I had a similar experience Peter although nowhere near as extreme...
I'm still not sure what the difference is between a redial and a refinish.
Anyway, I sent my Carrera 2447T off to get the dial refinished.
It does actually look great (correct fonts, matching colours etc) until you realise that the word swiss is missing and the concentric rings in the subdials are no more :-(
To anyone who doesn't know, it does look a hundred times better than before but small things like this can really nag at you and unfortunately with the subdial rings there's no going back...
I even specified that I wanted the subdial rings preserved - lesson learned...
I wish I'd kept it as it was - sure to the untrained eye it looks good but I'll always know.
So, I'm now on the lookout for an original silver dial - even a rough one will do :-)
AndyO