Complaint Review: James Allen

WORST RETAILING EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE

As a company, James Allen is in the enviable position whereby their customers are not able to complain publicly about their bad experiences with you, particularly on Facebook, because their partners are likely to see it, which would ruin the surprise of a forthcoming proposal. Most people just forget about their experience after several weeks or months and move on. Not me. For months now, I’ve been holding on to bitterness and resentment about my experience with James Allen, and today is the day for you to hear about it.

Once I had picked out a ring, James Allen staff REPEATEDLY threatened me, demanding immediate payment lest they sell my ring to someone else! I was deeply offended by this, considering the time I had gone to to pick it out and design a custom setting for it. Is it too much to ask to give me a few days to review my selection and find the money to pay for it, without their staff CONTINUALLY THREATENING to take my ring away and give it to someone else? They need to realise that it’s a huge decision to make. There are a billion rings on their website for people to buy – why can’t one of them stay off the market for a few days while people think things over?

The other problem with James Allen is that they call themselves a global company, but in reality they are an American-centric company that is ignorant to the needs of foreign customers. DO NOT BUY FROM THEM IF YOU’RE NOT IN AMERICA. If they want to sell to foreign countries, they should be upfront with customers about the true cost of their products, but they are not. After being threatened by their staff numerous times, I ATTEMPTED TO PAY FOR MY RING. I tried almost 20 times to pay the invoice using PayPal. It simply didn’t work. I’ve made hundreds of payments through PayPal, including foreign payments. Their PayPal account is not set up to accept payments from foreign sources. The money simply did not transfer, and guess what? IT COST ME A THOUAND DOLLARS!!!!!! In order to meet their arbitrary deadline of preventing my ring from being sold to someone else, I had to make an emergency bank wire. Because of the inflated currency conversion rates that banks use, the price of the ring literally increased by more than a thousand dollars. This wouldn’t have happened if James Allen could accept payments properly.

After being continually harassed, then paying more than $1000 for my ring than I thought I would, I get a random incomprehensible email from James Allen intimating that there was an import tax to pay. At no stage was I advised of this prior to my purchase. I know that this tax comes from my country obviously, but their website is deceptive and misleading about the true cost of the advertised products, because the prices do not include the local taxes payable for importing them. James Allen’s website KNOWS what country each shopper is in, so they are ABLE to show the cost of rings including taxes. They simply CHOOSE not to include these taxes. This is outrageous and deceptive, because it makes their products appear cheaper than they really are to foreign customers, particularly in comparison to other businesses that they may be considering purchasing a ring from. Not showing the taxes artificially lowers James Allen’s prices in comparison to your competitors, AND IN AUSTRALIA THIS IS ILLEGAL. IF THEY WANT TO SELL PRODUCTS TO AUSTRALIANS THEY SHOULD ABIDE BY AUSTRALIAN VALUES AND CUSTOMS, EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT LEGALLY OBLIGED TO. In Australia, people don’t rip each other off like they do in America. On top of the extra $1000 I had to pay, I WAS HIT WITH AN ADDITIONAL $1000 IMPORT TAX THAT I DID NOT EXPECT.

This experience of dealing with James Allen was very disturbing and stressful for me. I certainly won’t be recommending James Allen to anyone I know. $2,000 was unfairly extorted from me, and they have refused to pay it back. AVOID THEM AT ALL COSTS.