Warranty card for TIMEX watches, 1950s
You might not think an old warranty card could be interesting, but there's some interesting information you can learn from this card. BTW, hi, this is Alan, and thanks for reading. Contact info is below.
This card was kind of affixed to the undersurface of plastic "clamshell box" pictured below, which was part of the package of an old wristwatch I bought. You were meant to separate and keep a smaller tab, and send in the rest.
Here is the card, as it came, folded in half and tucked into a slot designed for it, along the undersurface of the presentation box.
Notice the holes along one edge of the card? Where some notches have been punched out? These were "edge-notched cards," a long obsolete technology used to storing a small amount of binary or logical data on paper index cards, encoded via the presence or absence of notches in the edges of the cards. More on this later on this page.
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This is the reverse side of the card, opposite the side with the address. It's quite interesting. Stamped in red right upper is what appears to be a serial number. Maybe not necessarily a serial number of the watch itself, as TIMEX watches never had any serial numbers. But maybe more like a unique purchase number, where the TIMEX records could determine the exact model of watch purchased, from this number.
Then, there is the usual info about your name, address, etc.
What's most interesting here is the additional information that TIMEX wanted to collect from you, when you mailed in your warranty card. None of this additional information (except maybe dealer name) is germane to the repair of your watch, but it was part of data collection to help TIMEX learn more about the demographics of the new TIMEX owner.
They wanted to know how you learned about TIMEX (8 options,) what type of store your TIMEX came from (8 options,) and your occupation (8 options). The wanted to know how old you were, what size city you lived in, your gender, whether the TIMEX was a gift, or purchased by yourself, and how many other watches you wear, both TIMEX and non-TIMEX.
I believe this card was from the first few years of the TIMEX brand, 1950-1953 or so, and it's clear US TIME, the parent company of the TIMEX brand, really wanted to compile information on the who/what/where/etc of how their watches were being purchased. This information would have certainly been valuable to them, for marketing, advertising, and possibly even for product development purposes.
Here are the terms of the warranty, printed on a small card that detaches from the main mail-in part, so you keep this piece. Warranty lasts for one year, and covers "defects in material and workmanship." Notice they didn't want you taking a broken back to the place you bought it. That's the last thing they would have wanted. This would inconvenience the local merchant, and if it was often enough, might make them decide to stop stocking TIMEX products.
The repairs appeared to consist of a movement swap. They'd take your broken watch, remove the dial and hands from the broken movement, and install them onto a reconditioned working movement, pop it back into the case and return the watch to you. Likely, your old movement would get a recondition, and wind up back in their inventories, for future repairs.
If they couldn't repair it they would replace it with a watch of "equal value and similar appearance." Notice that this means you might send in your broken watch, and the one that is returned to you may look different! It would be a similar model, but not the exact same model.
Inside of the presentation box. The watch strapped around the oval plastic "ring," which was elevated a bit, kind of "floating" above the base of the box. That slotted part on our left was probably where a small paper tab was held, showing price and maybe model name, for when the watch was in a display window or cabinet.
The other size of the tear-away card has some info on winding and advises you to have your watch to be inspected yearly to determine if any servicing is needed. For service within the 1 year warranty, you must take your watch to one of 200 Authorized Service Centers, or mail the watch to the main Factory Service Center in Arkansas. After the warranty, you can also take it to local jeweler, or watch repair place.
At first I thought these holes were like the IBM "computer punch cards," where the holes in cards are read by a machine. But this is nothing like that. The system is called "edge notched cards," a system where the cards come pre-punched with holes alone one or multiple edges. This TIMEX card has them on one edge.
The user manually creates "breaks" the holes with a special paper-punch device. Depending on your needs, each holes was assigned a meaning dependent upon a particular application. By punching that hole, you select that hole's application for either exclusion or inclusion. By passing a long, slim needle through a deck of cards, at a specific hole placement, then lifting up (see the black & white pic above) the cards where that particular hole has been punched will be left behind in the deck. You can use two needles, to create the logical conjunction "and:"
I'm not sure what this codes for, but I guess unless you know what each hole signifies, there really isn't any way you can know. On this card, five holes have been opened up. Kind of an interesting solution, now long obsolete, to problems of sorting out data points in a grouping of cards.
This small section of the warranty card says so much about TIMEX, and about the runaway success of the TIMEX brand of wristwatches. Both from the types of places US TIME expected people to buy TIMEX, as well as the "types of people" they expected to buy TIMEX, it's no wonder the brand was a success. You could say that TIMEX "democratized" the process of owning an wristwatch. Because of the price point, no longer did people have to save up X% of their monthly salary in order to purchase a watch for themselves, for for others.
With TIMEX, "anyone could buy it, from almost any type of store." How could this not be successful?
Finally, shout out to anyone who knows what I mean when I say, "We dress like students, we dress like housewives..."
Thanks for your interest in this article about a 1950s TIMEX warranty card.
I hope you will like it.
Alan
Contact:
Website: Alan's Vintage Watches
