![]() ![]() This time Rbibo was prepared, and he photographed the unique blemishes on the pearl. Just three weeks after she placed her first order, she told Rbibo she would give him “another chance” and purchased a second ring from him for $1,500. Rbibo’s customer knew how to play the game. “I decided to eat the $600 cost of the pearl because I think she would have hurt our reputation,” he said. “I knew if I told her that it was not our product, it would have ended with a bad review on our site and a credit card chargeback,” said Rbibo, adding that The Pearl Source has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. Problem is, online jewelers are stuck between a rock and a hard place: Fighting back against fraud can damage their business. Transactions totaling more than $400 - the amount of the average online jewelry purchase - have a 35 percent greater risk of being fraudulent, according to 2Checkout. “Jewelry is by far the most attractive item to steal online,” said Forter founder Liron Damri. Signet Jewelers, the owner of Kay, Zales and Jared, has been hard hit by allegations of “diamond swapping.”īut more often than not, online jewelers say, they are the victims of fraud by scam artists and a sophisticated secondary market where their baubles get sold.įraud represents 4.5 percent of online jewelers’ sales - an estimated $10 billion market - a rate that is more than double the e-commerce industry average, according to Forter, which sells fraud detection services to online retailers. The jewelry industry has been rocked recently by salacious stories about customers who claim they were sold fakes or that their local store swapped out real gems for stones of a lesser value. ![]() “I was 95 percent certain that she had swapped out the pearl,” he said. So when a customer from Flushing, Queens, returned a $1,300 ring with a black Tahitian pearl, claiming she was unhappy with the color, Rbibo was suspicious. Leon Rbibo has been selling high-grade pearls online for 11 years, often inspecting the priciest ocean gems personally before they leave his Los Angeles business, The Pearl Source. I forgot to remove a ring before bedtime - it turned into a real horror story Rolex tops list of most-stolen luxury watches as thefts soar to $1.3B I bought a necklace at a thrift store for $2 - it's worth $3,000 Smash-and-grab crew armed with hammers nabs $500K in jewelry from California shop, pepper spray terrified owner ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |