Blancpain

This april I bought a orig. Blancpain leather wristband and folding clasp for my Air Command which came with Steel band.

This watch had a wrist time of approx. 30 to 40 days and no contact with water.

Nevertheless the leather strap looses all its original shininess and to make things worse it starts to give colour as well.

While washing my hands the leather strap got by achance a little bit wet and my shirt sleeves had been brown afterwards.

The contacted shop "von Köck" in Vienna on the Graben, told me there is no guarantee for Blancpain leather straps and I should by a better quality, becouse Blancpain leather straps are usually worn out after one year.

I wrote two times an email to [Email address suppressed for privacy]  but didn't get any answer.

Are ther any suggestion from You out there?

Running to court seems no prctical solution for me, as the damage is only 190.- Euro for the leather strap.

 

Thanks for Your welcomed suggestions

 

bob

Blancpain is known for there poor aftersales service  all the way from HQ to all there useless salespeople, this coming from experience, anyhow i personally would buy a strap from another supplier which will be cheaper and more than likely better, or you can just not buy Blancpain and not have to deal with there third rate service.

Actually I could't belief this is possible.

I own 5 watches from the swatch holding and my Breguet leather strap is after a long time shiny as new.

See some Pics when the Blancpain strp was new in April and how it look now.

I am wondering why the Blancpain Service didn't anwer my mails sent to  office at blancpain dot com   at all?

Because I told them, with this experience I am going to buy a Lange 1 Daymatic as my next watch?

 bob

This was the leather strap in APRIL this Year, when it was new

So it looks after approx. 30 Days wrist time (no water contact)!!!!

I have looked at your photos.  Things seem strange.  Let me go through the list.  First this is not a current production watch.  Indeed, if memory serves this watch most likely would have been produced more than 8 years ago, more likely 12 years ago.  Was this strap on the watch when you bought it?  You say the strap was new in April; does this mean that you added a "new" strap to an old watch?  Where did you buy the strap?  A dealer?  Second, I have seen many hundreds of Blancpain straps.  I have never seen that occur if the strap was "never wet".  Never.  Blancpain sources its straps from the finest suppliers in the world.  A new strap simply does not deteriorate like that from normal use in a few months.  I own many Blancpain watches and I find the straps hold up with the very best in the industry--no exceptions.

So I am sorry to say that your portrayal of events raises more questions than it answers.  Something here does not add up.

@jkingston

Thank you for yout shown interest in this case.

Let me first of all, sort somthing out:

I newer mentioned the watch to be brand new.

I mentioned the strap is original BLANCPAIN and was bought this April, from a BLANCPAIN Dealer in Vienna, to replace the steel strap.

The reason behind this: I own some other watches, (Breguet originally with rubber strap, Omega originally on steel strap) and changed them to leather straps. Those are (for me) more comfortable to wear.

So did I with the BLANCPAIN Air Command this April.

My complaint was not about BLANCPAIN in general, it was only based on the fact "BLANCPAIN did not react on my mails".

In contrary, I love this BLANCPAIN and use it while playing golf and cycling.

Hopefully things are more specific now.

Regards

bob

My experience with Blancpain is that their straps are great quality....

As far as service is concerned, thus far, I consider them excellent.

Did you buy the strap from a boutique or an AD?

Cheers

@PinkPanther, this report is really as bad as true!

the Shop "vonKöck" at Graben in 1. District in Vienna is an AD, there is no Blancpain Boutique in Vienna.

The leather strap is genuine Blancpain and branded at the inside (which is actually rubber)

I am very disappointed by the "if there is aproblem, we do not answer at all"  strategy of the Blancpain headquarter.

it took the Shop "vonKöck" at Graben in 1. District in Vienna about 14 days to get the leather strarp and folding clasp.

For those of you, who could't beliefe the Blancpain strategy, see a copy of my unanswered mails to Blancpain: sorry partly in German !

Hopefully Blancpain will loose not only me as a customer...

Best Regards

bob

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 My first email to  info  at blancpain  dot  com:   (unanswered)

Gesendet: Montag, 20. September 2010 11:03
Betreff: Reklamation Lederband

 

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

 

ich habe im April dieses Jahres beim Juwelier VonKöck, am Graben in Wien ein originales Blancpain Lederband (innen mit Gummibeschichtung) mit Faltschließe  für meinen Air Command Chronometer gekauft, welchen ich bisher mit Stahlband getragen hatte. 

