ComplaintsforGigi’s Jewelers

• Initial Complaint

  10/20/2021

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  On or about June 26, 2021, I took two of my rings to have diamonds replaced that was missing. **** ***** said she would have them ready in 2 days, never heard from her. On July2, 2021, went 2 her place of business asked why I haven’t heard from her. Paid for my rings with credit card was asked what kind of work did I do in order to pay with credit card. When I placed 1 of my rings on my finger I asked wha happened to my diamonds, was told she didn’t know that maybe I gained weight or maybe that wasn’t my ring anyway. I told her she charged me $500.00 to steal my diamonds. A few hours later **** ***** took my ring back said she would fix the problem. July 20, 2021 went to pick up my ring again and the diamonds were even smaller, and the gold band was thinner. She had to change my prongs because they were too old,**** kept making up lies. Told me she was going to solve the problem. Never did. I cry every time I look at my ring and the other ring diamond was taken replaced with a cracked

  Business response

  11/09/2021

  Ms. ****** came to our jewelry store in June seeking to have missing diamonds replaced. I intended to have the job completed in two days, but my mother had a medical emergency and was hospitalized. My mother never recovered and passed away. When Ms. ****** returned to the store a few days later, her rings were ready. She appeared satisfied with one of the rings we repaired for her. She indicated that she was unhappy with one of the diamonds we sold and installed in her second ring and stated she wanted a different diamond. When she brought us this ring it had two diamonds and an empty opening where a third diamond should have been.

  She had requested that we provide a diamond for the missing spot and install it. The two diamonds that were in the ring when she brought it to us were small and the biggest of the two was approximately .32 carats while the smaller of the two was approximately .28 carats. The opening for the missing diamond was the same size as the opening for the existing .28 carat diamond meaning that the diamond, we would be providing to fill the missing opening would need to be .28 carats as well.

  The prongs holding the diamonds on her rings were old so I retipped all the prongs adding extra gold to make the existing prongs stronger and thicker.

  Ms. ****** was unhappy with the diamond we installed into the empty opening and so in order to make sure she was happy with her ring, I agreed to replace the diamond we had installed with a different diamond. 

  When she returned again to pick up this ring, she accused me of replacing the diamonds with smaller cheaper diamonds and shaving off gold from the band of the ring.

  However, this is untrue and there would be no benefit for me to do such a thing. First of all, it would be completely unethical. Second of all the diamonds that were in her ring were small and not of high quality as they were not colorless and they were of SI1-SI2 to quality, which is very low clarity for diamonds that small, therefore there would be no value in stealing and replacing the diamonds as there are only a few clarity levels below her diamonds, and so the difference in value between her diamonds and lower quality diamonds would be minuscule.

  Lastly, her entire ring, diamonds included was not worth much and a small portion of the rings value was the value of the band. The amount of gold needed to be taken from the band to make such theft worthwhile would be so great that no one would doubt that material had been taken from the band as it would be so obvious and would not even look like a normal ring anymore, there would also be tool marks or evidence of the shaving of material off the band. However, Ms. ****** has not alleged that there are any such tool marks on the band, as she cannot since no material was taken off her ring, and the ring is the exact same size as when she brought it in. The ring was polished; however, polishing does not result in lost weight, except maybe if measuring in micrograms.

  Since Ms. ****** was still unhappy, I offered to give her $100 store credit and she left.

  However, she returned to the store days later and yelled at me in front of clients and accused me of stealing her diamonds. She caused such a scene that she had to be restrained and escorted out of the store by a customer.

  She then threatened to contact the police which I invited her to do as I had done nothing wrong. She called the police and since our store is located in the mall, the mall police arrived. Our jewelry store has been in the mall for 22 years and as such, the police know me on a first name basis and know that I run an honest business and would never engage in the type of theft that Ms. ****** was accusing me of. When the mall police spoke to me, they told me that Ms. ****** was not normal.

  In a final attempt to make her happy, I offered to refund Ms. ****** the $500 she paid for the work on her rings, without taking any of the work back, however she instead demanded $1000 from me, which she then lowered to $800 cash. This all proved to me that her false allegations were simply a way to extort money from me and my business.

  I have been in the jewelry business for 40 years and have never received a BBB complaint. Our company has a five-star rating on Yelp with 28 reviews and a 4.4 rating on Google with 30 reviews. If we ever engaged in the kind of theft that Ms. ****** had accused us of, our ratings would not be so high and there would be complaints from customers on Yelp, Google, and the BBB.

