How we rate, and how we make money
Every claim on this site is meant to be checkable. This page explains what we check, how the rating is built, and where the money comes from — in that order, because the third one is what makes the first two worth anything.
Two tiers, and we never blur them
Every listing carries a badge saying which of these it is. The difference is the point of the site.
- Published sources
- Compiled from the business's own website, or a brand's official retailer locator. Address, phone, hours, brands, claimed services, authorised-dealer status. Every source URL is linked on the listing. Nobody has telephoned them.
- Confirmed by phone
- Somebody rang and confirmed it, and added what no website publishes: quoted prices, turnaround, warranty terms, whether there is a watchmaker on the premises. This is where the directory is heading. It is slower and it is the only version worth having.
We will not describe a listing as verified when nobody has called, and we will not fill a price or a turnaround with an estimate. An invented figure about a real business is worse than a blank field, so blank is what you get until someone picks up the phone.
What a listing needs to publish
A business does not appear until it clears all of this.
- Name
- The trading name on the door, not the LLC.
- Address
- Street, city and ZIP, confirmed to be a real working location.
- Phone
- Answered by the business when we called it.
- Hours
- As the business publishes them.
- A source
- At least one URL, linked on the page, that everything above came from.
- Plus two of
- Brands handled · services listed · authorised-dealer status · quoted turnaround · warranty terms · a confirmed price.
51 businesses are on file. 38 clear that bar and are published. The rest stay in draft until someone calls them. We would rather run a smaller directory that is true than a large one that is not.
Why there are no star ratings yet
Because we have not earned the right to publish one. A rating is only meaningful if it rests on facts somebody actually checked — credentials, whether the work is done on site, quoted turnaround, warranty terms. Most of that is not on anybody's website.
Publishing a score derived from scraped review averages, or from our impression of a website, would be a number dressed up as a judgement. So the listings carry facts and sources, and the ratings arrive when the phone calls do.
How we're funded
Category sponsors. A sponsor appears in the panel marked Sponsored on pages in their category, and nowhere else.
What sponsorship does not buy: a rating, a rank position, removal of a flag, removal of a competitor, or a say in what we publish. Sponsored businesses have been rated below unsponsored ones on this site and will be again.
We take no affiliate commission on repairs or sales, and we do not sell the directory data.
Re-verification and decay
Every listing carries the date it was compiled and the sources it came from. We re-check quarterly. A listing that goes twelve months without a re-check is flagged on the page and dropped from our sitemap and index until somebody looks at it again.
A directory that is accurate once and never re-checked becomes the thing we built this to replace.
Corrections
If we have something wrong about your business — you moved, the hours changed, you hired a watchmaker, we mischaracterised what you do — tell us and we will correct it, at no cost and regardless of whether you are a sponsor. If you would like your listing upgraded to confirmed by phone, tell us that too and we will call.
If you want your business removed entirely, we will remove it.