Complaint Review: Kay Jewelers

I bought my girlfriend an engagement ring in December 2013.  We've had it for about a week. It is now April, 2014, and it looks like we may not have the engagement ring before the wedding.

 The ring was about a half size too large, so we took it back to the store to have them resize it. We went to pick it up on the date they said it would be ready, and were told, "Oh, we're sorry.  We tried to call and tell you, but nobody answered.  It came back with a small visible line where they resized it, so we sent it back to have them get rid of the line."  During that visit, my girlfriend bought me a ring as well.

(We both have caller ID and call records on our phones... they had never called.)

We went back on the day it was supposed to be in - "Oh, somebody should have called you.  It didn't make it on the truck, so it will be a few days."

 A few days later, and it had finally come in.  We found out because we happened to be in town, and stopped by the store just in case - fortunately, according to the lady at the counter, it just showed up that afternoon with the rest of the deliveries and they were just getting ready to call us. (I didn't want to interrupt her to tell her that FedEx does not have Sunday deliveries.)

We took it and left; on the way home we realized that it looked absolutely horrible - they had stretched the band to the point that it was so thin and narrow enough that I felt it would break just from normal wear.  The band itself had numerous visible dents and blemishes, and after looking at it in the daylight we saw that it was nowhere close to being round.

The guy at the store 'fixed' it by hitting it with a hammer, but even he could see that it was horrible. A call to customer service, and we were told they would instruct the store to order a replacement ring, brand new, and the correct size.

 We went to the store on the day the new one was supposed to arrive, waited for a full 30 minutes without one person being able to take care of us (they were all with other customers.)

We left, to try again another day. We were called a few days later; the gentleman said they had received the ring more than a week prior, but that both of our phones gave them a "disconnected" message.

 We went in to pick up the new ring, and were told by the lady at the store that other people had complained about being told "we tried to call" stories.  We verified both of our phone numbers, and verified there were no calls to either of us prior to the one that day.

She produced a plastic bag with... the wrong ring.

She said the wrong one had been ordered, but that she would put out an "alert" and get the right one as soon as possible. (It is now April at this point.)  I mentioned that the ring my girlfriend was a little loose, but that after seeing how poorly they handled one ring that there was no way I would take it to Kay to have it resized.  She told me that if I took it somewhere else, it would probably void my warranty, but as long as I kept it to myself, she wouldn't tell anyone.

Monday April 7th, she told us that the new one would arrive that week, Thursday or Friday (April 10th or 11th)

Thursday - "It didn't make it on the truck, so it will be Friday or Saturday at the latest."

Friday - "I don't think it came in today, but I am looking right now."

Later on... "Oh, I just found out that they'll have to make it overseas."

 I called the customer service number to let the company know how their store was being run.  I spent over 45 minutes on the call, most of it on hold.  At the end of the call, the man I spoke with told me "The store has made an alert and are trying to get you a new ring as fast as they can.  Is there anything else I can help you with?"  

Their customer service department is obviously only there for show; I had mistakenly thought they would be interested in knowing what the store was doing to the customers.  The reality of it is that they simply repeat, word-for-word, what the store has already told the customer. (In fact, *I* told *HIM* what the store told me; spending 45 minutes on hold only to have him tell it back to me did nothing constructive at all.)

 So now we are less than a month from the wedding; we have already purchased our wedding rings from a different jeweler, and now we have the unique situation of having the WEDDING rings before we have the ENGAGEMENT rings.

 And at the end of the day, there is no way to contact anyone at Kay Jewelers who can do anything to change the way they do business; the only people who receive customer calls are paid to keep the call from going anywhere.