, none of this matters if PP want their pieces locked up in a safe OR if that's what owners normally do (in which case I am no "normal" owner).
Patek is not Ferrari, in fact, PP is a MUCH higher quality product in it's own niche in my opinion, but I sincerely hope that they get the aftersales side of the product offering in line with their products themselves because to not do does hurt loyal customers. And even though the costs are eye-watering, actually, I was and remain prepared to overlook that aspect completely....
Regards
MB.
P.P.S Proud but confused and irritated owner of a 5205g, 5170j and 5270G.
P.S. Oliver - as much as your posts and your insights of PP have been and remain wonderful and informative, I think your "re-welcome" of me was disgraceful - especially given the posts I've contributed to this forum myself. Murcielagoboy is my son's nickname. Thank you very much.
