Noticing a disturbing pattern

[fire&ice]

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On 2/25/2004 1:11:08 PM Mara wrote:


When I see a 'trend' starting to happen as Griffin may be noting with his friends seeing chargebacks, accusations, returns, etc...to me that says the customer needs to be made happier. It's not about complaining to others that things are being sullied by the big, bad internet. It's about getting off your duff and figuring out how YOU are going to make yourself stand out.

...but this is a very real phenomenon...the internet IS changing things, and B&M retailers have to be aware things will NOT change back.
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I like that - a proactive approach. Why are they seeing the returns, etc? Maybe one could be false information - but if you are seeing alot of this - maybe it is *they* who are not providing the service necessary to service their customer?

On an interesting note, I talked a non-computer friend to shop on-line for her facet & sink. She didn't feel that comfortable - but liked the savings. I said why don't you ask Home Depot to match the price - thinking that a big chain wasn't going to do that. She did ask. They matched the price - no hassle given. At the end of the day, smart business on home depot's end.

 

[Nicrez]

Agreed with Mara that the internet is really revolutionizing shopping!




I went physically to 40 vendors in the Diamond District in NYC. Door to Door with specs in hand. I met with cutters, wholesalers, retailers, jewelers (big and small, high-end and low-end). One thing I noticed was that most of them were scared of the fact that I knew EXACTLY what I was looking for in shape, color, cut and clarity. I would say 75% of them tried to convince me that the stones they carried where all I needed and that they were the best, without supporting it in FACTS. Many gave me ridiculous prices, and gave me BS lines about Rap and how it's calculated, etc...




Some interesting tidbits of info from these sellers:




"Radiant? Only Tiffany's sells Radiants!" - This one's my special favorite!


"Where do you think you'll find a radiant with a depth LESS than 78%?!"


"Radiants aren't very popular, that's why they are so expensive, and come with a premium price over Rap."


"G is the best color you'll find in a radiant, because no one cuts colorless (D-F) stones into radiants, they won't sell!"


"Henry Grossbard's Radiant? There IS no patent on the cut. It's only a generic cut. I never heard of him!" - ahh, therefore he can't exist...


" You can look for years, but


"Why go for a radiant, isn't a Lucere better? Turst me, it's the NEW stone!"


"We invented the Lucida cut...but they patented it, but our guys intitally did it." - This was claimed by a FEW people...


"Radiant?! You mean an emerald? Radiant, you mean a round brilliant?"


"Radiants don't come in square, they are MADE to be RECTANGULAR!"




Ok, with all these stories, I decided to try the net. Guess what? All the people whom returned my e-mails have been so much more helpful and knowledgeable that I was shocked and impressed. I was afraid of not seeing the stone...but after dealing with Jonathan and GOG, and Ron from Buydiamonddirect, (my BF dealt with) Jim from DCD, and Martin from USACerted, we realized our best bet was the net. Thereafter our retailer of The Radiant Cut came through, the stone was perfect, but pricey.




Eventually, we bought it from a B&M and were happy with the service all along. From the beginning of my search, I told my BF that if I were to buy from ANY of the jewelers we met, it would be Phil (from Philmar Jewelers on Fifth Ave), and he happened to find our stone, so that made it even easier. Even my nervous BF trusted him. Because he was the most knowledgeable, least pushy, most toelerant, and even took many times and many hours to give us a demo of color diferences, carat differences, and explained things honestly and worked with us. He even told us the truth that the dealers around the Diamond District knew us already (we were the extremely picky and tenacious Radiant couple), and said that he was glad to be the one to sell us our stone. And we TRULY love it.




In the end, a consumer doesn't care where they get their stone, so long as it makes them comfortable and happy that they made the right decision at the right price and were treated with dignity and respect, especially when laying out some serious money that they saved so long for. It's a Huge invetment, no one wants to be patronized, pushed, lied to or bullied. Better service, and more for your money is what we all want. If they can pull that off, on-line retailers and B&Ms can exist peacefully and maybe even in symbiosis!

 

[Rand_alThor]

My 2 cents:


Griffin, I think I understand what you are saying. Here are my thoughts:




a) Internet Vendors list diamonds from the same/similar set of sources and each will markup their own premiums based on their operating costs. Can you truly blame a consumer who finds the same stone listed at a few stores and decides to purchase it from the vendor offering the best deal.(note: I used price & not deal)




