One bride-to-be was shocked by the shoddy workmanship of a mall goldsmith and took to social media with her story.
In a viral TikTok that has amassed over 5.7 million views and over 435,000 likes, user ittybittycherry🍒(@ittybittycherry) shared how a jeweler “aged” her engagement ring “100 years in 30 minutes.”
@ittybittycherry I’m still in shock that he felt comfortable giving my ring back to me in this condition. #storytime #engagementring #jewellery ♬ original sound – Ittybittycherry 🍒
“This is the ring my boyfriend proposed to me with,” the clip begins. “A beautiful, snowdrift ring with eleven diamonds, 18-carat yellow gold, exactly what I would’ve dreamed of.”
The woman went on to explain that the ring was “perfect” and only needed to be resized. Everywhere she called gave her a two- or three-week turnaround time, which would take too long because they had an engagement photoshoot scheduled. So she decided to take it to a goldsmith at the mall.
“He told me it would take 30 minutes,” she continued.
Though he charged her $190, which felt like too much for the service, she was grateful to get the ring resized quickly. All seemed fine when she first picked up the ring. However, upon closer inspection, she realized things were very wrong with the piece.
“I was livid,” she said.
One of the first things she noticed was that the ring was “misshapen” and no longer a perfect circle.
The content creator also said the ring looks a lot thinner and as if someone removed “a lot of gold from the bottom of the ring.”
“You can see that it’s no longer, like, smooth even though they polished it,” she explained. “And for some reason there’s a dent in one of the main prongs.”
The woman also noted that the bottom of the ring is “warped” and “completely scratched up” and the engraved 18k marking was buffed out.
“When I saw this, I was speechless,” she said.
In a follow-up video, the TikToker explained that she immediately took the ring back and confronted the jeweler about his shoddy work.
“That man was not in any position to be working on fine jewelry,” she said.
After she pointed out all of the issues with the ring, she said he became defensive.
“Well this is your ring, it must’ve had that when you brought it here,” he allegedly told her.
To fix the misshapenness, the woman claims he banged the ring with a hammer.
“I couldn’t believe what he was doing,” she said.
The woman shared a screenshot of a text message exchange she purportedly had with the man in from store in which she outlined everything wrong with her ring. She also shared another update about what happened when she returned to get the ring fixed.
“Overall he was apologetic and really seemed like he wanted to make it up to me,” she said.
Fortunately, another worker at the store did just that and she ended up getting her ring back with all of the imperfections corrected.
Even though she was happy with the finished work, in the comments section, some accused the jeweler of switching out the woman’s diamonds.
“It can probably still be a real diamond but doesn’t mean he didn’t downgrade you,” user Calicotton wrote. “The prong dent is from removing the diamond.”
“No, it’s not,” the woman replied. “That part of the prong wouldn’t be damaged for that. It’s likely from the clamp during resizing.”
“I’m afraid the middle diamond was switched for moissanite,” another commenter said.
“Your ring should’ve come with certificates that show the diamonds,” user Pugnpoli advised. “Take it to an appraiser and see if it matches the original.”
In her follow-up TikTok, ittybittycherry said that she had the diamonds tested at Macy’s after the mall jeweler returned it restored to its original condition. All the stones were real.
“He made it right,” she said of the jeweler.
The Daily Dot reached out to ittybittycherry via email for comment.
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Source: https://www.dailydot.com/news/mall-jeweler-damaged-engagement-ring/