True. Honestly all of my A2824's have had some sort of issue. Still functional but they'll have issues like not clicking in properly when pressing the crown, hard pulls when trying to set the time, super grindy winding, and just bad time keeping.
I've heard that the Seagull chinese 2824 clones are almost on par with ETA especially when serviced. Those ones are only $70 ish and could be a decent upgrade to the clones put in these reps.
Same here. All my 2824/2836 have been grindy (no oil I guess). One kept COSC time, others lost 30-50 sec/day..
For the crown pulling issue I've had that as well, but actually what usually helps here is to rotate a crown a little bit back (reverse direction of winding) before pulling it out. That usually fixes it. Same issue on gen Rolex as well.
Had two 9015. One loses 50sec a day but has an incredibly strong 45 hour powerreserve, been almost a daily for a year without any issues what so ever besides the 50sec/day which isn't an issue for me.. The other I haven't measured yet, but seems to keep within 10sec/day. Winds a bit rougher.
I guess we can just conclude that regardless of which movement we choose, any rep watch you buy 'should' receive a service sooner or later. I'd however still pick ETA clones over SA/SH because servicing is so much easier and a lot cheaper than the rolex clones. You can't get parts for SH/SA and if you really want to fix issues you need gen parts that cost more than an entire new ETA movement.
Ideally buy a 28xx clone rep, buy a gen ETA, swap it in and you'll basically have a rep that lasts forever without a service needed the next 6+ years.
