The most expensive wrist sculpture in the world?
publication date: Jul 1, 2008
Hi
Call me picky, but I expect a watch to tell the time . . .
Like I expect a kettle to boil water . . .
Or a calculator to give me the right answer to a sum.
But I am, apparently, mistaken.
For my recent 40th birthday, Heloise bought me a fancy Franck Muller watch. Now I don't normally brag about material wealth, but this was an expensive watch - I'm talking WELL into the 4 figures.
It is a beautiful object and has more than 300 individual moving parts. So it's no surprise that Muller's reputation is as the 'master of complications'. It is a self-winding watch with a 'platinum rotor' (whatever that means) and the claims are it is accurate to within 1/6th of a second.
So it was a little frustrating to find the watch was gaining around 30 seconds per day! I went back to Selfridges (a big department store in London) and asked if there was something wrong.
I managed to find the sales assistant who sold us the watch in the first place. She was all sweetness and light when we bought the watch, but as soon as I returned with a problem her face darkened and her whole demeanour changed. I had now become a drain on her time.
"Hi, my watch is running fast. Can you help?"
"Well sir, any self-winding watches will gain or lose up to 6 seconds a day."
"OK, but this is 30 seconds a day."
"Let me talk to my colleague . . ."
I was then introduced to another assistant who talked about the number of movements and how these watches will gain or lose 6 seconds a day. However it turned out that my watch wasn't a typical self- winding watch so the daily gain/loss could actually be higher!
"What? So you're now telling me that my £X,XXX watch actually won't tell the time accurately from day to day. Don't you think you should have told me that before I bought it? I mean, I could have bought a 10 quid digital watch and it will tell me the time accurately to the micro second until the battery dies!" The assistant shrugged his shoulders and explained that as these watches are so complicated they do tend to gain or lose time.
Now, I don't actually believe them. And if you own a Frank Muller or have any knowledge of watches please let me know if I am being unreasonable. I am sure that even a £100 watch should tell the time to within a few seconds a week!
I've always tried to be as honest and upfront as possible about business opportunities I review or promote myself. I just can't see the point in withholding certain key elements because you will inevitably gain a bad reputation and high refunds.
I won't name names BUT there are plenty of money- making manuals, seminars, resale rights and all the rest out there that 'conveniently' fail to tell you the whole truth. So consider asking these questions:
- Are there extra costs involved? My pet peeve is those resale rights packages that always fail to mention that you need to write your own marketing copy. They make it sound as if it is a 'turnkey' business, but don't tell you just how difficult or expensive to produce copy that sells. Worse, they may actually provide the copy, but fail to mention that as they are selling thousands of resale rights that all of those people will be chasing the same costumers.
- How much time will I reasonably need to run the business and at what times? Many financial trading and sports betting strategies require you to follow the 'live market' to opitmise your potential gains. Is this clearly stated upfront?
- What's the competition? Is the market saturated? This is especially pertinent to online opportunities. You'll find that everyone and his dog have gone on about affiliate marketing or Google Adwords. To mask the fact that an opportunity is old, you'll find vendors will come up with all sorts of new titles, made up terminology. Also watch out for anything that is essentially luring you into the business opportunity market itself. This is a very tough and highly competitive area. Much better to identify niches that are under-supplied but with enough rollout potential.
- What are the risks? How much could you lose? I was absolutely flabbergasted by the free financial seminar I went to the other day. This was one of those hard sell affairs where they push you to buy a 3-day seminar for £3,000. Having worked in financial publishing for 15 years I was amazed that they had absolutely ZERO risk warnings. If we had done that at my old company we would be hauled up by the Financial Services Authority and given a nasty fine. But this company - who do not need to be regulated as they are deemed 'education' - can get away with stressing all the benefits but conveniently ignoring the very real risks of financial trading.
- What's the refund policy? Is the guarantee transparent? I don't care if it is conditional but please tell me clearly what that entails. You will find plenty of companies will require you to submit proof that you have 'followed their strategy to the letter' before they will honour a refund. Of course, the less ethical will wriggle their way out of paying by asking for such detail that they know most people would never take the time and effort to follow through.
And with that moan over, I'll bid you a great weekend!
Cheers
Nick
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