1 /5 Nicole Lam: Long story short, they took months to damage my rings so badly that another store had to fix the damage this business did later.
I brought in my engagement band and wedding band to be soldered together on July 20th. They were friendly and quoted a reasonable amount for the soldering. They said it would take three weeks. Four weeks later I called them on Wednesday, August 17th, and they said it would be done in two days by that Friday. Two months passed after that with no word from them. I called and left a message, and they said they could have it done by 4:30 the next day.
When I went to pick it up on October 11th, the jeweler came out and said it was free-of-charge because of the long wait time for it. We did not examine the finished product together. He didn’t communicate how the soldering went.
I got a better look when I left the jeweler. It was damaged and unprofessional. Not a standard solder where you combine your two distinct rings with solder so they are undamaged. There were divots in the gold, the edges were not smooth, and to my untrained eye, it looked like they damaged the ring by melting parts, particularly the thinner band.
I contacted them with the pictures of the damage I took. They said to bring it back and they’d fix it like new because that’s not the type of work they like to show to the world. They did a better job than the first time, but still not the quality youd expect from a professional jeweler. Uneven band and could still see slight gold damage still. I’m pretty sure the original Alexander jeweler stepped in and did the good work to cover for the younger Alexander family member that messed up the first time, but there was only so much he could do at that point. A good goldsmith job should be seamless, and should not be this obviously amateur to the naked eye.
I took it to a reputable local jeweler to assess the damage that Alexander’s Family Jewelry did. The new jeweler took a look and confirmed that the final product is uneven, too thin in spots, and not well done. I had to pay so much more than a soldering job to re-shank and fix the rings properly, when I should have been able to save so much time and money had Alexander’s Family Jewelers told me from the get-go that they weren’t up to the task.
I wish when I walked in for a quote over three months ago that they would have told me the truth: they don’t have the goldsmith skills necessary to do a basic solder. (Or to do a professional fix-it job of what they let leave the shop.)
I uploaded a picture of the ring they gave me to take home after they finished "soldering" it. Thats the quality of their work.