b) There is a "FAMOUS" & "well respected" internet vendor here whose style of communication needs a lot of work. Let me explain. During my search I noticed a particular diamond that I liked and one of the i-vendors carried the stone. I contacted them and inquired about seeing the stone in person. They had the stone sent to a local "Famous" & "Well Respected" appariser here at PS. When I inquired about the price of the appariser I was quoted a fixed price of $170. At the end of the apparisal the appariser (who did not really do a great job!) charged me $240.00 . I saw the stone and immediately noticed that while it seemed perfect on paper it had a huge "BOW TIE". This stone also had a GIA certificate dating back to 99. I complained aboout the price discrepancy to the vendor and to their credit they said that if I did buy the stone I could have an after purchase appraisal done for free. My girlfriend liked the stone but didnt "love" the stone. To make a long story short I decided not to purchase the stone. On hearing from me the i vendor claimed I had "engineered" the situation in a way in which I wouldn't end up buying the stone and that I should listen to my girlfriends wishes and respect them. In another earlier conversation with the same person while bargaining for the price of s tone, he tried to taunt my budget by implying that if the stone was out of my reach then I shouldn't consider it. I felt like I talking to an auto dealer. There is more to this story but thats for another time/post.Finally some pay pay a small premium for customer service and the way they are treated. I'm one of them.




Now having gone through this experience do you honestly think I would not speak up when the time arose. Trust me I will and when I do I am well aware that I'll go against popular grain.




What are my intentions you may ask?


Answer is Simple: Informed Consumers make Informed purchasing decisions.

 

[Shappy]

Alijdewey
What I was referring to is cut, not clarity. I see people splitting hairs over cuts which I think at times is a bit rididulous--they will post numbers that look outstanding and someone will criticize the diamond. That's ok because people are really trying to be helpful but it is as if sparkle, brilliance and fire are the exception in a diamond not the rule. If that were the case, diamonds wouldn't be so popular. You immediately bring up "fish-eyes" --my point is simply that if a diamond isn't super ideal H & A it is still possible to be a gorgeous diamond at possibly a better value (and isn't necessarily a fish-eye or frozen spit.) There is no disputing that one can purchase exactly what you want more simply over the internet. The return policy alone is enough to convince me to buy over the internet-most jewelry stores post a "no refund" sign- sure you might be able to exchange but by then they have you over a barrel.

 

[Griffin]

I didn't want to get into naming names or slinging mud, just identify a possible trend, but I see I do need to give a bit more context.

Online vs. B&M each have thier own advantages. Mara is right when it comes to B&M not exploiting thier advantages fully, but that is going to have to change now that they have online to compete with. I see the shakeup in the B&M industry as a good thing, don't get me wrong. I sell products to both sides, so the method by which people buy jewelry doesn't really affect me - just the overall health of the buying environment, which is why I don't like the kind of sales tactic so wonderfully illustrated by NovaGuy recently.

I am intimately familiar with B&M assaults on online purchases. We get returns based on them almost monthly.
Just a couple of weeks ago, my jeweler friend got a chargeback on a ring he sold six months ago. The customers were extremely happy with his ring, gold with complex inlay work. The price was $950, or about 200 more than he wholesales to B&M for - so about a $2250 retail ring. They got a great deal and were happy. A local B&M they visited recently who carried inlay work couldn't explain why he couldn't match the price, so he denigrated the work and said that it couldn't possibly be real for that price and that it was junk. He had them so convinced it was fake they did a chargeback and filed a fraud complaint with Visa without checking out the ring with an appraiser.
They didn't try to contact my friend AND they kept the ring even after getting back thier money. No, this is business as usual for B&M.

However, sitting on the fence allows me to see the mud fly BOTH ways....

In the last week two of my B&M retailers have sent items back to me for remakes, we have lost at least one customer, and a very large chargeback occurred to my friend right on the heels of the one I just mentioned, and they can be traced directly to the same tactics being used the other way.

One remake involved a custom platinum e-ring semi-mount I designed and cast. The customer sent it to the online stone vendor to have the center stone set.
Apparently, the vendor rep didn't like this.
The stone vendors rep tried to scare him out of my semi-mount using a number of tactics including a claim that it was too thin and the stones would fall out, and that the materials were substandard. Of course, THEY had something that would work....
My retailer got back the ring and a demand for a refund, but the points in the letter made no sense. I contacted the client myself and calmed him down, but he still wanted the ring remade thicker (it was originally 9.4 grams and 2.3mm thick at the bottom of the shank!!).
I am also to leave out side stones, the vendor will supply them now as the customer is terrified of anyone elses stones for some reason.

Speaking of side stones, I lost another customer to mistrust as I apparently either wasn't a real professional, or I was trying to pull something.
Why? All the stones in my e-ring weren't certed. Only my center stone was GIA, not the .10 side stones.
Someone online claimed ALL of thier stones were certed, and not to trust ones that weren't.
I told the customer GIA didn't cert .10 stones. They thought I was lying based on the information from the online vendor. Guess who they bought from.

Where do I buy GIA melee? After all, I can't be a professional until I find some!!!!

The list goes on. I'll stop here, I think I've illustrated the point.

