I'm aware that it's a cheaper alternative to the real deal but it's still no negligible amount of money (at least for me). I can live with the watch breaking 2 years down the line but if it stops working due to a known issue within a couple months of purchase I'd be pretty upset tbh.
I still went ahead and bought it tho, cause I really love the look of the watch, hopefully won't regret it! I guess if it breaks I'll have a really nice looking paperweight so it won't be a total loss hahah.
Thanks for taking the time to answer and ease my mind
The problem is that nobody can tell you how long a high-end counterfeit copy of a delicate mechanical piece of machinery, based on 13th century technology, assembled in an East-Asian pop-up sweat shop full of 90 year old, dirty machines and even dirtier tools will hold up.
Could be 15 seconds or 15 years.
But the whole spirit of the replica scene is this: If it breaks, we don't just accept it and use it as a paperweight.
We instead try to fix it. And not only that. Fix it AND make it even better.
Every other day a new person pops up in the TD section that signed up on RWI only to vent about how their TD "scammed" them, because their rep they bought to flex on the Gram broke. They have no idea how this scene works and that nobody here gives a damn about their rants. On top of that, they expect a counterfeit product to be sold with the same service and warranties like in regular retail such as Amazon prime or Walmart, which is, to put it kindly, slightly deranged.
The whole point of me droning on is to bring one thing across:
Reps break. Period.
It's what they do. And we accept it and have learned to seek workarounds for this elementary problem of this hobby.
If you can’t afford to potentially lose a few hundred $$$ in case your rep remains unrepairable, for example, I think you shouldn't buy a rep in the first place. Most noobs from that category lose it at that point and feel offended if you tell them like it is.
In your case, I think you are sincere in your admission that you need your investment of a few hundred bucks to safely work or at least that it needs some sort of assurance or some kind of warranty etc. There's no shame in admitting that. A lot of people are in similar situations (high student loan debt and just started paying it back, low wage jobs with twins on the way, and so forth... you get the idea...).
So I am certain that you won't perceive this as putting you down, or me being a smart ass or whatever. So, in all honesty, if $400 are too much for you to write off worst case scenario, for the time being at least, I think it's better for you to go with a nice Tissot or Certina for the money. Or, in my personal opinion, even better: with something Japanese. Until you can afford losing a few 100s with a rep.
But you now pulled the trigger on one already, and I hope (and expect) that you'll love it. So my advice is perhaps even more important now, because you will soon taste the dreaded opium high of top-tier replica watches. Highly dangerous and highly addictive! So if you continue buying more reps (which is now highly likely
—no pun intended), you have now been officially warned. Therefore you can't come back and complain that nobody warned you.
Anyway, since the Aqua Terra will soon be with you, you are now obligated to post pictures as soon as it arrives. And more pics of the 10 other reps that will surely follow...
