Not ready to do time piece repairs any time soon for anyone, but,
In my experience as a home repairman for over 14 years I always had to go over the existing condition before I went to work.
I've found the same thing. Once you send that clock out you "own" all the previous repairs so I want to bring everything up to a standard I can put my name on.
PWfanatik; This often brought in the factor of the previous repairman.
I said nothing about them because I soon found after making that mistake it was the Brother in law or husband who did the dastardly deed before I arrived.
Aside from that, as mentioned by others here discretion is the better choice of action.
That's a delicate situation but it doesn't make a shoddy repair OK just because of who did it. The owner really needs to know the truth - gently - so they can keep "uncle billy" away from the clock. I had a nice clock in for repair last year that had a really bad repair job. The owner was a friend (which made it a bit easier) but the butchery was done by her father, now deceased, who ran a respected clock repair business. I carefully explained that the lovely old ST No.2 regulator really didn't need two or three of extra weights soldered onto the original weight, but just a little work on the worn verge. She was happy and since brought me several more clocks to repair. What is that old saying, "the truth shall set you free"?
When I was a little kid I had a record player (I think most of us here are old enough to know what that is) that wasn't working. So being the kind of kid that had to see what made it work, I went inside and discovered that there was a capacitor (condenser) that had spilled its insides. Not having one, I set about to make one, which to me at that time seemed a reasonable thing to do. So I got out some waxed paper and aluminum foil and rolled it all up on a thin wooden stick, attached wires to foil and taped it all up and connected it in place of the blown capacitor. Well it actually worked mostly OK until something else went wrong that was at that time beyond what a 10 year old could figure out, so my mom and I took it to this wonderful man who ran a little radio and TV shop in the next town to be fixed. He could fix anything electronic so it wasn't even a challenge for him, and he would always take time to explain what was wrong and answer a little kids many questions. When we took it in I mentioned the capacitor I had made, so when we came to pick up the repaired record player he had to say something about that capacitor and why he replaced it with a nice new one. Rather than giving me a lecture about messing with the insides of the record player, or telling my mom to keep that kid away from it, he simply said to me that he had replaced my homemade capacitor and that it would have been fine if had a little less leakage and a bit more capacity. Electronics became my main compassion as a kid and teen and I frequently went back to that shop to get parts and talk to Ed. I looked him up a few years ago, he was in his 90's and still remembered me. He passed away a short time later.
Sometimes it isn't what needs to be said but how one says it that can make the difference.
RC
Keep on truckin'