  As a jeweler, I must always be cautious of people trying to steal from me. When I first started in the jewelry industry in the 80s, I had to worry only about physical theft such as robberies or burglaries, unfortunately now in these modern times, I must also worry about people trying to steal from me by extorting my company online through false complaints.

  Customer response

  11/15/2021

  My name is ***** ******, I received the message from you with the response that was given to you from **** ***** at Hope Diamonds & Co. I am really upset with all of the lying that was told to you from **** ***** about my rings and the size of my diamonds.  I have all the text messages and the pictures of my rings from before and after the 3rd time trying to get her to do the right thing and replace my diamonds that were stollen.

  I am not good with using computers yet I pray that there is a way that I could send pictures of my rings and copies of all our emails.  **** ***** has a problem with lying, she tends to say one thing and do another.  I you could request a copy of the video on Friday November 5, 2021, you could see for yourself that I waited patiently for her customers to leave and I was given a paper from **** ***** to sign a release from her obligations regarding stealing my diamonds. 

  Once a few of her customers left **** ***** came over to me and I told her that my name was spelled wrong and that I would not sign the document due to what it stated that I had to take back what I said to BBB, and write a good report, not talk to anyone about what happened, not to say anything online or media.  I said I would not take back what I said because she stoled my diamonds.  Yes I was offered $500 which was the amount that I was charged for allowing her to steal my diamonds.

  On Friday, November 5, 2021 after work we agreed to the amount of $800 which I told her that I was still not happy because $800 will not cover the diamonds that was stolen.  That $500 of the $800 was the amount of money I paid for her to steal my diamonds.

  On Friday November 5, 2021 I did call the police and spoke to a Sheriff from Riverside County by the name of **** ******, report # MV*********, Deputy # 4771, I was told that I would have to take her to court.   Now as far as I am concern I don’t believe that **** ***** was told by the Sheriff that I was not normal, that’s just another one of her lies.  My ring was an old ring with quality diamonds in it with thicker gold and the pictures tell all.

  Please if there is anyway to send in all of our communication and pictures please inform me on how to do it.  I told **** ***** that she even spoke with someone on the phone on my behalf and that person is willing to sign a statement having it notarized.

  I hope you received the pictures, if you look at them you can see that the diamonds are different sizes and there is a total of 4 diamonds not 2 as **** ***** mentioned.  The first set of pictures were taken just before giving my ring back to **** ***** for the 3rd time to place my original diamonds back.  When looking at the latest pictures you can see all the diamonds are the same level, when in fact the engagement ring was larger and higher than the three others and now they all are the same size. Thanking you in advance for reading this message.  My phone number has changed, the new number is: ###-###-####.

  Sincerely, ***** ******

  
  

  Business response

  11/24/2021

  "In her response, Ms. ****** provided pictures of her ring. These pictures clearly show that the diamond we provided her fit snugly in the prongs of the ring. If we had replaced her diamonds with smaller diamonds as she has alleged, the prongs would not fit appropriately as the prongs are only able to fit the same sized diamonds. Furthermore, Ms. ****** previously had alleged that we had shaved gold off of her band. However in our initial response we noted that shaving of gold from the band would be very obvious and would be visible as the band would then become much skinnier than the bridge, where the prongs attach. Ms. ****** no longer alleges that we shaved gold from her band as the pictures she provided clearly show that the band is the same size in both pictures. The fact that Ms. ****** so readily discarded the false allegation that we had shaved gold off of her band once she realized that her own evidence proved that it was false, shows that all of her claims against us are also false. 

  Ms. ****** has said that this ring is of much sentimental value to her and irreplaceable but then as her Desired Settlement she writes that we need to buy the rings from her. If the ring was of such sentimental value to her, why would she ever want to sell it. This proves again that she is dishonest.  As we noted in our initial response, Ms. ****** is attempting to extort our business through threats of this unfounded BBB complaint, as she has also indicated that for $800 cash she would withdraw this complaint.

  If Ms. ****** truly believed that we had replaced her diamonds with smaller diamonds or shaved gold from her band, there are many other jewelers that she could have consulted and requested their opinion as to whether her diamonds had truly been replaced with smaller diamonds and whether gold had been shaved off of her band. However she did not do so because any other jeweler would regard her claims as the nonsense that they are.

  We have  been in the jewelry business for 40 years and have never received a BBB complaint. Our company has a five-star rating on Yelp with 30 reviews and a 4.4 rating on Google with 30 reviews. If we ever engaged in the kind of theft that Ms. ****** had accused us of, our ratings would not be so high and there would be complaints from customers on Yelp, Google, and the BBB."

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