u/eatinggrilledcheese

Has anyone else who’s worked with Gabriel & Co. (or another vendor) on a custom lab diamond ring directly or through a jeweler had issues with the CAD process?

Our jeweler uses G&C for custom pieces and my partner and I are on the 4th draft of our CAD and growing frustrated with the communication process. Every adjustment we ask for is done to the extreme no matter how we describe it or what inspiration photos we show (ex. asking for a VERY slight taper and getting a rendering back with a major pinch),and each time they’ve done a new rendering they’ve made adjustments we haven’t asked for and not adjusted something we did ask for.

Between our most recent CAD and the prior one, I asked them to make our baguette hidden halo a bit more seamless as it didn’t look like any of the inspiration photos I sent in. I said nothing about the silhouette of the basket. They sent a new CAD where they didn’t touch the hidden halo and completely changed the basket. Before that, I asked them to reduce the baguettes to 3 per-side instead of 4 — they reduced to 2.

We were planning to have our ring this past weekend and now the process is taking forever and we’re quickly approaching the point where we run out of free CADs because we have to keep asking them to undo their (or possibly partly our jewelers? I can’t tell where this is getting lost in translation) mistakes. It’s so frustrating and anxiety-provoking and I don’t know what to do.

Has anyone else run into issues like this? I’m wondering at this point if we can get on a call with them or something and work on this together instead of being in a constant game of telephone with a middleman.

I’m in the market for a 3.3-3.5 carat emerald cut with a preferred ratio of 1.51 to 1.54. I’ve sourced 30+ stones on my own and viewed 6 or 7 from jewelers, but all of them have had some degree of face-up windowing (everything from reading text right through the middle to mild color leakage against bright colored paper), with the more elongated stones definitely having more obvious light leakage.

Two different jewelers, including one that seems to be extremely knowledgeable about step cuts, have told me I likely won’t find a stone that size with a ratio over 1.48 - 1.5 that has the type of light performance I’m looking for, but I have long, skinny fingers (US 3.25) and that small ratio difference looks noticeably more stout on my hand.

I have a 1.5 ratio stone that performs pretty well, but I kept holding out for something just a tiny bit longer. However, this search for the perfect stone has delayed my engagement by 10 months at this point and I don’t want to keep doing this if this stone isn’t out there.

So, is this sentiment generally true? And for those with longer emerald cut diamonds, did you lower your standards for windowing/light performance when you selected your stone, or does it not have any issues? TIA!

I got a return request for a Bath & Body Works body mist apparently smelling like alcohol, that I know didn’t smell that way when I shipped it. I’m stressed that the buyer is attempting to do the old dump, switch, and return thing that seems to be common in the B&BW community.

What’s weird to me is that this is a $15 item (listed for $19, buyer offered $15, I accepted) that’s being returned due to “smells,” and instead of just refunding both of us, they’re continuing to ask the buyer for more proof. Does Mercari not do the refund thing for $15 purchases anymore? Or does this mean the buyer abused that?