The Internet has bestowed many blessings upon us — free music and movies, instant access to information, and easy communication. But perhaps the most unsung is the ability to buy things in your underwear.
In those long-ago days before the Internet, when we all lived like animals, you actually had to get dressed to buy stuff. But now you can buy just about any item you want, any time you want, anywhere you want, in any undergarment you want. And that includes the big, scary, important, and expensive purchase you are about to make: a diamond engagement ring.
Browsing through the many great money-saving deals online retailers offer can be overwhelmingly tempting to save a few hundred dollars.
But before you even consider shopping online for your engagement ring, even if it’s from a certified vendor, I strongly suggest you read this.
Despite the guarantees and returns policies an online company may have, it doesn’t mean squat because most courier companies will not accept any jewellery with diamonds for transit because doing so would violate their dangerous goods policies for the security of their delivery drivers.
This leaves it up to you to somehow find a way to return the ring within a limited time frame and if you bought the ring from outside your home country, the chances of returning it successfully are even slimmer.
You are stuck with a dud ring and no money to go to a real store and get a new one. Even if you somehow manage to find a courier service that will ship it, you are risking a huge investment being lost or stolen.
All it takes is one dishonest postal worker to take away the ring and all the money you sunk into it.
Internet shopping is fine for inexpensive purchases like clothes or electrical goods. The worst that can happen is that you lose out on a few bucks but a wedding ring is special so is not a smart online purchase.
Buying directly from a respected and trustworthy jeweller is really the way to go when choosing an engagement ring. You will always know where your engagement ring came from and where to take it back if anything should happen and be protected by a valid guarantee and warranty policy.
You don’t truly know what you’re getting
Would you buy a wedding dress without trying it on? Or, would you book a wedding venue without seeing it in person? In most instances, you likely would not. You shouldn’t with an engagement ring either!
Like a bridal dress or wedding venue, an engagement ring can look and feel completely different when you finally see it in person. Pictures will only tell a small part of the story. Without seeing it first, you won’t get an accurate feel for the size, clarity, or small details. Though an online listing might “say” that the ring is a specific carat or quality, you could easily get ripped off by a low quality or knock off diamond since the entire operation is hidden behind a screen.
Plus, you miss out in the feeling of excitement and anticipation knowing that you went to a jewellery store to pick out the perfect ring!
You don’t get free ring cleanings for life
When buying an engagement ring online, you still have to find a jeweller that will clean, inspect, or repair your rings every few months or as needed. An engagement ring purchased online would likely have to be shipped back via mail for any maintenance (if they even offer those services).
Don’t put yourself in the position of potentially losing your ring in the mail. Every Anania Family Jewellers ring comes with free cleanings and inspections for life!
You can’t customise it
Have a vision in your mind of the perfect ring but can’t quite find it anywhere? Bring in the pictures you have saved and we’ll help you craft a one-of-a-kind ring from scratch within your budget. With our in-house design centre, we have the programming and resources to design and build your dream ring, exactly as you want it.
You miss out on supporting local businesses during the pandemic
The past year has been economically tough for so many households and small businesses. When you buy an engagement ring online from a big corporate retailer, you miss out on supporting the locally owned family businesses that have both served and employed your neighbours for generations.
Keep small business alive!
You don’t get specialised customer care
With an online purchase, you miss out on personalised attention. Online engagement ring retailers likely have corporate customer service centres to serve their large, global client base. When you shop with a local jeweller, you get specialised one on one attention for the entire ring buying process— even long after you’ve said “I do!”
An engagement ring is one of the biggest purchases of a lifetime. Not only is it a financial investment, but the meaning, emotion, and sentiment behind it is huge. Your soon-to-be finance will be wearing this ring on their hand everyday for the rest of their lives. A purchase this important and ever-lasting shouldn’t be done sight unseen. The picture that you see online may not reflect what the ring actually looks like as colours, lighting, and imperfections can be edited or manipulated for photo. If you want to enter this chapter of your life stress-free, start by shopping with your trustworthy local family jeweller!
Don’t shop without a budget
The first step to finding the perfect engagement ring is knowing how much you want to spend. Setting a budget might seem obvious, but nearly a third of grooms spend more than they wanted to on a rock, according to The Knot.
Daniel Anania says walking into a store with a price range in mind helps jewellers meet your needs.
Though there’s a well-known “guideline” of spending two months salary on an engagement ring, it was actually born from a diamond company’s marketing efforts. Your budget should be a personal decision that takes into account outstanding debts, income and financial priorities.
Don’t blindly fall victim to the “four C’s”
For years, calculating a diamond’s worth has revolved around characteristics known as the “four C’s”: cut, clarity, colour, and carat size. A diamond is rated on a scale for each characteristic by independent gemological societies, and those ratings play a role in how much a diamond is worth.
However, Daniel explains, those characteristics can sometimes be used to unnecessarily squeeze more money out of customers.
For example, consider two round-cut diamonds that are rated the same for colour and carat size but differ only in clarity. The diamond boasting better clarity on paper (which might have a VS 1 rating, for example) may cost more than the equivalent diamond with slightly more imperfections (a VS 2 clarity rating, for example).
But that would only be telling half the story. If the diamond’s imperfection is on its edge, it’s not terribly difficult to cover with a prong from the setting,
Selection Myth
Let’s start with what we call the “selection myth”. So you go to a website and it looks like you got hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of stones to select from. The first thing that most of you may not know is these websites do not have any of these stones. They are simply feeding their websites from a database basically like a brokering service like realtor.com, where you look for homes on a website showing all the options that are out there.
Not only do these companies not own these stones, they’re scattered all around the world with the vast majority of them being in India.
Comparison Illusion
Online companies are trying to give you the illusion of comparison. The problem is that all of these diamonds have been shot all over the world with different sources. They’re using different studio lighting. Just take a look.
Even the lighting backgrounds not the same colour. Do you see that was supposed to be white or grey some of them are coming off more blueish, more greyish? How could we possibly compare those diamonds when they’ve all been prerecorded? You need to see diamond side by side to be able to compare the differences. 
So before you check out, check us out!
You can meet with us in our studio, in-store or online, virtually.
Look forward to hearing from you.
