After seeing a couple of my colleagues wearing them, I decided it might be good idea to get a smart watch. Nothing expensive as I don’t really like wearing watches as they tend to irritate my skin. But, I thought it may have it’s benefits. I trawled through eBay and there seemed to a lot of really cheap ones around the £3.00 mark with a larger number between £10.00 and £30.00. Then there were the popular branded ones going up to £150.00 +. I wasn’t that desperate, so I plumped for one at the lower edge of the mid-price range.

Everything went well, I bought and paid for the unit on Tuesday evening and it was delivered on the Friday, by first class post. All was good and it arrived within the stated time frame. I was surprised by the appearance, as it looked good quality and it felt quite comfortable to wear. The English instructions were well written and easy to follow. I plugged the charger in and left it overnight to fully charge.

It can only be a small battery and usually these kind of things need a good charge to start with, but after 12 hours it was still only 50% charged. I realised that when I placed the unit on my desk, the two pins that charged the unit were not in the right place. This time I got everything right and within 2 hours the watch was fully charged. I installed the software on my ‘phone and I was good to go. It correctly picked up the time and date from my phone, and I began to play around with the numerous displays. The only few things I wanted it for was:
a) a step counter
b) blood pressure monitor and
c) heartbeat monitor
It did all these and many more.

Skip forward to Sunday lunchtime and I became aware that the time on the watch was wrong. The clock said 11:40 yet the watch said 00:04 with a date of 01/01/01. I thought at first I had set it wrong. I re-synchronised the unit with the software on my phone and everything went back to how it should be, Except … all the data from the previous day was gone! This happened again later that day and it seemed that the unit was resetting itself back to its factory settings. I read some of the reviews and soon realised that the phone an watch connect via blue-tooth so both needed to be near to each other. That seemed to make sense, so where I went, the phone went with me.

All was now good, or so I thought! Monday morning and again, the watch was showing a random time. I wasn’t happy about this to say the least, so I contacted the seller with all the problems I was experiencing. About 2 hours later, I received an email telling me that I had been refunded in full and that there was no need to return the unit. I checked PayPal and indeed the refund had passed through and was now in my back account.

I was one happy chap, especially as I didn’t need pay for any postage to send it back. That bothered me a little. How much did the thing cost to make and sell, if he can simply refund me with getting the unit back?