Isle of Wight Pearl — Attraction in Freshwater

With my family, I visited the centre yesterday while on a short break from London to the Island, having read a lot about the centre. Unfortunately we were extremely disappointed with the level of service received, the rudeness of the staff, especially the manager, Mark. with the manager being so rude, it says a lot about the rest of his team. As a family we bought goods well over £500 yet the treatment received was as third class citizens, with definite signs of hidden racism. One of the sales staff was ignorant of the services the centre provided, not knowing what was actually sold there. The final icing on the cake came when we had misplaced one of the bags of our purchases. We had bought a string of pearls. The manager served me, but after completing the card transaction, I forgot to pick up the purchase from the counter and moved onto the next counter. In that time, the staff having noticed I had left the bag on the counter, instead of calling out to me( a distance of 10 feet), took the bag and put it behind the counter. Now thinking about it, I daresay they were hoping I will leave the premises without realising I had forgotten the purchase. That way they have the pearls ans my money! Thankfully, having realised i was missing my purchase, before leaving the shop, I went back to the counter and initially calmly explained my predicament to the sales staff. Their reply was they cannot do anything until the manager gets off the phone. There were two purchase bags behind the counter and I calmly asked the lady if she could just take a look inside the bag to see if my pearls were in there, to put my mind at rest as by this time i was having aheart attack believing I had lost my purchase. i did not expect her to give it to me until the manager returns but only to check to see if the pearls were there and to put my mind at rest. She refused point blank! By the time the manager returned, i was tense but instead of any ressurance or politeness, he was extremely rude. Having checked the purchase bag, it was indeed my purchase. The irony of it all is that all she had to do was to take a look inside the bag, confirm whether it contained my string of pearls or not and let me know. I would then have happily waited for the arrogant manager for as long as it took, without risk of a heart attack. My advice: If you're brown skinned- don't bother going there!! I vowed never to return. I aim to keep my promise. WORST CUSTOMER...

Brought my daughter to the IOW especially for the rather unique ‘pick-a-pearl’ experience; her birth gem is a pearl and she’s going through a jewellery phase so this seemed like a delightful birthday outing.

It’s a lovely place very clean and well presented. My daughter was very excited to pick her own pearl and was lucky enough to have chosen a nice big one! Very beautiful.

The experience was slightly marred when a random chap came over to ask lots of questions right in the middle of our experience; our server Terri was nice but was unfortunately very interested in answering all these questions, and we were stood around like idiots waiting for them to be done. After explaining loudly in front of the children that the oyster experience is fake, they’re pre-opened and the ‘meat’ is synthetic so it doesn’t stink, my anger was rising as the magic of the experience was being explained away in front of the children.

This would be a lovely thing to do, BUT if your servers could kindly be focused on the customers they’re serving and not wander off to speak to other people that would make this a far nicer experience.

The locket we left with is really very lovely, but being ignored to listen to all that random chatter with someone else while we just stood there really has left a bitter taste in my mouth, especially after booking the trip especially for IOW pearl and for coming such a long way.

Worth a visit though. The people before us had a great time and got 2 pearls in one oyster (plus a round...

Blown away. That's the summary of our day today at Isle of Wight Pearl. We came over from the mainland for a one night trip to celebrate my Fiancée's birthday, the focus of the day being the Isle of Wight Pearl.

Liam, gave us our Pearl Masterclass (which I had pre-booked, and it was absolutely free) and it was brilliant. We were talked through all the different ways Pearls come into being, both naturally and cultured.

Liam talked us through so much, far too much to detail now so I'll say this, get down to the Isle of Wight Pearl for a free Masterclass asap!

Another thing that shocked me was how 'non-salesy' the Masterclass was. I had assumed that it was mainly a talk geared at getting you to buy something but this couldn't be further from the truth! Liam showed us some amazing things and at the end we were given a £5 gift voucher for use whenever we wanted.

As it was Fiancée's birthday, she deserved a present and we did the 'Pick a Pearl' experience which was really cool. Liam talked us through it and the Pearl we ended up buying was worth 3 times the price of the experience in the first place! Liam mounted it onto a necklace for her and after using our voucher it was £88. Not a cheap birthday present, but for a beautiful piece of jewellery that we have a real story to go with it was well worth it!

Oh and we popped into the Pearl Cafe for a sandwich, absolutely delicious! Highly recommended.

As a summary: Isle of Wight Pearl, give Liam a bonus, he...