 

[mike04456]

Thanks, Griffin, that does make things clearer. It's depressing to see that these tactics are spreading online, but I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising. There is nothing inherently ethical about the Internet

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This is a problem the retail jewelry business has struggled with for a very long time. I can show you editorials on the subject in trade magazines from the late 19th century. Bad-mouthing your competitor's products and integrity to make (or steal) a sale seems to be an unfortunate tradition.

 

[Hest88]

Griffin, I'm sorry for these problems. It's hard for me to imagine, hearing your side, any regular on PS telling a consumer that melee needs a GIA report. In fact, I vaguely remember a recent thread where I told someone that that scenario wasn't going to be likely. The workmanship issue is curious as well. None of the PS vendors who post regularly are benchmen, actually, so I'm not sure what they'd have to gain by sabatoging someone's work.

I'm curious to hear who these ppl are, and who Rand_alThor person is as well. If you're comfortable, feel free to PM me. I don't like recommending people if there's a legitimate problem.

 

[aljdewey]

Shappy - I realized you were referring to cut and not clarity.....my comment was that some consumers come here not even knowing the difference. Educating them shouldn't be construed as educating someone into a top-rate stone.




I didn't immediately bring up fish-eyes; I'm running through some of the scenarios that we've seen come here. I never said.....nor do I believe....that ONLY H&A diamonds can be gorgeous. In fact, I've been quite vocal in the past that I believe some of the best values can be found in really good cuts....they don't have to be H&A.




I think that what you've often observed happens because consumers have a harder time understanding the how to drop in cut without discernable visual sacrifice.




Every element - cut, color, clarity - has it's absolute best. Color = D, clarity = IF, and cut = Superideal H&A.




Most consumers know exactly how much they can sacrifice on color or clarity without giving up anything visually. They don't have that same information about cut, and that tends to unfortunately lead to an all-or-nothing line of thinking.....well, I don't want a crappy cut diamond, but I don't have enough knowledge to know what a "very good" cut would be, so I can only be sure if I select a TOP cut. Make sense?




I agree that sometimes the hairsplitting gets ridiculous. Recently, someone posted an AWESOME looking ideal-scope image, and one of the responses was "well, did you notice the two black spots on the star facets". I contested that comment quite vocally - I firmly believe that wouldn't make a discernable difference in visual quality. I think you and I are on the same page on this, even though we are expressing it differently.




Also, to be fair, some of the hairsplitting is done because of the comparison requested by the poster. If someone posts three AGS 0 diamonds with fairly similar proportions and asks which one people prefer, that lends itself to hairsplitting because ALL are nice.




I guess my reaction is the insinuation that the *intent* behind "educating" folks is to coerce them into only wanting AGS0 stones.....and that's what I take exception to. I frankly hope that folks learn more and more about cut so they are just as comfortable in knowing HOW and WHERE to cut corners on cut proportions without visual sacrifice the way they do on color/clarity.

 

[pqcollectibles]

MDX had a good educational post recently. Johan gave only spec info and asked us what we thought of the diamond. Numbers all looked good for a potentially great performer. Turns out the stone was a dog with the evil "Ring of Death". The cutter had craftily cheated the girdle to obtain a magic carat weight for price premium creating "Ideal" sounding angles in the process.

While I might tell people a diamond has potential, I'm not going to say unequivocally YES based on numbers alone.

 

[Mara]

Hest it sounded like G was saying that the VENDOR was saying that you should not buy melee stones unless they were certed. I know WF certs their smaller stones, anything above .20c has an AGS cert, but not their melee...so I don't know who could be cert'ing stones as small as .10c? Curious...




Griffin...unfort as LG pointed out, unethical badmouthing will happen online or offline...it's an unfortunate trend and hopefully sites like PS can help perpetuate correct information rather than mis-information.

 

[Nicrez]

Do you want to discuss the HISTORY of price gauging the client and price fixing for years where the Diamond industry from mine to market has been determining everything from how much we pay to how much we know...




It will always be a rough competition percisely because of the nature of the business, the profits inherent on it, and historically the lure of riches and high profit margins. Tides have turned giving the consumer a tehincal knowledge previously held by few. This is a repeat of Gurney's report on how to detect diamond bearing mines...De Beers was sole owner of such knowledge until he went public, and many people went searching all over. Same concept. People now know what industry knows and it frightens the system.




Survival depends on changing with the times. Darwin. DeBeers did it, and now B&M stores are starting. Look at GOG. They established such a web presence that I bet their business out of LI is flourishing for thier proactive position in this tough market. And their clients are happier for it. If you remain honest and work for your profit, you get more referrals. if you don't, you get charge-backs, refunds, and less customers. The public may not be perfect, but essentially B&Ms are useless without them and their survival depends on pleasing them. So adapt, and survive.