o, what a bother

my relationship with the oakley corp has been fairly solid…

…although you might not expect it to be.

the first pair of glasses i ever bought broke under odd circumstances – they “unobtanium” they use on their ear stems (a proprietary rubber that gets tacky when exposed to moisture like sweat) stuck to a novelty KOKE-FM mic that was on my desk at hightower radio and when i went to pull them off they snapped. they offered to let me send em back for credit towards newer glasses but i never did – they broken ones still sit in a drawer.

i’ve never used any other glasses for prescription lenses since switching to them and probably never will – but i’ve gone through tons of their sunglasses usually selling them on eBay when i grow tired of them for close, if not more, than what i paid for them. i use their bags religiously. and i have a few of their watches…

…this is where this bit comes in.

my first oakley watch love was the minute machine. i still have it. when i got it the retail was $1,200.00 and i paid $500 on eBay but it arrived with links missing out of the bracelet and not running. two hours after i had received my dream watch i was dropping it off at the post office and paying $25 to ship it to oakley for two new links (at $26.00 each) and hopefully just a battery swap to get it going. all in i dropped almost a bill to make my dream watch MY dream watch (i.e. it fit me and ran). i contacted homeboy on eBay about it and he refunded me $50, roughly covering my shipping and battery change. he pointed out the difference in our wrist size was not HIS fault, which is true – but he shoulda saved the links. just saying. hell, he’d probably sold them on eBay years ago.

next watch was a gearbox i paid for, completely unplanned, with a ten dollar scratcher. it was MSRP $600, but had been marked down to $400 on the (now defunct) oakley vault site, and then they had a closing sale where everything, for one day, was half off…so i scored it for $200. less than a year later it was being sent back for a dead battery (you gotta figure it had sit in an oakley warehouse for a WHILE before i bought it, having done the rounds on oakley.com, then oakleyvault.com, and the latter long enough to go on mega-clearance).

a few months before i had sent the minute machine for a battery swap (the “four year battery” had lasted five and a half years) and i had to take pics of the watch and send those via email before they’d send me a pre-paid shipping label. not realizing i would NOT have to pay for shipping (as i had before) i had already packed it with liberal amounts of bubble wrap and so when they sent it back it came with an oakley watch soft vault (a $35 value).

i packed the gearbox better, and didn’t have to pay shit – it was still under warranty, they paid for the shipping and swapped the battery and sent it back. no pics needed.

so fast-forward to a couple sundays ago and bullshit daylight savings time starting. i went to reset the gearbox but the crank wouldn’t lock back down. it was like the threads stripped as i screwed the over-sized crown down and it popped back out. the watch still runs, but it’s not water-tight any more with that crank out. so, i called the number i had always called…but got a recording saying that there were new warranty policies in effect and all claims were started online. then the recording hangs up on you.

so, i went on their site – but the site specifically says if you have a WATCH warranty issue to call a number on the screen…the same fucking number i’d called earlier. so, i called back, got a claim going, and was told i’d get an email with a shipping label.

i got no email.

so i called back and a woman sent me the form – but it said i had to pay at my own expense to ship it back, and had to pay for tracking and insurance. my expense? for you selling me something that busted while under warranty? bullshit! but so it went. cost me $12 or so, but it’s now in their hands. literally. delivered yesterday. so we’ll see where this goes…