Frustration with Brian Gavin Purchase

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Thinking of getting a Brian Gavin (BG) diamond? Here is my experience. 

Due to the Black Friday sales, I have been busy comparing the diamonds between these 3 online retailers: James Allen, White Flash and BG.

Although I have finally settled for Brain Gavin Black and Brian Gavin Signature Cushion, I have been trying to purchase these diamonds in vain, since 2 days ago. 

Yes, until today I did not manage to land myself with any of these coveted stones. Why so?

Unremovable phantom diamond in the shopping cart

Simply because, I was having issues with their online shopping platform. Interestingly, there was this phantom diamond, 0.51 carat F VS1 Select Cushion, which cannot be removed from the cart (it was missing the cross "X"). In short,  I had to cart out this phantom diamond, if I were to purchase anything from BG.

As I suspected that this glitch was due to some browser cookie issue, I decided to switch to the Chrome Incognito browser. Interesting enough, yet another phantom diamond, 1.012 carat F VS2 Signature Cushion, appeared.

User unfriendly error messages

Even after I signed up another account, using Chrome Incognito browser, the same thing happened! The phantom diamond cannot be removed, to top it off, their coupon codes did not seem to work too. I tried to apply the a couple of discount coupons but the "The requested quantity is not available", instead of "coupons have been used up", error message appeared. This made me wonder if the error message had anything to do with the phantom diamond which was stuck in my shopping cart.

Laggy customer support

Unlike James Allen's "live" virtual assistants, "live" chat is simply an email form for you to submit your enquires and email address. Therefore, the customer service personnel will take a day or more to respond. 

In my case, their customer support was not helpful; they took a couple of days to reply so (imagine all the good coupons I had missed out during the agonizing wait) and their response was very brief! In addition, even after I provided all screengrabs, and detailed the issues faced with the system, customer support did not explain what/why happened (phantom diamonds that seem to sticky no matter which browser I had used) only only apologize for the IT glitch. 

As for the coupon issues, the customer support personnel pointed out that the customers would need an intimate knowledge of their products, in order to apply their coupons successfully; apparently, only certain coupons can be used for their in-house, virtual, select and signature range and so on - what an amazingly confusing range of product lines! These coupons should also be applied within certain date and time duration - many different conditions to meet and in short, confusing to use lah! So apparently I have been using the wrong coupon on the wrong product line, date, and time for my purchase! Ugh!

Although I had explained that I am located in Singapore (the time difference zones meant I had to stay up overnight just to wait for the responses about the issue with my account and the new coupons),  their responses were still slow and somewhat nonchalant. In addition, coupled with the fact the coupons still did not work after they had been applied correctly (which they later clarified that all of the coupons were used up by the time I receive their emails), all these unfortunate incidents added up and gave me a very confused, stressful and disappointing journey.  

Bottom line

As an overseas buyer, I do not recommend purchasing from BG. This is because of the following:

1. Laggy responses (refer to the details above);

2. 15 day short return policy (their laggy customer service responses might mean you, an overseas buyer, might not meet their 15 day return policy);

3. Buggy shopping platform (refer to the details above) and;

4. Complex product structure (too many and too confusing).

My spouse, a complete diamond noob (who had never ever purchased a diamond online before), seeing how upset and stressed I was over the BG issues, had gotten me a brilliant Emerald diamond ring from James Allen (which I am going to blog about later). He told me he did it with the help of several virtual assistants who accompanied him throughout the purchase process. His simple gesture made me realize that aside from the final product, it is also important to enjoy the entire purchase process. 

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