Castellano Fine Jewelry Design and Gifts — Local services in Bainbridge Island

I had an unbelievably heartbreaking experience involving Castellano Jewelers and a family heirloom a year ago that I feel is my responsibility to share. It has sincerely taken me a year to process the grief from what transpired in order to be able to write this review.

My mother and I took my grandmother’s ring (her late mother’s) to Connie at Castellano’s, looking to resize it as my engagement ring and to replace one of the stones, since a large gouge was in one of them. This gouge is very important to the unfolding of our experience. Initially, Connie and her staff seemed incredibly knowledgeable. They explained that the vintage stones that were in the ring weren’t genuine emeralds, but had value due to the fact they were no longer manufactured in the same way, so Connie recommended against exposing them to heat and preserving them along with the flaw, which my mother and I appreciated. They also explained that the delicate nature of the setting would make it virtually impossible to replace the stones without significantly altering the appearance of the ring, adding to their recommendation to preserve it aside from a resize. I am a deeply sentimental person, and therefore I appreciated and trusted this careful and conservative assessment by the jeweler.

When my fiancé and I picked up the ring many months later (they never called to let us know the ring was ready), I immediately saw that something was very wrong. The gouge was no longer in the top stone and the emeralds were a distinctly different color; surely they had not replaced my grandmother’s original stones without informing me? I did not want to make such a large accusation after just having back it my hands for a few minutes. I was in utter shock, so we left after signing off on the work.

It took me until my fiancé and I had driven a couple blocks before I called back right away to ask how the gouge had managed to disappear, since we were explicitly told nothing could be done about it, and that it would be preserving the ring to keep it as is. The woman who we picked up the ring from at the front desk (not Connie), insisted that the color change was from cleaning (which seems totally reasonable to me) and the gouge was “buffed out from polishing.” I asked if it was filled, since it didn’t make sense for such a deep gouge to suddenly be level with the rest of the stone. She insisted - and I quote - that the stones were “1000% the original stones.” This turned out to be far from the truth.

We arranged to meet with the owner, Connie, hoping for some explanation. She was incredibly defensive and unprofessional. Instead of addressing my concerns, she started divulging, in great detail, her personal struggles, which I will not share here. I truly sympathize with anyone going through a hard time, but it was absolutely inappropriate given our professional relationship.

When I explained what I saw was wrong with the ring, her response left me speechless. She went on to confirm that the old stones HAD shattered when exposed heat during repairs, and she had used - and I quote directly here - “whatever five dollar stones they had on hand and did not charge for them.” A far cry from the insistence that they were “1000% the original stones.” At no point had we been contacted regarding any of this.

She suggested she would “look for and gather any leftover dust.” I never heard from her again.

I feel like I lost a piece of my family’s history and had no say in now what is a permanent installation of “five dollar stones” in the ring. We took the ring to another local jeweler who was astonished as to how they managed to replace the stones — and were aghast when learning Castellano’s denied us the chance to choose our own replacements.

The monetary value doesn’t matter to me at all. The lack of honesty, professionalism, and care left a scar on my family an heirloom bigger than the one we came in hoping to fix.

It's not worth risking loosing an heirloom. Go elsewhere.

pictures show before (with gouge) and after with their "five dollar"...

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