Phamble Don’t get your feathers all ruffled with the responses you get. Although I don’t have a high post count, I’ve been reading this board and collecting for years but even so, I’ve been asked to go some where else with my posts before. It’s just part of it, you will get railed if you don’t understand this community and even more so if you come back as a smarta$$.
More to the problem, don’t post negative remarks about a TD until you have tried to work it out with the vendor and have talked to a mod first. The board is actually here to help.
Second, Ryan is a TD. You purchased a watch and he got it, QC’d it, and got it to you. I DO understand the frustration of an expensive rep not being up to par but is that Ryan’s fault or the factory? I doubt he knew it was a dud or he wouldn’t have sent it to you. Sounds like he is doing all he can do by trying to get it fixed if you get it back to him. This is a bad idea though.
Third, finding anyone to fix a rep is difficult even within the board. Super difficult out in the wild as watchsmiths don’t want to work on what many consider inferior since it’s not Swiss and afraid they will be liable for it if the repairs go wrong. As for the board, if I said I could fix watches, I’d probably have several hundred on my doorstep tomorrow so understand why it may be difficult to get it fixed.
In the end, you have to do the best you can and decide whether the 400 watch meant to look like 10,000 watch is worth trying to get back over to China or just take the hit. We all have at one point if you’ve bought enough watches but you can’t blame Ryan. You could have as easily gotten that same watch from any other TD using the same factory.