Roger L Bishops Fine Jewelers — Local services in Hollins

This is lengthy...but worth the read. When my mother passed, she had a ring a friend had given her. I had done a little research, just so I would be a bit more knowledgeable when presenting it to a jeweler. What I factually knew: It was purchased in the early 30s, marked platinum and considered Art Deco Style. What I "thought"/did not factually know: diamonds were Old European/Mine cut and retail value was probably around $3- 4,000. I presented it to a young male employee at Bishops and asked him to, basically, tell me ANYTHING he could about the ring ( and yes, I acted like I knew absolutely nothing about it. I even described it as "silver", not platinum. He put on his loupe, looked at it for about 15seconds, then proceeded to give me his professional opinion. He says....and Im paraphrasing: yea, um, we see lots of these. Im guessing it probably came from you're average, chain-type jewelry store, like Kay's. Those type stores mass produce stuff like this. I mean, it's pretty, but, yea...these are like, a dime a dozen. He couldn't even tell me if it was platinum...and it was marked. Not sure what that was about. Knowing what I DID know about the ring, I was beyond shocked and chose to just keep my mouth shut and walk away. I don't know if this was just someone who truly had no knowledge of diamonds, or metals...or if my "im a dumb girl" game was working a bit too well and he thought he could try and get me to load off my cheap, mass produced silver ring on them for some fast cash. I'm guessing it's the latter. Fast forward to today: According to my Independent Certified Gemologist Appraiser, I own a beautiful "Vintage Art-Deco Platinum cocktail ring with Old European/Mine cut diamonds." It's retail value is....well, about double what I had guessed it might be.

.....and it's definitely NOT silver, nor was it purchased at...

If I could give this negative stars, then I would. Mr. Bishop accepted my watch saying that he could do the work I was wanting done. He couldn’t. As a matter of fact, I was told my watch was done, went to pick it up, and he hadn’t put three out of the four parts I had given him to put on my watch. I asked him about it, and he wasn’t even sure where the parts were! I finally pick it up a week later when it was supposedly officially done, but he installed one of the parts wrong probably breaking it and the movement stopped while I was wearing it. I called him about it and he was like “it was nothing that I did”. Come on man.

UPDATE 2/21/21: luckily I found someone to fix what Mr. Bishop messed up. If you look through the reviews for this business and see the 5 star reviews for this establishment you’ll notice that they come from “local guides”. These are not...

When I called, an elderly woman answered the phone. I asked her if they had experience repairing plaitinum jewlery and if they had a laser welder to do it. She snapped back at me, "I can't understand you!" and HUNG UP on me. I do not have an accent and enunciated my words clearly. I wanted to inform the owner about the experience I had and suggest they get someone else to answer their phone. However, I didn't want to get immediately hung up on again. This prompted me to look at other reviews. Yikes! I'm actually glad she hung up on me. It seems like I dodged a bullet by avoiding...