It and my engagement band got stolen between the national jewelry chain branch store and the repair jeweler. :eek: On the return trip. :eek: The shipping company is the one now responsible for tracking the thief. The njc store is gonig to replace both rings.
The diamond solitaire is the kicker. The stone was a gift and had been re-set into a Tiffany setting. The color of the original stone is K with V1-V2 clarity and the size is .27 caret. So I am interested to see what I will be offered to replace the engagement stone.
Let us cross our fingers and hope that the original rings are re-covered and returned instead. I miss a silly piece of carbon. Am I losing my mind? I would rather have MY rings back, not a “NEW” stone.
I am glad that I wasn’t the customer whose one of a kind 40yo wedding set was in the stolen shipment. I would be prostrate with grief.
I am shook up as it is. The engagement stone was special-to me for sentimental reasons.
My Dad owns a jewelry store, and they have a jeweler in house (they actually have 2 now). For engagement rings, and other items of high sentimental or monetary value, they size/repair by appointment, and you get to sit up with the jeweler while he works. . .your ring never leaves your sight. Nothing ever leaves the building (except watches under warranty that their watchmaker can’t touch)
Private, non-chain jewelery stores often will have a jeweler on site. Often as not, it’s the owner. There is no shipping involved, and I’m sure there are other stores that do something similar (such as while-you-wait). You might want to try something like that next time.
I understand why you are upset about losing your special ring. My wife’s engagement ring that I gave her was “lost” (probably stolen, we learned later) and I promised her a new one for our 5 year anniversary. Instead of buying another new engagement ring, I had the stones from my mother’s engagement ring (they’re divorced, and it was her suggestion.) reset into a new engagement ring for my wife. My mom’s engagement ring had a 1/2 caret center diamond surrounded by rubies (they were married in July) and smaller diamonds. I had the center diamond reset into a new ring with two of the rubies on either side of the diamond to represent our two girls, and I had 5 of the smaller diamonds reset into the wedding band for our 5 year anniversary. I still have the other stones set aside for a matching bracelet for our ten year anniversary. (Shhh that part is a secret.)
I’m always pissed when I hear these stories. I don’t deal with jewelers much, but it just so happens I had a good experience with my guy when I had my wedding rings sized.
He came out and told me my stone was about to fall out! He fixed it, no charge. Also, I was able to stand at the window and watch him do the work, so I didn’t stress that he was pulling the old switcheroo on me (I assume this happens all the time…how could it NOT?). Not that my ring is worth much…but still!
A lady I worked with swears up and down that when she took her ring into a then national chain for resizing, that they switched the diamond. She never had anything but a " it doesn’t have the same sparkly clear quality that it had before’ and since she had worn it for 30+ years, I trust her experience.
I prefer the smaller jewelry stores myself.
Our local jeweler has an apprentice that just bought into his business. This guy is smokin’ hot. Just smokin’.
I had a similar experience. It took a threat of legal action to get my ring back after six months - but that was the local jeweller. I thought “I’ll go local, better for the economy; feh on the chain!” - and ended up with my ring essentially runined. A year later (three years after the ring was bought) there was a chip out of the middle stone. We went into the chain where it was purchased, and they allowed us to buy the warranty. Then they replaced the ring. Only, the table size was smaller (but same carat weight) and I didn’t like it, so they allowed us to trade to a different style.
I certainly won’t say great things about every chain jewellery store because I’ve heard too many horror stories, but the Kay I dealt with in Baltimore kicks ass. We don’t go anywhere else.
If you’re forced to take the replacement option, insist that you will have the replacement(s) independently valued and that the store who lost the originals will pay the valuation fee. They can’t reasonably argue with this.
One of my co-workers took his plain wedding band to a jeweler to be resized. When he got it back he wore it for weeks before noticing that there was no inscription inside the ring - his original ring had their initials inscribed inside it. He just shrugged and kept it.
I’m thinking there’s some other guy walking around town wearing a wedding band with a strange inscription that he’s never noticed.
Wait a minute. When they “resize” a ring, don’t they either they either add gold to the inside or they carve some gold out? That would explain the missing inscription, no?
I lost my wedding set AND the 3-stone ring I got for the birth of my first child. Stuck them in the pocket of my stretchy levi’s and they fell out, either in the parking lot of or inside the Black Angus in San Lorenzo, CA. I realized I didn’t have them just as I was crawling into bed. Hopped my ass out of bed, grabbed a flashlight and searched and searched. Anybody find them yet? It’s been two years. I can’t bear the thought of someone else wearing my stuff but I’m sure that’s probably the case as they were quite pretty and the wedding set was very unusual.
I put an ad in the paper offering a very generous reward and had someone respond via a collect call, and simply out of habit I declined the call without realizing it WAS someone calling about my rings. Dumshit am I. We scoured pawn shops to no avail.
It’s a horrible feeling to lose something so special in any manner. Hub was sooo great though. He hardly batted an eye, until I said I wanted replacements!
I replaced the rings with better, but I still yearn for the wedding band I can covet only in a picture taken during our honeymoon.
Oh, and I’ve thought that they sized rings by heating them and sliding on a sizing rod. How exactly IS sizing done?
You generally size rings by cutting through the bottom shank, and then either removing a bit of gold and resoldering, or adding a bit of gold and resoldering. There are ring shrinkers/expander machines, but those are only good for rings without stones, and you can’t change the size too much with them.
So the upshot is that I ended up with totally new rings.
They searched the NJC systemwide database to find the enhancer and demanded it from another store to make me happy. They matched the weight and clarity of the solitare but since they don’t do K color I ended up with an J.
The enhancer was replaced and the stone they found to replace the solitare was actually a nicer stone.
I picked the rings up two hours ago and THEY FIT and they are PRETTY. I had to sign off that I was satisfied and I am.
