Bummer Blue Nile Experience

[FL_runner]

I’m sorry to report a recent poor experience with a Blue Nile ring I have owned for a few years. I have a “bubble” band in 14kt rose gold with natural diamonds that I have worn as an everyday band pretty regularly for the past three years. I take my jewelry off before exercising, gardening, etc. but do wear it for daily tasks. I recently wore it in the hot tub on vacation and did not smack it into anything - I was just sitting in a mildly heated tub- and half the stones fell out! We found one in the bottom on the tub.

I’m going to send it back to the customer service department for evaluation and have been notified I will need to pay for repairs. I understand and will do so. They have chocked it up to “user error” but I was honestly shocked- y’all know me and I am pretty careful usually with jewelry! However I’ve washed dishes with my rings on, scrubbed it with Dawn and hot water with a baby toothbrush, sent it through my ultrasonic cleaner and nothing happened so I never thought sitting in a hot tub for 15 minutes would make it basically disintegrate I knew it was a more delicate setting type but if you have this type of setting and want to be more carefree be warned! Do NOT take it in a pool, hot tub or sauna!

 

[JV36912]

I’m sorry to report a recent poor experience with a Blue Nile ring I have owned for a few years. I have a “bubble” band in 14kt rose gold with natural diamonds that I have worn as an everyday band pretty regularly for the past three years. I take my jewelry off before exercising, gardening, etc. but do wear it for daily tasks. I recently wore it in the hot tub on vacation and did not smack it into anything - I was just sitting in a mildly heated tub- and half the stones fell out! We found one in the bottom on the tub.

I’m going to send it back to the customer service department for evaluation and have been notified I will need to pay for repairs. I understand and will do so. They have chocked it up to “user error” but I was honestly shocked- y’all know me and I am pretty careful usually with jewelry! However I’ve washed dishes with my rings on, scrubbed it with Dawn and hot water with a baby toothbrush, sent it through my ultrasonic cleaner and nothing happened so I never thought sitting in a hot tub for 15 minutes would make it basically disintegrate I knew it was a more delicate setting type but if you have this type of setting and want to be more carefree be warned! Do NOT take it in a pool, hot tub or sauna!

Half the stones?! That's crazy! I would never have expected that to happen either - sorry this happened to you! Hope they are at least, able to fix it to your liking, without taking advantage of you in pricing the repairs.

 

[FL_runner]

Half the stones?! That's crazy! I would never have expected that to happen either - sorry this happened to you! Hope they are at least, able to fix it to your liking, without taking advantage of you in pricing the repairs.

Yes 4 of 8 it was really surprising! I am not sure if it was the jets? It was not really high speed and we had them off most of the time since we we had our kids in there most of the time, it was a friend’s backyard hot tub!

Honestly if they quote a very high price I’ll probably ask for the bits back and make something new with a local jeweler.

 

[JV36912]

I or 2 stones I can imagine (and still be surprised since it handled normal wear fine) but 4/8?! Thanks for sharing. I'd be leary to order from them in the future.

Yes, totally make sense. I'm sure it can be reworked into something beautiful and to your liking for a reasonable price - since you already have the gold and diamonds. Hope this all turns out well!

 

[seaurchin]

Well that's a bummer. Pretty ring, too!

No expert here but, to me, it doesn't make sense that anything about a hot tub would cause the stones to fall out, so my guess is that might just be a coincidence of timing.

Three years of daily wear is a lot of chances for a more delicate ring to get some knocks and become slightly bent, even when trying to be careful with it. With the design of that ring, maybe a possible "knocking out of alignment" caused several stones to fall out?

When you look closely at the ring from different angles, does the band appear to be bent out of shape at all?

 

[m-cubed]

I think it might just be simple physics. Heat makes metal expand, cold makes it contract. That ring does not have large prongs, so when the metal expanded in all directions with the prolonged heat, that was probably enough to lose firm attachment on the stone.

 

[Mrsz1ppy]

What a shock! I’m so sorry this happened to you.

I have read that chlorine can react with the alloys in gold jewelry, causing microscopic pitting.

Frustrating.

 

[LilAlex]

So the issue is that they were not actually floating diamonds, as advertised?



No, my best guess is that it got slightly bent out of round and that can tweak all of the mountings. This happens to one DD's ring whenever she carries a suitcase or a backpack by the handle -- so very common on travel. A jeweler had warned us about this and I did not believe it until I saw it with my own eyes -- her thick ring is an oval.

 

[lala646]

Thank you for sharing the cautionary tale, and so sorry it happened! Were you able to find all 4 of the stones?

 

[monarch64]

My eyes may be deceiving me and it’s hard to tell from your pic, but it looks like two prongs are gone. The one in the middle of the two missing stones on top and the one in the middle of the other two missing on the side. But I could be mistaken!

 

[FL_runner]

My eyes may be deceiving me and it’s hard to tell from your pic, but it looks like two prongs are gone. The one in the middle of the two missing stones on top and the one in the middle of the other two missing on the side. But I could be mistaken!

Oh the prongs did come off! I wish I had an underwater forensic video to see what happened! I found some scraps of metal on the bottom of the tub. Unfortunately even going through the filter I didn’t find all the diamonds.

In retrospect it was silly of me to wear it for something like that, but it had held up so well with hand washing, dishes, etc and my hands have been swelling a lot so I’ve been leaving my bands on I didn’t think! Probably time for me to move to sturdier pieces