The aptly named ring saga gets another chapter
Posted
Wednesday, July 02, 2008 8:31 AM
I'm going to tell the whole ring saga, please bare with me if you've heard parts before. I feel the older information is relavent to the new chapter...
On January 26, 2008, my fiance (M) and I went to a trunk show at a local jewelers (we had received a postcard from a bridal show advertizing it). We went late in the day, towards the end of the sale. (Even though our wedding is August 2nd, we figured we'd get a jump start on something)
A young woman helped us out, she was nice and friendly (we have since learned she is the cousin of the family that runs the store). I knew that all I wanted was a simple white gold band (my engagement ring is a)super fancy and b)white gold). The young woman helped me find one that I liked, and then we found a nice ring for M, it was Tungsten and looked beautiful. The young woman wrote down the ring codes and prices for us on a handwritten recepit, as while they had a computerized system, I believe they were entering all items from the trunk show at once at the end of the sale (we got maybe 20% off on the rings too). M and I left, having spent a little more than we meant to, but thrilled to have found rings that we loved so much... (of course, this can't be the end of the story)
About 30 minutes after we had arrived home from the sale my cell phone rang. It was the jeweler (I think the same girl that helped us) and she said that she had mistakenly told M the price of his ring, and in fact, it was about $600 more than we had paid because the ring had a platinum band in it (making the cost of M's ring more than both of them together). Well, we don't have that kind of money laying around (he was in AmeriCorps this year and I am an admin assistant for a non-profit) but on the other hand, we'd already paid for his ring. The girl told us we should come in and see rings they have that are very similar.
We went in within the next week and looked at the rings they had in the store. None of them were what M wanted. They said the new catalogue was just about to come out and they would call us when they got it, by Wednesday. Well, Wednesday came and passed, as did a few more, and so we called them. Now they said they could help us, they thought they had something M would like. So they showed us a ring with yellow gold, rather than the platinum, and said they could have it made with white gold for us (which would cost almost twice the original prices of M's ring, but they would cover it for us). Well, this made us happy, M liked how it looked and we thought it would be nice to have my simple, white gold band and his ring as a tungsten with a white gold band in it. I believe we even said as much to the jewelers...
They said M's new ring would be in in about two weeks and they would call us. That was mid-March. In late May, we still hadn't heard from them, but I figured they had the rings, they just didn't call us... that was not the case. They called M the last week in May and said that his ring had come in with their last shipment, but had not passed their quality control and had been returned but they thought they'd have it in late June.
So, late June comes around, M calls and they said they had just got his ring in! M was totally excited and rushed us over there the first chance we had (yesterday at lunch). We got the rings, the jeweler said they could help me with my engagement ring (which has a chipped diamond) and we all said good bye. Done, right? Nope.
We get home after work and are gazing at the rings. M's says it's 18K gold in it, I turn mine around looking for what karat gold mine is, I hadn't even wondered before, but couldn't find a marker. The only words inside said pd950. So I punched that into a search engine and guess what? My simple, white gold band that was all I wanted in my wedding ring, is palladium.
How had this never come to light before? All I wanted was white gold to match my engagment ring. I never knew the ring was palladium, I wouldn't have looked at a ring if I knew it was paladium, as all I wanted was white gold. M called the jewelers (asking if the rings came with papers or something) and we verified it is not white gold. I was sad, very sad and M felt very bad. So he called them back, just to say that perhaps the girl that helped us shouldn't be allowed to help at the next trunk sale. The jeweler's office manager said she'd see what she can do, but... sigh...
So, I'm sad, but at the same time, I feel like a freaky bridezilla. Is having a palladium ring that bad? It's not what I wanted and I didn't think that what I wanted was asking for much. No diamonds, no engraving, no sculpting, just a simple, white gold band. If I couldn't tell the difference, would it matter? Should I make a big deal about this?
So, that is the ring saga as it stands... who knows what the next chapter will bring. I honestly thought it was over when we picked up the rings yesterday. I'm pretty sure the jewelery store rues the day we walked in their door. But it does seem to be their errors, not ours... ugh... they've been very nice to this point, I don't know how the palladium/white gold thing will be handled... time will tell... (and we're running out now that the wedding is only a month away! Who would have thought when we bought the rings JANUARY 26th that we still wouldn't have it settled on JULY 2nd.)
I hope your ring buying is uneventful.