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.
email me for the golden goose then.