Paging Ellen...

[panda08]

I''m contemplating a custom project with Quest. I remember reading a previous post by you about how your experience with it on a custom project did not work out.

If you don''t mind, can you tell me about your experience? What did you want made? What was the problem? And why was Quest unable to produce the product you wanted?

Many thanks!!!

 

[Ellen]

Hi Panda,

I just typed out a really long post and lost it. I'll try it again later, I just don't have it in me to type it all up again right now. Sorry!

 

[panda08]

Hi Ellen!

Yeow, I hate it when long posts get swallowed up

No worries. Whenever you can get around to it, I''d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

 

[Ellen]

Ok, let''s try this again!

I was wanting a custom setting made, I had designed it for my Aqua. Since I had worked with Pete before (he fixed an heirloom ring another jeweler had mangled), he had a great price quote, and I''d never heard anything negative about them, I decided to go with them.

There are so many things that will be left out or I will still be typing this noon, but amidst the process there were avoided phone calls, calling and being told he was with a "customer" after he had emailed me to call him, not sure what I was...not being told till after we started there would be no regular pics during the process, which I didn''t think to ask, just assumed, my fault I guess. But I did get him to take some anyway. Just a lot of littler stuff, that did not help.

The biggest problem came right after we started. I had done a TON of research on what goes wrong most with a custom process, and came away with miscommunication being a real problem. So I made a very detailed explanation of what I wanted, and several example pics to go with, so there was no doubt what I wanted. Then Pete went over it with me, and we were now on the same page.

Time for CADS, Pete is leaving town for a seminar, but says his brother will take care of me. No problem, until I get the first CAD drawing. I had wanted a tapered shank, smaller at the head, tapering wider down the shank. What I got was a ring with no taper at all. Of course I was slightly confused and a bit irritated, since I had given them everything they could possibly need, but I just wrote back asking where the taper was, and directed him to my notes and pics. Second CAD came, this time with a taper, the opposite way of what I wanted. At this point, I thought it was time to stop. If they couldn''t get a simple thing like this with all I had given them, I felt it wasn''t a good match. So I told them to stop and have Pete call me when he got back, which he did. He was surprisingly not as apologetic as one might think he should have been, though he moreless did apologize. And he tried very hard to talk me into giving them another chance, and promised he would be working on it exclusively now, so I said hesitatingly, ok.

Things did go a bit more smoothly after that, though insert the many little things mentioned earlier. The shank was finally done, and I asked for some pictures, which he said he would take, and that took a week. When I finally got them, there was a detail off, but I ended up letting it go after he sent the ring to me so I could see it in real life (and for the record, I didn''t ask him to do that, he just offered). Didn''t get back to me the day I got the ring, which threw off mailing it back, and therefore the finish date. So finally he said the ring would be done the next week. That it would take just a few hours to do the head and put it on and polish it all up. So I was thinking it should be done Mon. or Tues. However, that Monday he told me he was leaving for vaca Friday and they had many rings to finish. Long story short, on Friday afternoon, I had to call again to see if the ring would ship out. They were supposed to send pics first, because if it wasn''t right, I didn''t want it. I had someplace to go, and at 5:30 I left the house, still with no pics. He called later on and told my son he was emailing the pics, and I finally saw them late that night.

To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. One of the details I had stressed I wanted, was claw prongs. I knew he most likely couldn''t do "Leon" quality, but from seeing previous work, I felt he could definitely do something acceptable. I will attach a pic of the prongs. Besides not being claws, they are totally messed up on the tips. I have no idea what''s going on there, I never even asked. I just called him and said it was not a good job, and I just wanted a refund. (I was burned out by this tme) Pete agreed the ring had not been finished properly, and told me he could easily do the claw prongs. All I could think was, if you could easily do them, why didn''t you?? I decided he couldn''t, and said I just wanted a refund. He readily agreed to that, and that was the end.

So, that''s the brief-er story. I just don''t understand what happened. I "would" say maybe it was a fluke, but after that, OldFasionedGal had trouble with a setting from them too. In his defense, he did an outstanding job fixing my heirloom rig, but, that was really an entirely different process than a custom piece.

So anyway, I hope this helps.

Heres the pic. It''s supposed to be all WG, not sure why the prongs look like YG, may just have been the lighting. I never asked about that either.

 

[panda08]

Thanks so much for taking the time to write back!

Wow, that does not sound like a good experience at all. I''ve seen the current version of your aqua and it''s gorgeous. I can see why you were disappointed with Pete''s work. Even though I''ve read about how other PS''ers have been happy with Quest, I''ve been on the fence. He was very friendly on the phone and his quote was significantly less than the other one I received but I''ve been unimpressed with his response time to my inquiries. It took him about a week to answer my first question. It''s been a week since I sent my second question and I''m still waiting for an answer. I haven''t been feeling particularly confident in Pete, despite his tempting quote, and hearing about your experience with him reinforces my gut feeling to take a pass. Thanks again!!!

 

[Ellen]

Date: 6/12/2009 11:38:11 AM
Author: panda08
Thanks so much for taking the time to write back!

Wow, that does not sound like a good experience at all. I''ve seen the current version of your aqua and it''s gorgeous. I can see why you were disappointed with Pete''s work. Even though I''ve read about how other PS''ers have been happy with Quest, I''ve been on the fence. He was very friendly on the phone and his quote was significantly less than the other one I received but I''ve been unimpressed with his response time to my inquiries. It took him about a week to answer my first question. It''s been a week since I sent my second question and I''m still waiting for an answer. I haven''t been feeling particularly confident in Pete, despite his tempting quote, and hearing about your experience with him reinforces my gut feeling to take a pass. Thanks again!!!

You will be doing yourself a big favor by listening to that. If I had done the same, I would have stopped the process after the second wrong CAD and saved myself a lot of time and stress.

And yeah, response time can be slow...

Good luck on your ring search, I will be looking forward to whatever you end up with. If you have any other questions, just ask!

And you''re very welcome.