The Swatchgroup & Eta To Restrict Supplies

[ro63rto]

A terrible state of affairs.  I am now turning away the majority of eta repair work due to unavailability of parts.  Almost all the top end repair work  has now disappeared.   The trade should be petitioning the government to ban the import of all eta product if the parts are not going to be made available the trade as a whole.  

http://www.watchpro.com/cousins-versus-swatch-group-dispute-gets-first-hearing-in-swiss-court/

and a bit of reading for you to catch up on [emoji4]

[MilTimeCan]

Swatch might have a significant problem with this in Canada.  

The Swiss signed on to a Free Trade deal with Canada:

IV. Competition Law and Policy

Article 14 - General principles

1. The Parties agree that anti-competitive business conduct can hinder the fulfilment of the objectives of this Agreement. Accordingly, each Party shall adopt or maintain measures to proscribe such conduct and take appropriate action with respect thereto, acknowledging that such measures may be brought about by a Party’s obligations entered into through other international agreements, such as the Agreement on the European Economic Area, done at Brussels on 17 March 1993, to which certain EFTA States are party. The Parties shall, upon request of a Party, consult about the effectiveness of measures undertaken by each Party.

2. Each Party shall ensure that the measures referred to in paragraph 1, and the actions it takes pursuant to those measures, are applied on a non-discriminatory basis.

3. For the purpose of this Chapter, “anti-competitive business conduct” includes, but is not limited to, anti-competitive agreements, concerted practices or arrangements by competitors, anti-competitive practices by an enterprise that is dominant in a market and mergers with substantial anti-competitive effects, unless such conduct is excluded directly or indirectly from the coverage of a Party’s own laws or authorised in accordance with those laws. All such exclusions and authorisations should be transparent and should be reviewed periodically to assess whether they are necessary to achieve their overriding policy objectives.

4. No Party may have recourse to dispute settlement under this Agreement for any matter arising under this Chapter.

 http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/agr-acc/eu-ue/efta.aspx?lang=eng#a2 

Canada has a number of consumer protection laws (Provincial and Federal) that cover the availability of parts for a reasonable period of time:

39. Where goods being the object of a contract are of a nature that requires maintenance, replacement parts and repair service must be available for a reasonable time after the making of the contract. 

The merchant or the manufacturer may release himself from this obligation by warning the consumer in writing, before the contract is entered into, that he does not supply replacement parts or repair service. 

http://www.canlii.org/en/qc/laws/stat/rsq-c-p-40.1/latest/rsq-c-p-40.1.html 

 

What might fly over in Europe:

http://kluwercompetitionlawblog.com/2011/01/31/luxury-watches-and-spare-parts-the-general-court-discusses-the-analysis-of-aftermarkets/ 

Might not fly so well over in North America. 

Swatch may be opening a back door they hadn't planed on.

Edited November 5, 2016 by MilTimeCan

[jdm]

3 hours ago, watchwork99 said:

The trade should be petitioning the government to ban the import of all eta product if the parts are not going to be made available the trade as a whole.  

Gov.t of which country? In the UK Cousins has taken the initiative which you can read in another thread. In my country they protested publicly but nobody really cares.

[watchwork99]

I think the governments of any country that the ETA/Swatch policy affects should be taking action as they should be taking action against any restrictive practise.   The trade as a whole should refuse to stock any items  of ETA origin.   I do not stock any items  I cannot obtain parts for.  This includes ETA  & all Fossil Group Items.  This is not a one way sword after all.  If I cannot repair the products I sell there is little point me stocking them.  If the retail sector as a whole , worldwide, refused to stock ETA based products they would soon change their attitude.   Consider what would happen if car or electonics manufacturers stopped supplying parts for the repair of their products.

[jdm]

6 hours ago, watchwork99 said:

I think the governments of any country that the ETA/Swatch policy affects should be taking action as they should be taking action against any restrictive practise.

You can try petitioning your gov.t but I'm quite sure they won't care and won't act. If your business is affected, do not expect help from them.

Edited November 7, 2016 by jdm

[Paul78]

On 07/11/2016 at 11:37 AM, watchwork99 said:

I think the governments of any country that the ETA/Swatch policy affects should be taking action as they should be taking action against any restrictive practise.   The trade as a whole should refuse to stock any items  of ETA origin.   I do not stock any items  I cannot obtain parts for.  This includes ETA  & all Fossil Group Items.  This is not a one way sword after all.  If I cannot repair the products I sell there is little point me stocking them.  If the retail sector as a whole , worldwide, refused to stock ETA based products they would soon change their attitude.   Consider what would happen if car or electonics manufacturers stopped supplying parts for the repair of their products.

Like you i don't stock fossil group products - but only because they wouldn't allow me to, i did however until last June have an account for spare parts - we had this account for around 12 years, then with no warning the just said our account had been closed because we don't stock their brands. I don't turn away any work though if i can help it, when people come in with an Emporio Armani for example with a broken glass, I'm honest and tell them i can't get the manufacturers part, BUT i can however fit a generic part, for a fraction of the price and 99% of the time, the customer goes for the generic part and it always happy with it. 

Ive just repaired a 1960's Omega speedmaster Moonwatch that needed £400 worth of parts, it would have easily been a £2000 repair had it been sent to Omega or an authorised Omega service centre. The woman who brought it in would never have paid that, she just wanted it as a gift for her son as it was her late husbands. I obviously used original parts - hence the price of them, but i know for a fact if there were copy parts she would have chosen them to keep costs down. Sometimes people spend £5000 on a watch, but would never spend stupid amounts of money to have them serviced/repaired. Theres loads of reasons for this, people save for years to be able to buy them, or get one given as a retirement gift etc etc. So my point is, if we have an alternative, a lot of people will take it, so i hope the chinese do start to produce the parts and Swatch shoots themselves in the foot. I hate big organisations with a passion, they're the reason us independents struggle or go out of business!