Zales jewelry store lost diamond ring during repair

Zales repair lost ring

Jewelry, Other

From:

Date: Tuesday, November 27, 2001 05:19 AM This is an account of a 30 YEAR OLD DIAMOND ENGAGEMENT RING. After being repaired at ZALES, it was lost in a few weeks. Other customers have problems with the same store. My husband and I took my 30 YEAR OLD DIAMOND ENGAGEMENT RING to ZALES for repairs. Two ladies talked us into completely restoring the rings saying the past jeweler had done a poor job. We had the rings soddered together, the head of the setting rebuilt, and the prongs and tips rebuilt. A few weeks later, the diamond fell out and was lost. I was told by a saleman they would take care of it and we went to the store to talk to the manager. Much to my surprise, he would barely talk or look at me. He said he would do some checking and call the next day. Several weeks went by and I finally called him. He didn't even remember who I was. The process of him saying he would call and then not calling, followed by me having to call him happened several times.

Although he said they would replace the diamond, it is with a diamond of very low quality and as best I can figure will cost them about $100. We paid much more than that for the diamond alone 30 years ago. We had purchased the rings and diamond from a very reputable jeweler and at the time opted for a smaller very high quality diamond instead of a larger one of lower quality.

Anyone who saw the diamond could see they had been very truthful and often during cleanings jewelers volunteered comments on what a nice diamond it was. Unfortunately since it was purchased 30 YEARS AGO we have no documentation concerning the grading of the diamond. However because of what we had been told about the diamond, doing a great deal of research, and talking to several reputable jewelers, I know exactly what I had. Remember, I had the DIAMOND FOR 30 YEARS and looked at it daily. I knew it very well. By this point I had talked to the ZALES manager 4 times and 3 of those times he basically called me a liar and said they were not responsible. Had I been trying to get something extra from the store, I would have certainly said it had been a much larger diamond. I just wanted what I had before. ZALES had added insult to injury. This was a very emotional thing and by this point I was very upset. I picked up my setting and talked with several people in the next 1 1/2 hour and found that 4-5 people had also been insulted, treated poorly, and received poor service at the very same store. That seems like a lot of people for such a short time. My husband contacted customer sevice a couple of weeks ago and of course there was no response. I only hope we can warn as many potential customers as possible. ZALES can never replace the DIAMOND even if they were to offer a much larger even higher quality diamond. That was my ENGAGEMENT RING DIAMOND OF 30 YEARS. The ZALES manager says they are not responsible and it was not poor craftsmanship. I managed to keep the same DIAMOND ENGAGEMENT RING FOR 30 YEARS. ZALES repaired it and it fell out in a few weeks and was lost. Are they responsible? Customers you be the judge. Sincerely,

Belinda Gilmore

Comment On This

I went to Zales 2 days ago to have a necklace soldered. Then the next day, they called and said that it was ready for pick up. So I went today, and when I was about to pay for the service, I'm so glad that I took a closer look at the repair. I saw this black thing on where the repair was. And I also noticed that the other part of the ring (near the clasp) was skinner than the rest of the ring. It wasn't like that before. The Zales lady said that the repair guy is going to polish it or whatever. I asked a little bit about polishing, and the lady told me "oh the jewelry repairman knows what he's doing...". So I said, then why is there a black thing on it. She said, "maybe the repairman was in a hurry..." I was so disappointed. I have to come back tommorrow to pick it up. I hope this fix. After this experience with Zales, I would never go back there. They are charging me $27 for the solder. I hope there's a warranty on this repair.