My wife purchased a new Citizen's Eco Drive watch for me for Father's Day in mid-June 2011. It was purchased from an Ebay dealer who noted in the Ebay listing that the watch came with a 5-year warranty. The dealer has feedback in the thousands and lists page after page of Citizen watches.
Soon after delivery, the "seconds" hand on the watch came off and was free floating around. There was no abuse, mishandling, impacts of any kind. The hand simply came off. After a few more days, the seconds hand became trapped between the "hours" and "minute" hands and stopped working altogether.
The watch was shipped to the nearest repair facility in Torrance, CA. By email, I received an email stating that the repair would cost around $80, just slightly less than the cost of the watch.
After protesting by return email, I was contacted by a Citizen rep who offered to reduce the repair cost to around $39. She admitted that there was no abuse to the watch and that the watch was a legitimate watch with a Citizen serial number. But the rep said that Citizen does not provide any warranty any watches sold on Ebay because no sellers there are "authorized" Citizen dealers. I asked if Citizen knows the original retailer to whom the watch was sold and she replied that they keep no records of sale by serial number, so the original retailer could not be identified. I asked if Citizen was aware that hundreds if not thousands of their watches were being sold on Ebay and whether the company has notified Ebay to halt such sales as unauthorized and advise purchasers that no warranty would apply. She replied "no" but said there was no way they could prevent Ebay sales of their watches. I asked if they had taken any steps to identify the original buyers who are "reselling" their watches for reselling to the public. She did not know of any.
Bottom line is that a new Citizen watch was purchased that was defective and Citizen refuses to honor. I told the rep that I would file a small claim action against the company, write a "ripoff" report online, and basically warn the unwary that the company does not stand behind their product. What if you get a watch as a gift and don't know who the seller is? Who knows. My family has purchased 5 Citizen's watches before. No more!