I don’t like to complain about things. I really don’t. My midwestern stalwartness has furnished me with a grit your teeth and get through it attitude that usually serves me well. But sometimes, a fella just has to tell you what’s going on.
I got a watch….
I recently got this beautiful looking watch from Frederique Constant, which is a brand of Citizen Watch.
The box looks pretty for the Frederique Constant watch, but nothing works.
I was so hopeful that it would be a wonderful timepiece. They call it a “horological smartwatch,” which means it does all the fancy stuff a smart watch does–tracks steps, pulse, sleep–but it looks like a regular watch. All the fancy stuff–indeed, every control for the watch–goes through an app you put on your phone. I loaded the app is said to, the “MMT-365” app, but then the app said it was no longer supported. It directed me to download the Frederique Constant watch app.
This is where the problem started.
There is no Frederique Constant app in the Google Play Store. (For the two weeks I have had this watch, there has been no app.) There’s one for “Hybrid watches”, but when I tried pairing it with my watch, it couldn’t find the watch. There is an app in the Apple Store, but there is nothing for Android users. Plus, the logo for the Apple Store app is different than the “Hybrid” one in the Google Play Store, so I knew it wasn’t the right app. Also, the Hybrid app says to charge your battery, but my watch has a 2-year battery that does not need charging, which is one of their big selling points!
I tried contacting them….
I wrote to the seller. No answer. I wrote to Frederique Constant and got nothing. I tweeted to them, Frederique Constant and Citizen Watch US, both publicly and privately (and you know I swore off social media months ago)! No answer. I finally called the customer service line; voice contact, the last refuge of the desperate customer. I have talked to them 4 times, mostly to a lovely woman named Veronica, and once or twice to another lovely woman named Cynthia. They told me they had to “call Geneva”, where the watch, and presumably the app, are made. And I have never heard back about the availability of an Android app. Nobody has been able to get me an app, and without it, the watch stays stuck at 10:10, as you see in the picture. (It is supposed to be controlled by the app.)
Reader, they–the Frederique Constant people–don’t seem to care at all about customer service, or for getting non-Apple customers. I am returning the watch. It has been nothing but trouble.