oooh..I have one....Around Christmas this past year, I walked through a store in the mall and was looking at the diamond stud earring selection. One of the sales people asked if they could help and I said "I don't think so." She persisted so I said.."Ok, Do you have any asscher cut stud earrings?" and she exclaimed..."Oh yes, of course" (in a tone that implied I had just asked a rather silly question) and promptly shows me some princess cut earrings. I showed her my ER and said "THIS is an asscher." and walked out.

SERIOUSLY?!?! How can people in the diamond business not know what an Asscher is! KILLS ME!! Or cushion!! 

Snooper, I know what you mean!  I think it's because many, many of them are sales people as opposed to jewelers.  Whenever I go to Vegas, I check out the eye candy at a major vintage jewelry store.  There's only a couple of semi-knowledgeable people who work in that store and the rest of them?  Well, they like to tell unsuspecting customers things like that the piece in the case that has a modern RB encased in platinum that has no patina is a vintage piece from the early 1900's.     

Local maul store here just started carrying asschers, to my real surprise. Lucky to see beyond rb here. I took a look and they were sad, spotty little things. Looked like the council cut them.

Actually, I don't know if that means anything to folks in the US, but in the UK, the council is the local authority, ususally responsible for cutting hedges and stuff, usually badly. (Did the council cut that? is a popular generic insult for a bad haircut also.)

No, the man in the shop didn't smile either...

Still, the thing I learned today from speaking with our new local asscher expert is that this is a brand new cut, just out. He's the first in town to retail it.

Jen

It always makes me laugh. Makes maul store staff grit their teeth and hitch their smiles up a little. Except for one bright little spark, who looked puzzled for a moment then said "I don't think so, but I'll ask the manager."

DH says that's what I deserve for being so rude in the first place! He may have a point, but I just think maul stores set themselves up for a little mild leg pulling now and then.


Jen

That's hilarious!  Cut by the council!  I'm a Brit and I've not heard that before!  I'm going to start using it though!  ROFL!!!

Jen, I know you will appreciate this.  I walked my best friend into a certain catalogue shop in the UK just to show her how bad the jewelry was.  I asked the sales lady for a diamond bracelet and when she handed it to me, I told my friend to close her eyes and I dropped it into her hand.  I said, "See.  It feels like tin foil.  Not good."  Yes, that was quite rude of me and the sales assistant looked none too pleased but I had a point to make.  I then took my friend to my favorite hometown jeweler and asked Betty (sales lady) to grab any diamond tennis bracelet she wanted and I did the same thing again.  As soon as the bracelet was in my friend's hand, she said, "Aaaahhhh!  I get it!"  Betty, meanwhile, was still smiling at us and trying to figure out what we were up to!

Oh and I once had a sales woman at a down market UK chain store tell me that diamonds from the US all looked cloudy - "as if coated with hairspray"!!!  That made me mad actually!  I'd just gotten home after 3 years Stateside where I'd worked in two jewelers - she definitely picked the wrong person to say that to!!

What??...diamonds from the US cloudy!   Where do  they think most diamonds come from in the first place??   That has to be the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard!   It would have taken all my energy not to go off on that salesperson!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!     I would have done this.............

LOL!!!  Yeah, too right!  That's downright rude if you ask me - how presumptuous!

Ronda, honestly, I was pretty steamed!  I could cheerfully have told her that 80% of the cack in her window wouldn't even be considered for sale in the US - 9ct gold isn't considered high enough to be gold Stateside!  Grrrrrrr!

We do have to remember that maul jewelers are generally no different from other maul stores in that they normally have a high turn over of staff so it's not unusual to have staff who don't know their asschers from their elbows!   

DJ,

I was amazed she asked to try on my ring - could not believe a sales assistant would do that! Kinda like it would be fair enough if I tried on one of their display rings- created stones and diamond chips, expertly set in 9ct 'gold'. 

She looked bored though, it was a slow day and she had probably spent it sitting on her asscher...

Sorry, this is long:
Just this week, I went into a mall jewelry store where the saleswoman offered several times to show me anything I wanted to see. I explained that I was not ready to make a purchase, but, I would love to see what different ring and stone shapes looked like on my hand. Also, the saleslady said that there were some J-color, and maybe K-color stones in the store, so I was on the lookout: I wanted to test my “color tolerance” within the range of colorless stones (laying the groundwork for BIGGER here…)

First, I was shocked at the poor selection: the shop ONLY carried rounds and princess cuts in both solitaire and three-stone engagement rings (plus, they had one small pear set on a pavé band).  Overall, the stone quality as it related to price was very disappointing; I was surprised at the relative high prices for such poor quality stones. Some diamonds actually looked as if they’d been coated in milk, others looked like scratched kitchen glassware. Most had minimal sparkle (if any). Under about 15-20 linear feet of glass counterspace, there were probably four diamonds in the ENTIRE store of any note, and the best I could find (the sales lady raved about it) was a .5ct round G SI2.  Please understand, I’m not experienced looking at stones, and I wasn’t being picky, but the flaws in this stuff were obvious and somewhat overwhelming.

At one point, I had two 1ct solitaire rings in hand. When I looked sideways through each ring to see the diamond’s bezel, one stone looked distinctly yellow. When I did the same with the second stone, the bezel looked more like cloudy water. “Aha! I’ll bet THIS stone (the yellow one) is a J/K,” I said.  “The other, maybe H?” (I felt that I was being generous in both cases). After checking the heavily-packaged certificates corresponding to each ring, the saleslady announced triumphantly, “Oh no, THIS stone (the yellow one) is actually a G-color stone, the other is an I.” WHATTTTT? She continues to explain, “You see, the G-color stone looks yellow because it has more inclusions than the other stone.”  Wahhhhhhh!!!!

THEN, she showed me the “certification” reports. They were from a Mystery Lab that I have never heard of. “This is our own lab,” she explained.  “Only the BEST of our stones are graded.” (Ahhh, that explains why the rest of the stock looked as shabby as it did.) Best of all, the report actually had a key to the marks describing the diamond characteristics (like a GIA report), and, although the key to descriptive marks was different on the two reports that I saw, (as you would expect), the marks in each report were never recorded on the diamond illustrations. In other words, each report had a key to nothing.

The store actually had a yellow diamond ring, and I’d wanted to try it on just see how I liked the color with my skin tone.  But, I was so blown away by the rest of the experience, I simply forgot. ?

Certainly, this store’s target market is people who are spending less than I intend. That’s fine. But, I KNOW stones of much better quality, both with grading reports and without reports, can be had for the same price, or less.  Dressing up a mediocre to poor stone with a fancy-multi-page-report-with-a-big-black-cover must work, because I can’t see how this store could remain in business any other way. But really, who knows WHAT grade these stones would have ended up with if looked at by a legit lab!

 

Trinkette...It is appauling to say the least.  People get sucked into buying from those type of stores everyday..........which is even more appauling!!

It's pretty sad, isn't it. Diamond rings (for a lot of people, ok maybe not us) are a once in a life time purchase. The maul stores know that. Some of them sell rubbish, dressed up as special, to people who want something precious. There's a lot to be said for being educated before you buy, but there's also something to be said for an ethical sales policy.

In the UK, the Sale of Goods Act entitles the buyer to rely on the seller's expertise. At least that sets out an expectation on sellers and some redress for buyers. Although we should be verrry careful - the caveat to that rule is - unless the buyer has greater expertise!

In a maul store? Not likely to be difficult!

Jen