In December of 2008 I was on my honeymoon in Venice, and decided to purchase an Armani mechanical (automatic) watch. It was quite an advanced unit with day, date, month and year all included. Also included was a 2 year international warranty, rather important since I live in japan.
Upon returning home, a few weeks into January, the problem showed up. Over the course of a day, the watch would gain five minutes. I took the watch to the Armani store in the city I live, and was told that since I had purchased the watch overseas, they were unable to do a straight exchange. However, the watch was covered by warranty and they would ship it no charge to the service center in Tokyo.
About 10 days later I received my watch back in the mail and I seemed everything was fine. However, approximately 3-4 months later, the problem cropped up again, exactly the same. I once again took it to the store, heard the same story, all very polite and apologetic in a good Japanese service kind of way. This time however when I got the watch back, the strap was not correctly put on. Once again, back to the store, more profuse appologies and assurances of dealing with the problem. A few days later, the service shop phoned and said there would be a charge to fix the strap, which wasn't covered by warranty. I explained, once again, the situation and was told as a "special service" here would be no charge.
At this point a rather sad pattern emerges; 3-4, then 4-5, finally about six months later, the same timing problem came up. And each time the store staff would apologize profusely and assure me that *this time* they'd finally get it right. The last time was in November 2010, one month before the expiry of the warranty, and I expressed my fears to the staff, namely that they hadn't been able to fix it the previous 4 times (plus one time to fix their screwup), why should I trust them to fix it this time, and what assurances did I have that the problem wouldn't return after the warranty period.
Like clockwork (at least not Armani clockwork) my watch returned a little over a week later and seemed to be working fine. Then, in January this year, 2 weeks after the expiry of the warranty, the dial indicating the day of the week fell off. At this point I was tired of dealing with the store staff and decided to write to armani's customer support. I explained the troubles I had had for the last two years and asked them to please take care of it. The reply I received bordered on insult; this address was for service issues related to the online Armani exchange website, please direct your concerns to he regular Armani customer service.
It has been six months since that particular exchange, and 8 months since the last failure, and once again the watch gains five minutes in a single day.
For those that have read this far, I commend you. Let it serve as a cautionary tale.