Watch Station Review

Tuesday, October 8th

2024 Watch Store Reviews

Watch Station

• More than 2,400 watches to choose from
• About 15 brands of watches
• Free standard shipping on orders over $100

Since 2007, Watch Station has been part of the Fossil Group. You may have spotted one of their more than 100 brick-and-mortar locations worldwide, typically associated with outlet malls. Their online store carries over 2,400 watches to choose from, evenly split between men's and women's styles.

Mostly fashion, no luxury

Watch Station didn't have any watches in Citizen's Corso line, the first watch brand we used in our reviews to compare stores. How about the Rolex Explorer? Once again, a big zero. Watch Station's featured brands are Michael Kors, Emporio Armani, Fossil, Diesel, and Armani Exchange; you'll also find watches by Kate Spade, DKNY, Skechers, Zodiac, and a handful of other brands. In other words, the watches here are more about fashion and not necessarily something you're going to pass down as an heirloom. That corresponds to the prices at Watch Station: almost everything is under $400, with just 100 or so that cost more.

Try it on (virtually) for size

The store isn't difficult to shop: either type in what you're looking for or start with Men's, Women's, or Smartwatch categories. Filters can help you get to your results more quickly; just click the boxes to specify your preferred material, case color, price range or brand. We weren't impressed with the details (or lack thereof) when we clicked on the watches we liked: the specs were pretty sparse, and we didn't see any watches that had buyer reviews. The one feature that struck us as novel was the "Try It On”: use your smartwatch to see how the watch would look on your wrist, and/or compare it to a ruler, smartphone, or credit card to gauge its size.

Savings via pop-ups and seasonal sales

Browsing the Watch Station store, we got a pop-up discount of 25% on our first purchase. We had to give them our email address, and the asterisk indicated that "some exclusions may apply”. There was also a holiday promotion in place, with a 40% discount applied automatically to many of the watches in the store.

Slight drop in rating from BBB

How about Watch Station's reputation? Their listing with the Better Business Bureau displays a "B+”, lower than we usually like to see but with only 14 complaints over a three-year period that all got appropriate responses. That's hardly worrisome, in our book, but the rating has dropped since our last review when the company had an "A+”.

Some changes that aren't customer-friendly

There are a few additional changes we spotted, compared with our last review of Watch Station. On a positive note, online purchases can now be returned to a retail location near you; just bring your order confirmation email and you're good to go. Oddly enough, the Watch Station site says you need to be within their return period - but now it stops short of saying exactly how long that is. In the past, that was 90 days, but it's hard to say if that still stands. And, they've doubled the amount you need to spend to get free shipping, from $50 to $100.

Could be better, could be worse

No wonder customer feedback for Watch Station is lukewarm. Everywhere we looked, the reviews all averaged out to exactly that: "just average”. No one is raving about the amazing deals on top-quality watches here, or saying that the customer service is the absolute worst. In about every dimension, people seem to have an "eh” reaction to Watch Station.

Nothing to rave about

We tend to agree. There's nothing that jumps out at us as a big red flag here, but there's also not much to entice us to shop here for a watch instead of a higher-ranked competitor. Go ahead and buy that watch you found on this site, if there's something you like for the right price, but we wouldn't make Watch Station the first store on our list.