dublingirl
Rough_Rock
- Joined
- Feb 29, 2004
- Messages
- 4
Hello all,
Well, here''s the E-bay story you''ve been waiting for. I''ll try to make this as short as possible. My husband and I started looking around for a three-stone anniversary ring in January. New as we were to the whole diamond-buying business, we were surprised to find lots of rings on E-bay. Anyway, hubby jumped the gun a bit and bid on a ring I was watching (purely out of curiosity). We ended up "winners" of the item (#2683501312) and nervously wired off the $$. Ring duly arrived at a friends in Boston (we now live in Dublin, Ireland) and he sent it to Martin Haske in Brookline to have it checked out. The GAL cert said value was $50k which we knew was grossly inflated, but if the basic information had checked out we would have been satisfied. Mr Haske was a great help and went through everything on the phone with my husband. Turns out that the two side-stones (1.24ct and 1.25ct F colour and SI1 clarity on GAL) were in fact .96ct and 1.05ct, HIJ colour and I1. The centre stone checked out, except for clarity (SI2 vs GAL''s SI1). Our appraisal values the ring at $16K, less than we paid, but way off the fabulous $50k!!! Well, this was enough for us and we contacted the seller to tell her that we weren''t happy and would be returning the ring for a refund. And this is where it went pear-shaped. The seller and her ring manufacturers don''t "agree" with the report we got. We tried the E-bay mediation service, but it has stalled. According to the seller, the manufacturers Romancing-The-Stone aka Ringmaster 47th St aka Direct Jewellry Source in NY, now want US to obtain two more independent appraisals in order to proceed. We have told the seller that as far as we are concerned our appraisers qualifications are beyond question. Now we are stuck, we have no idea what to do next. We know we screwed up, we now know all the reservations about GAL and RTS. We know we could have done better using Pricescope and other reputable vendors, but without any ''I told you so''s'', does anyone have some practical advice on how to proceed here? Do we need to take all this to a lawyer? How would we even go about finding one from so far away? Thanks in advance for your wisdom and wit!!
caireann
Well, here''s the E-bay story you''ve been waiting for. I''ll try to make this as short as possible. My husband and I started looking around for a three-stone anniversary ring in January. New as we were to the whole diamond-buying business, we were surprised to find lots of rings on E-bay. Anyway, hubby jumped the gun a bit and bid on a ring I was watching (purely out of curiosity). We ended up "winners" of the item (#2683501312) and nervously wired off the $$. Ring duly arrived at a friends in Boston (we now live in Dublin, Ireland) and he sent it to Martin Haske in Brookline to have it checked out. The GAL cert said value was $50k which we knew was grossly inflated, but if the basic information had checked out we would have been satisfied. Mr Haske was a great help and went through everything on the phone with my husband. Turns out that the two side-stones (1.24ct and 1.25ct F colour and SI1 clarity on GAL) were in fact .96ct and 1.05ct, HIJ colour and I1. The centre stone checked out, except for clarity (SI2 vs GAL''s SI1). Our appraisal values the ring at $16K, less than we paid, but way off the fabulous $50k!!! Well, this was enough for us and we contacted the seller to tell her that we weren''t happy and would be returning the ring for a refund. And this is where it went pear-shaped. The seller and her ring manufacturers don''t "agree" with the report we got. We tried the E-bay mediation service, but it has stalled. According to the seller, the manufacturers Romancing-The-Stone aka Ringmaster 47th St aka Direct Jewellry Source in NY, now want US to obtain two more independent appraisals in order to proceed. We have told the seller that as far as we are concerned our appraisers qualifications are beyond question. Now we are stuck, we have no idea what to do next. We know we screwed up, we now know all the reservations about GAL and RTS. We know we could have done better using Pricescope and other reputable vendors, but without any ''I told you so''s'', does anyone have some practical advice on how to proceed here? Do we need to take all this to a lawyer? How would we even go about finding one from so far away? Thanks in advance for your wisdom and wit!!
caireann