Brilliant Earth — Local services in Chicago

Tldr; Ethical diamonds unethical customer service.

In June my fiancee and I were very excited to purchase a ring from this company. We had an incredible experience with the folks in the Chicago office who were super friendly and accommodating and they helped us leave incredibly happy with our once in a lifetime purchase.

A few months later in August my fiancee decided that she wanted to have her ring resized - just a half size. They assured us this would be no problem. We didn't realize this at the time but this was the start of a pretty ugly story for us.

About 6 months later the band of my fiancee's ring split. This was very surprising given the relatively short time that we had the ring and the $6000 we spent on it. However, we weren't too concerned since the company offers a "lifetime" warranty.

We head to the Chicago storefront and were again greeted by the incredibly friendly staff who informed us that this would be no problem and that "they see this happen all the time after ring resizes". We left again -feeling great about our purchase with this company.

This is when things changed. A week or so later, an email arrived in my inbox from brilliant earth. I quickly skimmed through the email, not thinking too much about it until I got to the bottom. They informed us that we would be the ones paying for the repair! I didn't understand, we owned the ring less than a year and had no accidents to speak of.

Still, I wasn't too concerned. I was sure that we'd get on the phone and address the misunderstanding. After playing phone tag for a week (seriously... their Chicago office is so easy to get in touch with but I have never once called their corporate office and had them pick up the phone) my fiancee finally got on the phone with them. After a long discussion she was told this is not a "manufacturing" issue and that the most likely cause of the breakage was the way she opens DOOR HANDLES.

I don't know about you but I'd like to think that my multi-thousand dollar ring purchase is capable of standing up to your everyday door handle...

She got off that call visibly disturbed. It is particularly painful when a company selling life long emblems of commitment leaves you hung and dry.

After a few more painful calls we were put in touch with a manager. I picked up his phone call feeling hopeful but the phone call honestly just sucked. He offered nothing in the way of a resolution and I left realizing the type of company I had just made the biggest purchase of my life from.

My fiancee decided to take to social media. Lo and behold the next day I get a phone call again from the manager. "Hi Sir, I talked to my team and we have good news, we're willing to pay the full cost of the repair!" ... .... "We'd just like you to take down any posts, I mean I haven't seen any... but in case you've posted anything please take them down. And we'd like you to sign an NDA." (Paraphrased)

I'll let you decide whether they'd seen any of her reviews or not.

Either way we decided to hear them out. We were met with an NDA that silenced us on any and all issues going forward related or UNRELATED to this instance. They refused to budge on this gag order. Afterwards, we found reviews online that said they had also been through this. I wasn't surprised.

As you might have guessed we decided we didn't trust this company enough to sign a lifelong agreement like this.

I almost never post negative reviews but I'm posting this one - so that when you or your fiancee look down at the beautiful ring on their finger it will remind them of their incredible engagement not the awful company they...

So many regrets. DO NOT BUY FROM BRILLIANT EARTH!!! My fiancé got my engagement ring from here and we later got his wedding band too to use the store credit, but that’s when the service turn truly awful, and I honestly regret that wedding band purchase sooo much. I’m so shocked and disappointed that a company making such expensive and meaningful items would provide such horrendous service. My ring is so beautiful, but I would never recommend anyone to buy from here.

We chose a non-plated white gold wedding band specifically because we loved the pale gold color. After it got resized, it stayed in the showroom for several weeks before we had a chance to pick it up (booking an appointment is a whole other issue and it’s quite inconvenient for us to go), but when my fiancé finally was able to go to the store, only then did the jeweler tell him that they made a mistake during resizing and somehow changed the non-plated white gold to all white gold! Completely defeating the purpose of getting non-plated white gold for that pale gold color. At pick up, there was just a quick apology, no offer of anything to help us, and we do not have enough time now to fix it before our elopement (beware their resizing times are pretty long). As he left the store, she even said “I’m glad you were able to make it work !” As if nothing was wrong with the experience. I don’t know what we will do now; we have no choice but to use this wrong ring for our wedding, but I also can’t imagine later going through the whole hassle of sending the ring back, making another appointment that can fit into our schedule, then doing another inconvenient trip to the store. I am so sad that there was no quality check on their end and no one bothered to tell us this until we got to the store to pick it up.

In general, their customer is really terrible, and I now can definitely feel for the other negative reviews here. You call into a central platform, and they never put you through to the store, so every time we call there is a long hold time as they have to then call the Chicago store to relay our message, wait to hear back, tell us the message - a long game of telephone. A couple of customer service reps we spoke to were also just outright rude, saying things things like “CLEARLY you can see there are no appointments online.” We asked if we could be notified if anyone cancelled their appointment given our tight timeline, and they said it was impossible. But when we got to the store that was supposed to be “completely booked” and we were told we should not go because we would need to “wait for a looong time,” there was no customers at all! The employee at the Chicago store said all the appointments ended up getting cancelled, so why isn’t there a way to open up those slots to a waitlist? Now I wonder if we could’ve picked up our ring sooner, avoiding this whole disaster of getting the wrong ring so close to our wedding date.

Overall, just don’t buy from here. I really, really regret buying the wedding band here - wedding planning is already so much work, Brilliant Earth will only add to this stress! There are so many great jewelers that can provide much better, personalized and dedicated service, there is no point is wasting your time or money on poor...

STAY AWAY FROM BRILLIANT EARTH!!!! GO SOMEWHERE ELSE

I got my engagement ring from Brilliant Earth in December. After only a few months of wearing it, the band began to warp, and recently I noticed that the center stone setting was tilted, along with a stone missing. Having the ring for less than a year, I did not expect these issues to arise if it was made correctly.

The real nightmare began when I took it to the Brilliant Earth Chicago Gold Coast location. The employee at the front desk mentioned that if I didn’t want to pay for the repair, they would simply send it back to me, but she kept saying, "It's okay," dismissing my concerns. It was not okay, and I made that clear, but she continued repeating herself.

After sending my ring in for repair, I received a call from the repair team, who stated that fixing it would cost half the price of the original setting since they needed to replace it entirely. When I explained that I’ve only had the ring for a short time, the representative, Janelle (or something similar), told me that it wasn’t a manufacturer issue and claimed that the warping happened because the center stone was tilted due to "trauma" from me supposedly hitting it or catching. I tried to explain that the warping happened first, but she kept interrupting and insisting it wasn’t a manufacturer defect.

I then asked to speak with a manager and was told I would receive a call back within 24 hours. That didn’t happen. I had to call again and was told someone would call me. Instead, my fiancé received an email from Macee, who claimed to be a manager and wanted to schedule a time to talk. My fiancé added me to the email and asked her to contact me directly. Despite this, she kept communicating with him and disregarded my involvement.

When she eventually called me, it was outside of the time frame I gave her, so it went to voicemail. I called her back within a minute, but there was no answer. Later, she called again, and when I picked up, she asked, "Is this Lauren?"—never identifying herself or mentioning Brilliant Earth. Confused, I said no, and we hung up. She called me a second time, but I didn’t answer since I wasn’t sure what was going on.

Immediately after, I received an email from Macee saying she “tried to call me.” I replied, explaining she asked for someone named Lauren. There was no response. By then, I had already requested to have my ring sent back and called multiple times for an update. I was told that the Gold Coast location would call me once they received it. It’s been over a week, and no one at the location answers the phone.

This has been the worst customer service experience I’ve ever had. I finally spoke to another “manager,” who said she would be there for any future needs. What “future needs” would I have when the damage is already done?

DO NOT GO TO BRILLIANT EARTH. Their product quality is poor, and their customer...