There is a line we use at Fix My Watch:
Cheap watch repairs do not exist. Only cheap watch repairers.
It sounds like a statement about price. It is not. It is a statement about what is actually being done to your watch.
What a battery change actually involves
A properly done battery change is not five minutes and a screwdriver. Done correctly, it means removing the caseback, replacing the crown seal and caseback gasket, crystal gasket if one is needed, fitting a fresh battery, and running a pressure test to confirm the water resistance has been properly restored. The movement is also checked on an analyser: this measures the current consumption of the battery, confirms the movement is running at the correct rate, and flags anything that suggests the movement itself needs attention. Every time. Without exception.
We recently had a Cartier sent to us for a battery replacement. The testing of the movement showed that it was running inefficiently, drawing too much power from the battery. What would normally have taken over 2 years to drain the entire battery actually would have likely drained within a few months. As this was caught and flagged during the process we managed to save the customer time, effort and further cost as they saved on having to do the job multiple times.
Parts also cost money. The equipment costs money. The training and accreditation required to source genuine manufacturer gaskets costs money. A watchmaker doing all of that correctly cannot do it for £15. The numbers do not work.
So when you see a battery change at that kind of price, it is worth asking what is not being done. More often than not, the answer is the seal. The battery goes in. The gasket stays as it is. The watch goes back on your wrist with its water resistance quietly compromised, and you have no way of knowing until moisture finds its way inside.
The other end of the scale is worth questioning too
There is something else the high street and many online repair services would rather you did not think about: a significant number of them do not actually perform the repair themselves.
A jeweller with a watch repair counter. A website with a polished booking form and a prepaid envelope. In many of these cases, your watch is collected, sent to an external workshop, repaired there, and returned with a margin added at each stage. The shop takes a cut. Sometimes the intermediary takes another. By the time your watch comes back to you, you may have paid over £100 for a battery change that cost the actual repairer a fraction of that.
This is not a universal rule. There are excellent high street jewellers and independent repairers who have invested properly in the tools, training, and accreditations to do the work in-house. But the practice is common enough that it is worth asking the question directly: who is actually opening the case?
We had a customer who told us they’d just had a battery replaced in their TAG Heuer at a local high street jeweller and when we opened it we were shocked to find they hadn’t replaced the case back gasket, there was clear signs of water ingress and they’d even fitted the wrong battery. This whole job had cost the customer £120.
What is a fair price?
The honest answer is that it depends on the watch. For most quartz watches, a battery change done properly, with seal replacement and a pressure test, should sit somewhere in the region of £35 to £75 at a reputable repairer. For a diver’s watch, a complicated case, or anything requiring specialist tooling to open safely, the figure moves up, and reasonably so.
Proportion matters. You should not be paying £100 for a battery change on a watch worth £150. You should also not be paying £20 and hoping everything inside is being looked after. If the price seems surprisingly low, something is likely being skipped. If it seems surprisingly high, it is worth understanding why, and whether the person quoting it is actually the person doing the work.
You can learn more about our battery replacement process and get pricing for your watch here
Why Fix My Watch prices the way it does
We are sometimes told our prices look too good to be true when compared against the high street. We are also told they look expensive compared to a market stall or shopping centre kiosk. Both of those things are true, and both make sense.
We do not send watches out. Every repair is done in our workshop, by our team, using genuine parts and manufacturer-specified gaskets. We have invested in the equipment. Our technicians hold the accreditations required to source the right components. There is no middleman and no markup on top of someone else’s labour.
That is why we can price fairly without cutting corners. The seals get replaced, The watch gets pressure tested. The case and bracelet are fully cleaned ultrasonically and ultimately the watch leaves in better condition than it arrived.
If you are paying well below that somewhere else, it is worth asking what is not happening. If you are paying well above it, it is worth asking who is actually doing the repair.
A note on repairs beyond the battery
We have used a battery change as the example here because it is the most common repair and the easiest one to cut corners on invisibly. But the same logic applies to any work on a watch: a service, a crystal replacement, a crown repair, a movement overhaul.
In every case, the questions are the same. Is the person quoting you the person doing the work? Do they have the tools, the parts, and the training to do it properly? Is the price proportionate to what the job actually involves? A low quote on a full service should raise the same questions as a low quote on a battery change. Either something is being skipped, or someone else is doing it and a margin is being added on top.
