I had a Seiko SKX-007 that needed some
maintenance, and I was quoted $600.
That price is awfully high. They were either trying to rip you off... or simply drive you away, which is possible if they were a shop that prefers to work on high-value watches for wealthy customers. Maybe they are an authorized Rolex service center and prefer to collect those hefty prices.
But, there's definitely not $500+ of labor involved at any reasonable market rate.
Those Seiko 7S26 movements are something like $50 new and even an amateur can perform the swap in a short amount of time without specialized tools (edit: well, maybe a hand puller, but that's cheap) and there are plenty of videos showing how.
There's no actual watchmaking knowledge required. That would only be required if trying to repair a module rather than simply swap it out.
The SKXxxx models are something of a classic but are hard to find now that they've been discontinued for a while; if you still have your broken model it may be worth more than you paid for it.
It was definitely a high end watchmaker. A large part of the issue is what they considered the service requirements, that they wouldn't budge on - things like polishing all the scratches out of the band, and whatnot, when all I really wanted was maintenance on the movement. I didn't want to swap the movement, and that wasn't an option either.
I’ve looked into this and the only recommended tools were a hand puller and hand press, otherwise it’s pretty straightforward to replace the movement with another stock one, or switch it out to 4R36/NH36 to add hacking and hand winding. I plan to swap the movement for one of the hacking/handwinding ones when the movement when my SKX009 dies.
But, there's definitely not $500+ of labor involved at any reasonable market rate.
Those Seiko 7S26 movements are something like $50 new and even an amateur can perform the swap in a short amount of time without specialized tools (edit: well, maybe a hand puller, but that's cheap) and there are plenty of videos showing how.
There's no actual watchmaking knowledge required. That would only be required if trying to repair a module rather than simply swap it out.
The SKXxxx models are something of a classic but are hard to find now that they've been discontinued for a while; if you still have your broken model it may be worth more than you paid for it.