WF ACA melee with HCA of 4.5???

[tevyk]

quick background: I''m getting a WF 3-stone trellis. Center is an eye-clean .80ct F SI2, sides are ~.17ct ''ACA melee'', which I''ve been told means a diamond that WF says meets their ACA standards but isn''t certified.

I felt somewhat uneasy about the concept so I asked for images and a sarin report for the two sides (cost me $85 extra :-/ but was going to make me feel better so I went with it).

Anyway, one of them looks great -- nice hearts, great IS, HCA of 1.8

The other seems more iffy. The hearts look fine, but IS shows a couple arrows virtually missing, it has over a degree of crown angle variation, and an HCA score of 4.5 (!!)

I suppose I''ll ask for a different stone to be selected? Or am I being too picky?

Idealscope attached, sarin and any of the other standard WF images you guys want to follow.

 

[tevyk]

For whatever reason, WF didn''t like me including those images/reports here, so I had them removed.

They''re finding me a new one now -- apparently that previous one ''slipped past the experts evaluating the stones''. Makes me awfully glad I asked for this non-standard documentation rather than just relying on them to pick something better than mediocre.

I''m sure this will turn out fine, though I''ve gotta say I''m somewhat disappointed that this wasn''t noticed and corrected by someone at Whiteflash through the process of taking and sending me these pictures.

Will post any updates here.

 

[strmrdr]

Date: 5/21/2008 5:22:25 PM
Author: tevyk
For whatever reason, WF didn''t like me including those images/reports here, so I had them removed.

They dont want everyone asking for them which would kill any profit in them.
On the other hand im a firm believer in trust but verify so the info is nice to have and as you have shown sometimes things can slip by.
There is really not a good answer to this because it costs to much to provide the info for every melee.

 

[Allison D.]

Tevy, I took a personal interest in this one and did a little checking for you.

It wasn''t the stone that ''slipped through the cracks''; rather, it appears it was a bad scan that slipped by. Sarin results can be thrown off by a dust particle on the stone; when this happens, we usually notice the oddity in the results right away and we clean the stone and rescan it. Because we don''t usually scan melee stones, this scan wasn''t reviewed prior to sending it to you.

After seeing your post, we cleaned and rescanned the stone twice; the results were completely consistent within the ACA tolerances.

On the IS, you noted the hearts looked fine but some of the arrows appeared faint. I''m not surprised at all.....under normal conditions with larger stones (over .50), even the slightest amount of tilt can skew the appearance of the IS image. That effect becomes even more pronounced in a stone sooooooooo small; it''s incredibly difficult to capture a uniform photographic representation of arrows/hearts in melee stones. That''s why we typically don''t provide IS images for melee.

I''m confident that you''d be delighted with the stone had it shipped in your piece, but we want you to have absolutely no reservations so we''ve substituted a new stone as promised. I believe Vera has emailed you photos and Sarins on the new stone to be sure you''re absolutely confident in your selection.

I sincerely hope this helps; please let me know if there is anything else we can do to maintain your confidence.