WATCH POP

Hi Guys,

Just got back from holiday. I was in the French Jura region which is at the heart of horology, bordering on the Swiss Jura, with places like Bienne, Le Locle etc. From the same origin the Swiss have specialized in watches, the French more on clocks (the Comtoise models, from the regions name Franche Comté. Apparently clock making was taken up as an alternative for manufacturing religious objects like Maria statues, crosses etc, that were more or less banned when the protestant Calvijn gained influence. Where Catholics like these, worshipping of images is not accepted by Calvinistic followers. Hard work is, as is being on time, so making clocks and watches was a good alternative.
Due to a little accident with my eldest son (6, he sprained his ankle for the second time in two weeks) we were not able to go to Besancon to visit the time museum. We did however have a chance to see the Tour de France pass, with US Lance Armstrong and the US Postal Team in leading position.

Now for the bad news: Checking out my e-mail I found this rather distressing mail from Omega VIS:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for your enquiry.

As we are sure you are aware, our website http://www.omegawatches.com/cu_vintage/ has published the technical specifications of vintage Omega wristwatches and other interesting documents free of charge since March 2004. This allows you to find the general characteristics of your model automatically, using the reference number engraved on the inside of the case back. Several hundred of these specifications are already available and we are adding many more each day.

Despite these improvements to our Vintage Information Service, we are still faced with an overwhelming number of additional requests, which we unfortunately cannot reply to within a reasonable deadline. We are therefore obliged to restructure our internal organization once again and cannot answer your enquiry for the moment.

We therefore kindly ask you to be patient and to await further instructions which will appear shortly on our website.

Best regards

OMEGA S.A.
Museum (Vintage Information)
Stämpflistr. 96
P.O. Box 4129
CH - 2500 Bienne 4

I seems we have put them out of business again for the near future. I hope they will find the resources to cope with this. I still have the idea it would be better to charge a small amount of money for this service: it keeps the number of enquiries limited, and only serious questions will be asked.

Anyone else have any info?

Jaap
Switzerland
Jaap Uithof Perfection lies in small things but perfection is no small thing Henry Royce Hi Jaap,

I'm not aware of any 'old world' compagny, which have successfully adopted their preferred level of service to the Internet, unless the economic incentive for providing a very personalized service is very large. In other words the combined ignorance of the world's population will almost certainly always outstrip Omega's comfort level when it comes to paying for the vintage info service.

With more than 80 million serial numbers issued so far and people asking (and being told to ask, the "Ask Omega!"[1] syndrome) about each and every one of their quite common vintage Omega watches, it was only a question of time before Omega would shut down the OVI service.

We brought this onto ourselves. Enjoy. :-(

Frank.

[1] Back when OVI was still going strong, there used to be an "Ask Omega!" syndrome on many of the public internet watch boards, like this one. Once someone asked a question bout a vintage Omega and noone had answered in, say, all of 5 minutes, someone else would helpfully redirect the request to OVI, usually with links to the web page in question and all. The result was A) overloading OVI and B) no general exchange of vintage info on the boards, resulting in very few people actually knowing much, if the talk doesn't happen to center on Speedmaster's.