Complaint Review: Kissed By Fire Jewelry Julie Frolova

My name is Julia and I own Kissed By Fire Jewelry - a small Etsy store, which sells handmade natural opal jewelry. Before I proceed with more words I would like to invite you to simply visit my Etsy store page and read REAL reviews posted by the actual customers, who have purchased jewelry from me over the past year and a half. Those reviews speak for themselves as do the numbers: I have 188 reviews as of right now and 186 of them are 5 star reviews written by satisfied customers who had a great experience working with me and are happy both the quality of the Jewelry and the level of my craftsmanship as well as my customer service approach, which holds the happiness and satisfaction of my customers as the top priority. My second priority is adherence to the high quality standards when it comes to sourcing and selling the best quality and often rare quality grade Natural Ethiopian Welo opals, which I use to make most of my jewelry with. I genuinely fell in love with this particular gemstone and I work exclusively with the natural opal that comes from this region. I also work with a professional silver jewelry manufacturer to develop my own line of high quality unique jewelry settings, which I design myself with the help from my partner, who later produce them for me in small wholesale quantities. The quality of the settings, which I have designed is excellent and they meet the new industry standards such as adding white gold or rhodium plating to the silver, so the jewelry does not require regular cleaning as sterling silver usually does. These are THE TRUE FACTS about my business, which I would like people to know, so the above report is not the only source of false and misleading information, which is available to consumers on this website.

Now I would like to address the specific problems that are mentioned in this report: 1. Smoked black opals is NOT a bad thing at all! It is a process when heat is applied to a white Welo opal, which causes it to turn dark but still retain the most of its play of color. This DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE OPAL IS FAKE as the author of the report stated. This is simply a comment, which is made by a person who doesn’t know much about the gemstone market or specifically the Ethiopian Welo opal. Heating is NOT the same as chemical treatments, dying, color enhancing and other things that are done to almost all colored natural gemstones nowadays... An opal that has been heated IS STILL A NATURAL GEMSTONE! It came from the earth and is not a synthetic or a man made stone, which can truly be called a fake. Heated opal is not altered significantly enough to even be called a "treated” gemstone. A smoked Ethiopian Opal nowadays is recognized internationally for its unique kind of beauty and fascinating play of color, which can show you the stars and galaxies within if you allow it! As a matter of fact I am PROUD TO OFFER this type of Ethiopian Opal, which my black opal collection is made with! Traditional black opal from Australia is extremely expensive and not everyone can afford to spend $50.000 for a ring, and after Ethiopian Opal took the world by storm the dealers who sell Australian Opal started a "campaign” to label a smoked opal "not natural”, because their sales plummeted....

Now it is a widely accepted AFFORDABLE alternative to the ridiculously overpriced Australian black opal and many people get to enjoy this unique gemstone, who ordinarily would not have been able to afford even looking at it. I made sure that I disclose that my black opals are heated, so I am not selling anyone something trying to pass it for something else. So, making any kind of negative argument out of selling smoked Ethiopian black opals in my store is simply not relevant to this situation. I never made a secret out of that in the first place. Perhaps I should include more information on this in my blog to avoid further misunderstanding. 2. I never ever had a situation where I didn’t follow through with my return policy. The buyer who posted this review was IMMEDIATELY offered a free repair or replacement of their damaged item although it had been much longer than my return policy allows. I stand by my work and allow 7 days for any item to be shipped back if there is a problem and especially if there is a quality issue, which I take most seriously. The buyer contacted me after a MONTH, but I extended the timeline for him as courtesy. The buyer declined my offer for the reasons that I do not completely understand. He also declined a refund, which I had offered him as another option and refused to ship back the item..

So, I simply do not understand what exactly happened here and why it had to escalate to the point when I have to defend myself from these false and completely made up accusations brought up against me publicly. Now the buyer deliberately wants to hurt the reputation of my store by posting things like that all over internet and social media.... I am feeling like I am being attacked despite that I did everything a responsible seller is expected to do to settle the buyer’s issue at the time....