Oh my god! What a disaster
story this poor watch has gone through. It all began in August 2013 when twenty-five
guys on the Swedish watch forum Klocksnack chose to be a part of developing
an official watch for the forums one year anniversary. The manufacturer,
TNT Watches (Torsten Nagengast Timelime), and design had already been chosen by the board members of the forum so
it was only a matter of a few details that the participants could discuss and influence.
We were running a separate
thread dedicated to the watch alone and were all following the progress with a genuine interest. In mid-September we got the first renders of the watch and we all
felt it looked promising. Everybody was praising the unique look and you could feel the excitement. In November the patience among the participants
started to run short because nothing was happening but in the end of the month we finally got to see pictures
of an actual prototype and everybody got a little less tense. We were all hoping that
the final product would at least show up before Christmas. But that didn’t
happen.
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| The first render of our customized Challenger ONE with the Klocksnack logo. (borrowed from TNT Watches) |
The new scheduled time for delivery was set to February 2014 which was later postponed
to late March because of a delay of parts due to the Chinese New Year. By this
point the disappointment had reach its pinnacle and the conversation had gone
out of hand. No one cared about the watch anymore and was instead more focused on who
to blame. The guy in our group responsible for all communications with the
manufacturer did all he could do speed up the process and finally, sometime in
mid-May, he heard from Torsten who announced that all the twenty-five watches had been
assembled and were soon ready to ship. It took until the 12th of June for the watches to arrive
and when we all thought the nightmare was over it had only just begun…
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| #226 - The TNT Challenger ONE. Custom made for the Swedish watch forum Klocksnack. |
It wasn’t long after everybody
had received their watches when people started to notice certain flaws
regarding details and finish. Misaligned inserts and movements that weren’t
working properly were just a few things to be mentioned. It was a disaster. This Torsten guy must have been in such a
panic that he totally forgot about quality control. Everyone was disappointed and wanted to
return their watch to be corrected. I honestly didn’t care
anymore and never returned mine. The watch had since long been written off and
the loss was accepted and forgotten.
Before writing this piece I thought it might be fun just to have a quick look at it. I then discovered that one screw was actually missing from the caseback and another one was quite damaged. Seriously, what the hell? I have never been wearing mine for more than a couple of hours so I really don’t know how well the movement is keeping time. Let’s say I just wouldn't be surprised if it didn't. One of my friends even told me that his rotor came off.
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| Say what? How can you miss a thing like this when assembling a watch? |
This watch bothers me quite a bit since I never use it which goes against my number one rule; if I don’t use it, it has to go. But this watch can never be sold. It would mean having to put up with quite the harassment from the other twenty-four owners for the rest of my life. I could even consider putting it up for auction and donate everything to charity. Because it has nothing to do with selling because I need the money in any way, it’s only because I can’t stand owning watches that don’t come to any use. I should of course have realized this before I accepted to participate but too much excitement can really cloud your judgement and make it hard to think rationally. Now it’s only going to sit there in its box and rot away forever and ever.
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Flipper's Diary unless noted.
