(the new stone – picked out last week)

If in case you’re not caught up to whats been going on with my Lord & Taylor drama, please read this first: The Time L&T ruined my engagement ring pt. 1 and the follow up: The Time L&T ruined my engagement ring pt. 2 and the third in the story: The Time L&T ruined my engagement ring pt 3.

Its been exactly a week today since I finally got to pick up my ring with the new stone in it, that I had picked out a few days prior (mentioned in post #3). Wednesday last week, I got an email from the store manager at Lord & Taylor near us, saying that the ring had come in for me to pick up. We arranged a time for me to go in and pick it up on Thursday. In the email exchanged back and forth, I asked if the repair center owner had in fact sent along the certification of authenticity with the new stone. I never heard back about that.

When we got to the store on Thursday we met up with the store manager who brought out my ring with the new stone and…

… HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF : it was the stone I had picked out and it was beautifully cut. FINALLY. I mean, it only took since november to get this sorted out, a bajillion phone calls, 4 blog posts, countless tweets and facebook messages and finally working with the store manager (who had been very true to her word on everything so far) – but my ring had a new stone and it wasn’t wonky or terrible.

Down side? No paperwork. Turns out that it was because the repair center owner had never sent the paperwork. Surprise surprise. While I don’t quite understand why its so hard to send along paperwork of what is being sent, I was annoyed to say the least because considering that this was a major major screw up on L&T’s part, we’d been pretty understanding and willing to work with them on sorting this out. All I wanted was to know for sure that I hadn’t just been handed some very pretty purple glass. I was told that no owner of a big company would want to ruin his reputation by sending glass to me — and we stated that this would be true… generally except it was the same company that ruined my ring and stone to begin with.

More importantly, we wanted the paperwork for insurance purposes for the ring. At this point the store manager mentioned that she was (and I am NOT quoting her directly here but rather paraphrasing) hesitant in speaking/dealing with me because she didn’t want her words to show up on the internet. Apparently this blog and these posts have been getting some attention from Lord & Taylor themselves.

I wanted to state here, for the record, that I fully respect people’s privacy hence why I have made sure to never mention anyone’s name here in anything to do with this entire incident so far.

However, that is as far as I am willing to be quiet on the matter. Given the circumstances so far, I feel that Lobster and I have been very forgiving and willing to cooperate with L&T in this matter – I am very sure that any other couple would have actively retained a lawyer by now and dealt with them through those means instead. Now despite my insistence on getting proof of what the stone’s quality and value was, it still wasn’t provided. At the VERY least, I have the right to write about my experiences with Lord and Taylor, to help hold them accountable for this entire incident.

Lobster and I mentioned that at this point to ask us to take Lord & Taylor’s word or the repair center’s word on the value of the stone was not going to work. We were gun shy about dealing with them on this matter considering everything that had happened and that paperwork was important. The store manager was understanding and let us know that this would have to be approved by higher ups to get an appraisal of the ring and value of the stone.

I let her know that again, we weren’t expecting things to be done over night but at the very least I’d like to be kept in the loop as to what’s going to happen and an approximate of how long it would take. We left things with a handshake and she said she’d be in touch.

As I said, that was exactly a week ago. I am hoping to hear from her soon in regards to the paperwork for the ring. The next step is to take this ring to a gemologist (a very good friend of ours knows one) and see what they say about the stone (I might also have them take a look at the fake “original” stone as well.)

We’ll see what happens next. At this point I just want the paperwork from the store, stating what they are saying the value of the stone is (so I have proof of what they gave me as being of at least equal value to my original stone) and then I would like to move on from this, as I am sure Lord & Taylor would too.

I WOULD like to point out something, for kicks. I wasn’t planning on it happening this way but apparently if you do a general search on google for Lord and taylor and engagement or wedding rings, links to this blog show up within the first few links. The power of the internet never ceases to amaze me, honestly.

 

ps. I’ll put up links to the new stone and ring during the day when I have actual decent light