Da ich aus Ihrem Konzern insgesamt fünf Uhren besitze habe ich die Air Command seit dem Kauf des Lederbandes etwa 30 einzelne Tage getragen. 

Ich habe die Uhr nie im Wasser getragen, trotzdem ist das hochglänzende Band bereits matt und stumpf geworden. 

Bei meiner Reklamation beim Juwelier VonKöck, wurde mir im Beisein eines Zeugen, erklärt:  

„Lederbänder der Marke Blancpain sind Verbrauchsartikel, verlieren eben sehr rasch ihren Glanz und müssen nach einem Jahr bereits ausgetauscht werden, da sie dann bereits abgetragen sind“  

Und ich wurde mit dem Rat, wenn ich wert auf Qualität lege, solle ich ein Hirsch Uhrband kaufen, weggeschickt.  

Bevor ich nun ein Hirsch Uhrband kaufe, wollte Ihre Meinung ebenfalls hören, ob auch Sie glauben Blancpain Uhrbänder sind von solch minderer Qualität, oder ob Sie bereit sind das Band in Kulanz zu tauschen.

  

Ich sehe Ihrer werten Reaktion mit Interesse entgegen und verbleibe

 

Mit freundlichen Grüßen aus Wien

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

And my final email to  info  at blancpain  dot com:  (unanswered too)

 

Dear Ladies and Gentleman,  

it is now an entire week, since I wrote my complaint about your wrist leather bands.  

You are not able or not willingly to answer.  

So far this is an understandable answer for me, as a customer.  

Owning five luxury watches from swatch holding, it is time to cancel my Breguet Classic wish and change to Lange 1 Daymatic, as my next watch.

Best Regards

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I can understand your frustration  to now which has become anger, as this is suppose to be a So Called Big Brand but they treat there customers like absolute rubbish, they have no regard for the people who have spent thousands of dollars on there watches, this is why BLANCPAIN will never be amongst the elite  PP VC AP RM UN Pam even Rolex  as all these brands plus a few i m issed  KNOW how to take care of there customers, i have never had so much problems with a brand like Blancpain THEY JUST DONT CARE  so anyone looking to buy Blancpain  BEWARE!! 
This message has been edited by gazoz on 2010-09-29 03:42:38

We can all trade stories of watch woes.  I own watches from more than 15 brands.  I have had service issues with every single brand except 1 (and that was from a very high end independent watchmaker).  My worst service experiences have come from a certain extremely well reputed Geneva brand that we all know.  I had one complicated perpetual calendar go back to them to be fixed NINE times before they got it right.  And that was not the only watch from them that had problems.  A perpetual chronograph had to go in 4 times.  Another perpetual twice.  Another watch 4 times.   Far and away worse than any other brand across the board.  With one German brand also problematic for me, I had to send one watch back 3 times before it was right and another watch back twice. 

One thing I did not do was run to the internet to write a worms eye view of things trying to smear them in some way. 

For what it is worth, my experiences with my many Blancpain watches have been among the best in my collection.  Not perfect, but then as I noted above the only perfect "brand" experience I have had is the one watch from the super high end independent.

With years of collecting experience spread over far too many watches I have come to view these kinds of sweeping criticisms in this string with a grain of salt and give them essentially no creedence

So actually i think i have been more than fair waiting more than 2 and half years is not acceptable for a Brand New Watch to be repaired, there is a mod here who knows my story very well and even he couldnt and maybe still cant believe how bad there service was
i would gladly email you a small piece of the problems i had.

i have waited nearly 3 years before i ran to the internet and still i havent shared my story or should i say nightmare  so i think i have been quite understanding, i can tolerate that things happen and go wrong but its the way the company reacts and responds is what separates them from the rest.

Gazoz has kept his problems (of which I know a fair bit) totally off-line and did not communicate any details to the public. The problems were (are?) substantial and would, regardless of brand, create some serious doubts about the attitude of a brand towards its customers. The time frame of which this problems are being 'dealt' with attests to the immense patience on the side of the customers.

Still, despite the above, I would be very cautious to generalise. Any customer service experience are truly snapshots is a function of [time, location, issue, personal interaction, ...]. Did the customer deal with HQ? An AD? A local service center? Was the problem well described? What were the expectations? Were they reasonable and did both sides agree on them? And so on and on...

So there are specific conditions that may or may not make a service incident work smooth or not.

