I grew up on the West Side, but moved an hour north about 7 years ago. Faigle Jewelers has always had an excellent reputation, and the few occasions I had been in there before, I was treated wonderfully. My father-in-law has also been a frequent - and extremely loyal - customer there for decades.\r
My husband recently purchased a new wedding ring for me to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary - online. He also purchased a separate, practically flawless, 1 carat diamond - valued at $8,000 - online, although the retail cost was in excess of $10,000. When we needed to have the diamond mounted in the ring, we immediately thought of Faigle to do the work - although it was SO far out of our way - regardless of the other jewelers who were located much closer to home.\r
As soon as we stated to the woman who helped us what we wanted done (who I believe is a daughter of Faigle himself), her response was, ""Well, I can do it, I guess, but I really would've appreciated an opportunity to sell you the 1-carat diamond."" We paused for a moment, unsure of where she was going with this. After much hesitation on her part - ""You're asking me to assume all the risk on something you never gave me the opportunity to sell you, something I'm not making any money on."" - she agreed to set the diamond. During the 15 minutes we were there, among other remarks made, in a disgusted manner, we were told that they don't make much money on things like this, they can only survive if they're given the chance to sell the actual jewelry, as well as her repeated declarations of how uncomfortable she felt doing the job at all. When my husband finally said, ""Do you want the job or not?"" she eplied in a nasty and disgusted voice, ""Yes, we can do it, but it's going to cost you."" The cost of $75 was nothing compared to what we were prepared to pay, and because we were in need of someone to set it, we agreed to let her do it, and realized that if she messed it up, it was her loss, not ours, so we had little to lose.\r
My question is, Why, if you see a person who places $11,000 (diamond plus ring) worth of jewelry in front of you, would you not see them as a potential future customer and treat them as such, rather than greedily and begrudgingly focusing on the diamond sale you lost??? If the diamond was only a quarter-carat, would she have reacted the same way?? Obviously, we could afford to buy this, and would probably have purchased even more - from her - but now she's lost us - and our father-in-law's decades of loyal business - forever. VERY bad business decision.
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