zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

The recent discussion of Gelber Mundy brought up a significant issue--the risks of public discussions of discounts offered by Authorized Omega Dealers.

I have chosen to do something that I almost never do--delete an entire thread of messages. I do not make this decision lightly and this not out of censorship of any of the ideas and contributions of the people here. These contributions are quite valuable!

I do this as part of my responsibility to PROTECT us as consumers.

I'll try to keep the explanation of why this is important and necessary from being too long. All Authorized Omega Dealers are restricted to very stringent guidelines by the Omega dealer network that they must comply with to maintain their dealer status. If on occasion, an Authorized Dealer makes a deal outside these guidelines, it is to our advantage as consumers to NOT publicly discuss such matters. Such discussions have several major risks to us as buyers. One is that they can create a FALSE expectation that a dealer can offer an identical deal to ANYONE else. This leads to major disspointment and unreasonable criticism of a dealer that is trying to do their best to accommodate good customers. The other is that it creates the perception that a dealer is regularly violating their Omega dealer agreement, risking loss of their dealer status. That would effectively be 'killing the goose that lays the golden eggs' -- taking out a dealer that may occasionally bend the rules in favor of good customers.

We as the online Omega community have already killed one or two golden geese. Omega used to offer free COSC certificates on watches made within the past decade, offer free Moonwatch books, and offer free serial number lookups on ANY watch they ever made. Now ALL of these benefits are GONE or SEVERELY restricted because Internet groups shared the info TOO MUCH so that Omega was overwhelmed and overburdened with more requests than they could accommodate. Now they are no longer willing or able to offer such freebies.

So while I do not like to declare any relevant discussion a verboten area, I am going to try to guard that we do not cause further detriment by communicating information that in the long run hurts everyone more than it helps anyone.