In this context I propose to qualify a bit. You are well known watch 'journalist' (if I might say so), and you have (like me) a very special and tight relationship to Blancpain. Whether this has any influence on how you are treated or not does not matter here, but it certainly reduces comparability of your cases with other cases.

So, let's take your issues listed with a certain extremely well reputed Geneva brand also with a grain of salt?

Cheers,
Magnus

Hello Bob:  I also own a total of five Blancpain in the past, two currently.  The worst memory I have is the rubber strap of my Leman Reveil GMT 2041-12A30-64B.  I never wear the watch under water and just very occasionally during showers and under the rain.  The outter and inner surface of the rubber strap bubble up after six months and later broken near the lugs even before the 2 years warranty period of the watch.  As there is also a built-in winding and power reserve problem even after a free service, I decided to quickly sell it as an used watch.  In terms of the leather strap, the quality is average but never ever let it wet or you will easily get water stains .... X71 is a fine bracelet.  I will definitely wear it if I were you with the Air Command.   My pennies worth ....   Regards, Roger, still a Blancpain Fan

@JB1735

Hi Roger,

it seems i am not alone...with my trouble about BLANCPAIN straps and I am blessed not having trouble with the Air Command itself, as well.

Meanwhile I've contacted Hirsch and they are going to prepare me a custom made leather strap.

So I have never to bother BLANCPAIN again - still ignoring them also when buying new watches.

bob

approx. 3 weeks after i mailed Blancpain, this weekend while abroad, i got  five mails from five different departments of Blancpain and Swatch Group.

There was also a big difference, what they are telling me:

One mail tells me, my first mail had been misrouted to a false department and they apologised.

One mail tells me, my first mail had never reached them and my second mail will now forwarded to the responsible staff.

One mail telling me i had probably misused my leather band, by constantly immersing it in chemicals or water and they are terribly sorry, but can't help me.

One mail asking me to see the local Swatch group in Vienna with my leather band. if there is any fallback in quality, they will change it for a new one.

One mail from Blancpain Munic, asking me about the size of my band leather band, so they can send me a replacement for it.

So i am looking forward how BLANCPAIN will keep a good reputation in Costomer Relations.

 

I will keep You informed

bob

Let's meet!

Magnus

Yesterday i followed the invitation from Swatch Group, at Ares Tower Vienna.

They short investigated my poor looking leather strap and apologised for what had happened.

Within seconds it was certain, they will replace the strap. Only, at present it is not in stock and the will notify me asap.

(Blancpain leather straps are amongst many others manufactured by Kaufmann as a OEM product. Blancpain probably confront this company with my fainted and brown colour staining leather strap).

So in my point of view, the reputation of Blancpain, regarding customer relation, is restored.

Concerning the fact, i got 5 mails from 5 different departments, with 5 total different messages (see thread title: Late response from Blancpain), there may exist some internal communication problems within Swatch Group.

On the other hand, i am asking myself:

is it really necessary a customer needs to do all this, to lead the attention of Blancpain to a obvious failure of their product ???

This answer had to be given by everyone to himself...

With Regards

bob

 

and I will try to make Blancpain aware on the conflicting messages they sent out to you. Clearly, they were trying to help, but such a cacophony should be avoided by better streamlining of communication processes.

Enjoy your Blancpain and post a pic of the new strap once you received it!

Cheers,
Magnus

Hi followers,

today i visited Swatch Group Vienna and they replaced the rotten leather strap with a shiny new one.

So from my side there are no recalls of the trouble it caused in the dirst place.

Hopefully it will last longer than the other one.

They even offered me, to bring my other Swatch Group watches direct to them, if the need service.

I think i will accept this offer.

Have a look on the new strap.....

congrats on the new strap and your success, and thanks for sharing.

Magnus

I hope you will enjoy your watch (and new leather band) for many years to come.  Service issues can be frustrating, but I am glad a satisfactory solution was finally reached!

Cheers,
Daos

Thank you for your shown concern in this case.

To be specific:

There was no point about the watch itself, which runs fine since a long time, as my others do.

I complained about the AD (vonKöck at Graben in Vienna), who refused even to think about replace the obvious flawed strap.

And the now best sorted out, confusion with five different answers from Swatch Group at first hand.

All in all, it had been two Swatch Group staff members (one in Munic and one in Vienna), who took action, to keep me on board as  a customer.

Hopefully more similar incidents, will end that happy way....

bob