Tenenbaum Jewelers — Local services in Houston

Deceptive sales, sold a SUPERGLUED ring and lied about it

When they closed down their old store they held a store-wide 50%-off sale. Great, right? We found a lovely engagement ring with a central diamond and diamond and ruby accents.

It looked a little dirty and my girlfriend asked about some residue she spotted. They told her that it just needed a good cleaning, which they would do.

We bought the ring the next day. Once she got it home, she looked more closely and saw that not only had it not been cleaned, but a ruby calibre piece was missing. We didn't have time to sort it out as we were travelling to London. Once there we had it looked at by six jewelers. Four outright refused to take it for repairs because it was in such poor condition. A fifth was willing to look at it and has a name as one of London's best repairers. We went there wanting a price to find and cut a ruby, and to properly clean it.

To our shock they told us that the centre diamond was about to fall out of its collet (setting), and that the residue wasn't a matter of cleaning but was superglue residue.

We got a second opinion who agreed that every small diamond and ruby was glued with superglue, that the collet needed repairing, and that two small diamonds were also missing and a third was damaged.

I don't mind antique jewelery being damaged, but I do think that should be fully disclosed before the sale. What really gets me is who sells a ring full of superglue and then actively lies about it in the store?! Both London jewelers told us if they had done that, they would be thrown out of their jewelers' trade associations. But oh look, Tenenbaum doesn't belong to any. I'm sure that's just a coincidence though.

We of course contacted Tenenbaum. They were... not helpful. The sales person we reached quickly grew flustered and tried to lie to us (telling us that the ring was 50% off because of these issues - nope, it was a store-wide 50% off sale). Then offered us a partial refund that wasn't even half the cost of the repairs. Then stopped talking to us.

We took the matter to one of the owners. They had their own repair person quote on fixing these issues and their quote was within 5% of ours. The owner said if we returned the ring they would repair it at no cost to us. (There was never any admission of superglue or that the ring had been sold deceptively).

That sounds like a good answer but when I looked into it I found that the cost to us to send it roundtrip UK to the US, with insurance and all fees we'd pay on "importing" it back into the UK, would be over 50% of what we paid for the ring. That is hardly "no cost to us", and I invited the Tenenbaum owner to either cover those shipping costs (obviously absurd), or to pay for us to have the ring repaired in London since they agreed that's what it would cost.

They stopped returning emails or calls at that point. Zero contact from then on. I eventually reported the transaction to my bank who after investigating agreed that it was reasonable to contest the credit card charge for the cost of the repairs. Exact words were "goods sold not as advertised" and "goods supplied were defective".

However I speculate that Tenebaum have been down this path before. Take a close look at their Terms & Conditions: all sales are "as-is".

Learn from our mistake. Do not buy from Tenenbaum unless you have the piece examined by an indepedent jeweler under magnification in good light. If anything is not as Tenenbaum claims, or if they lie to you like they lied to us, then you will have no recourse. Apparently this is not technically fraud because those Terms & Conditions mean we agree that we are buying everything as they actually are and not as Tenenbaum claims they are. That means they could sell you a cubic zirconia and tell you that it was a diamond... but if you bought it, you will have agreed that you bought a CZ ("as-is") and you will be suckered just as we were.

They should be ashamed of themselves to sell superglued jewelery, let alone to lie about...

7.28.24 Have been coming to Tenenbaum for years, but had such an unbelievably bad experience there this past week that I will never be going back.

4 weeks ago I took my alternating pear eternity band to them to have it sized. I asked if they could take out one of the pear stones and even specifically asked if doing so would compromise the integrity of the band and risk a stone falling out. They assured me that it wouldn't but because each pear stone alternated direction it would result in two of the stones facing the same way. I said that was fine and to proceed. I picked up my ring and happily started wearing it again.

Cut to this past week when my husband and I were at dinner and he noticed that a stone and a prong were missing. The missing stone was one of the stones next to the area that had been sized. When I took it back to Tenenbaum, the gentleman who originally helped me, but didn't seem to remember me, took it up to the jeweler to show him. When he came back down he informed me that the jeweler told him that the missing stone wasn't next to where they had sized it at all. I calmly told him that I could prove it was because it was one of the stones that faced the same direction as the one next to it so it had to be where they sized it. He had the jeweler come down to talk to me and he tried to tell me the same thing. After again explaining that yes that stone had to be where they sized it, he doubled down and said that the missing prong was unrelated and I must have knocked it off. I don't wear this ring to exercise or to sleep in. I had been wearing it for 5 years every day with no problem but 3 weeks after having it sized a prong fell off and the stone disappeared. I again said that this was the stone right next to where the ring was soldered. He said that they could fix it but that it would be an additional charge. I told them that there was no chance I was letting them touch the ring again and I took it to another jeweler in town that I trust.

I really couldn't believe the way that they spoke to me. Now, did I think that they were going to take full responsibility? No, not really. But I did think they would offer to put the stone in (I had the extra stone from when they took one out to size it) and repair the ring.

8.15.24 Update

I received a phone call last week from one of the managers at Tenenbaum who had recently had my review come across her desk. She said that she was mortified by the way the situation was handled when I brought my ring in and was hoping that she could make things right. At this point it had already been 2 weeks since I had brought the ring in so I had long since taken it to another jeweler to have the ring repaired. She was very apologetic and invited me to come back in the store whenever and to contact her personally. I appreciated that she reached out and acknowledged my experience. It doesn't negate the interaction I had with my sales associate and the jeweler but I do respect that she followed up and while I cannot say that I will be a returning customer at this point, I would take it into consideration. Full honestly, I think I would consider making a purchase there again but would likely not turn to them for any alterations or repairs...

I’d like to share my frustrating and disappointing experience purchasing a $10,500 brand new bracelet.

It all started positively. I contacted Leo, who was very kind and patiently helped confirm the bracelet size. And I placed my order right away. However, my order has been canceled after three days WITHOUT ANY NOTICES. It took me two exhausting weeks to finally complete this purchase, dealing with multiple order cancellations and poor communication along the way.

After reaching out to customer service, I was told the order was flagged because I used a Chinese credit card to ship to a U.S. address while I placed the order from Canada.

For context, I live in Canada, and the U.S. border is only 30 minutes away from my home. I wanted the bracelet shipped to a parcel receiving center near the border for convenience.

To resolve this, I provided my credit card, PR card, Chinese passport, and other verification documents. However, I didn't hear back from them. I finally switched to a Canadian credit card and changed the address to a US FedEx location as they asked, which I was reluctant to do but wanted to move forward. After all these compromises, the bracelet was finally shipped.

When it arrived, I discovered it was made in 2019—SIX YEARS AGO FROM NOW. The bracelet included a safety buckle, which hasn’t been part of recent models. The bracelet also had ascratche inside, came in an old box, and didn’t include the authenticity card. None of this was disclosed to me during the purchase process, even though the price has increased by at least 30% since 2019. I didn't expect to buy a 2019 bracelet (6 years inventory) at a 2025 price.

This experience was incredibly frustrating and disappointing. It is not what I expected when spending $10,500 on a...