Zales~ what you Must know....Help!

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#46
Wow, I cannot believe this. I always thought Zales had a pretty decent reputation; definitely scary. I thought the same thing about Macy's too. Seems like you really DO have to be careful and check everything these days!

Ghost55, I hope everything works out smoothly for you!
 
#47
OMG - now I am terrified. Years and years ago when I lived in PA I dropped my engagement ring off at a Zales to have the prongs tightened. I have moved since then but now I wonder if they replaced my 1 ct diamond with a fake CZ...
Is there an easy way to tell without going to a jeweler?
 
#50
Yea then you should probably take it to a jeweler (NOT Zales) and see if they can confirm.

I personally think it's EXTREMELY important for all diamond owners to own a loupe and learn the internal inclusion plot of their diamond and find the inscription, if there is one, so that they can IMMEDIATELY identify their stone after a jeweler has touched it.
 
#51
ame said:
I'd be filing a BBB complaint and possibly taking them to court if they committed such fraud.
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Exactly - Make sure that you don't accept $200 and sign a waiver... you are owed more. If you gave them a diamond to repair and you have proof they gave you back a CZ - that is FRAUD, my friend.
 
#53
My SIL's grandfather was a jeweler and had stores in NY and Italy. He educated me years ago(sadly he has passed away) about the practices that are done with appraisals on diamonds. Apparently, a lot of diamond rings have numbers in the band. Not necessarily cert numbers registered with GIA, etc but numbers. Say you buy a ring from Jeweler A, and he tells you "take it and get it appraised. I assure you it will appraise for more." The appraiser sees the numbers and knows what jeweler owned the ring, and in some cases calls Jeweler A to find out what to appraise it at. Others, have a code in the number to know what to say and then.....here is the kicker....they get a payback from the original jeweler. Jeweler A sends Jeweler B(the one doing the appraisal) a kickback, usually a few hundred. I was pretty shocked. He refused to mark his jewelry and did not participate in this practice but the moral of the story is to not trust a jeweler. lol
 
#54
^ Oh that's sad. I'm glad your SIL's grandfather did not take part in the practice.

So, where do I go to buy a loupe and what power should I get? Or do they come in different powers?
 
#56
Florasun said:
^ Oh that's sad. I'm glad your SIL's grandfather did not take part in the practice.

So, where do I go to buy a loupe and what power should I get? Or do they come in different powers?
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As Ame said, 10x is the standard (that's what I have). It's also recommended that you buy a black, matte finish, not the shiny chrome finish--helps keep any reflection problems at bay when your're squinting into the loupe (I have a shiny one, and don't have this problem, but gemologists recommend the black, matte finish loupes). Also, get the triplet lens; that seems to be the most commonly-used type (that's what I have).

You can get them here: www.gemsondisplay.com, or on eBay. I'm sure there are other online sources, too. I've dealt a lot with Gems on Display, and they're a good company--FAST shipping, nice products. They sell jewelry store supplies.
 
#59
Hi all,

This post is intended to warn you about Zales. I was looking forward to wearing my (Zales-purchased) wedding ring for the rest of my life, until Zales LOST IT (as well as my husband's!) when I sent it in for polishing. Although they offered a replacement (same model / reference number) the replacement ring looks very different to me (diamonds further apart, INCLUSIONS, channel has a square quality to it instead of nicely plump/rounded, which matched my non-Zales engagement ring) and I really want my original ring back: after all that is the one I exchanged at the altar with my husband.

If you guys have Zales rings with the lifetime plan, just know that they send their rings to an off-site repair shop and they won't give you any information about where the rings are sent. That's funny because after all this drama, they were able to size 2 brand new rings on site under 2 hours and send us "on our way"... (yes, they really used those words!!)

When the salesperson browsed through some order documents to figure out where our lost rings could be, we glanced at the address while she wasn't looking and found out that they sent our rings from their CT Trumbull store to a location coded "Sterling 8595" (in fact the address shows it is a Jared in Rhode Island!

In our case, they first blamed UPS, before saying that an employee might have left the box on the counter and somebody probably took it. They said that in any case, it never got checked in to the computer system and the security camera doesn't show enough information to figure out what happened. I even heard them on the phone (they forgot to mute it) saying "we don't have to tell them it is lost, we can just give them the replacements". That would have been a "smart trick", except they had no idea what ring size I was, even though we resized our rings through them before, and the default replacement they were going to give me was a size 7 (I am a 5 1/2) so the ring would have fallen right off my finger!

So just a warning for the folks out there who love their rings as much as I loved my original one, think twice about using Zales' services!!!!
 
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