Hi all, just thought I'd post our engagement ring shopping experience and how we brought our ring.
First of all don't show with a online jeweler that doesn't have a store. We found one with a slick website that was owned by a teenager running it from his parents home. A great wholesale jeweler that I can recommend is EROS Diamonds http://erosdiamonds.com . They are brokers/wholesalers and import certified diamonds. They gave us a great price (half price we found anywhere else!) and it was nice to be able to pick up the phone and talk to them at a store.
We also bought our diamond online, from diamondcutters.com.
They have a shop in New York City. Their stones were certified (GIA) and they shipped overnight for free. There was also a 10 day evaluation period during which we could return the stone and be refunded all but a slight restocking fee. It turned out we didn't need to return it. It was exactly what they said it was, and the price was excellent!
Mine was bought at diamondbrokersoffl.com who have an excellent reputation on the web for service, responsiveness, and pricing. My fi (a physicist) did a pretty exhaustive search on the web for my diamond, visited many message boards and diamond forums, bluenile and the rest. He got everything he needed to know about my stone and the setting before buying, including a firescope and several other obscure images, from Jan in record time. The store itself is in Florida, and Jan and Brad, a married couple, are both gemologists, and have been in the business for a long time.
What I really liked about Deb from http://erosdiamonds.com was that she owns the business and is a trained Master diamond grader. We went with a channel set wedding band with 9 diamonds and she even added three more stones at no cost because she though there weren't enough diamonds! She loves what she does and I can't recommend her highly enough. We were very happy with the price and especially the service she gave us. It really felt that she was working for us. She even showed us the real RAP price of the diamonds.
