Went into the Jewellers Bench this past summer for a repair to a piece of jewellery. Bob did an amazing repair leterally in seconds to Kudos to him for this. He has a new lazer machine that is quite incredible. Anywhere else I would have had to wait a week or more.
I took an idea I had for some time back to him and he said that he could make on up no problem at all. He gave me a price of $500 and in the next minute it turned into $600 and then $700 a few seconds later. I was more concerned about getting a prototype made so it was a small investment for me to get something happening. He had me pay in advance and that was not a problem.
it was ready in a week. I went into pick it up and it was exactly what I was looking for to the T. I told him that he did a good job. He said that he didn't make it but rather had to send it out and have a mold made up. I was quite surprised and disappointed that he had told me that he was going to make it and didn't.
I took it home to show my wife and she went wild on my head. She immediately took it to one of the more expensive jewellery stores that we know of and showed it to them and asked if they could make one like this up. The lady took it to the owner in the back room and came back with a cost of $166.00 for exactly the same thing and they said they could do much better if there was some volumes involved.
I felt nothing less than a fool and went back and talked to Bob about this and he started giving me an explanation "They are probably making it out of filing and you will be able to tell because of the porosity in the gold and so on.
I had full intentions of getting a setting from him for a ring for my wife, this whole situation left me with a feeling that he took me down the road to the cleaners which is the reason for this post.
Customers beware and be more educated than I was or at least get a second or third opinion before you go ahead.
P.S. the complete unit that I had made weighed .20 grams of gold which translates too 5 X .2 grams is 1 gram. There are roughly 31 grams per ounce of gold. So if this item weighed 1 Gram I would have paid $3500.00 per gram but the labour is not included. If it had weighed an ounce then it would have cost me $108,500.00 not including labour for this item of course.
How stupid do I feel? You have no idea! I feel like I have been taken totally advantage of here and won't be forgetting about it too soon.