The rise of websites designed to cater to your every need is one of the truly defining elements of the modern age. Held responsible for “killing the mall”, online websites simply offer the good prices and convenience of use that many Americans want; it’s not the result of anything underhanded, just that if people can get stuff from their computer, they will. That applies to just about everything you could buy, including expensive things like buying gemstone jewelry online. How can you make sure that you stay safe when you’re doing so, however? If you get ripped off buying a video game, it’s not that big of a loss, but if you drop thousands of dollars on an emerald ring and never receive it, that can be a big financial hit. Here are a few methods to make sure that you stay safe when buying gemstone jewelry online.
Research the Seller
The fundamental thing you need to do to protect yourself is to simply make sure that you’re working with someone trustworthy. Unfortunate as this may be to the start-ups out there, but in the realm of selling things online, especially expensive things, trust generally translates to experience. Can you see how many sales this company makes, how regularly, how long they’ve been in business, whether they are a publicly known company. The larger and more established a company is, the less likely they are to rip you off: the money they could make from not fulfilling one sale will be quickly undercut by their inability to make future sales. Therefore, never ever give large amounts of money to small, unknown, unverifiable sources online, even if the product is extremely tempting.
Establish the Money Back Guarantee
Part of selling jewelry online is offering money back for any issues. There shouldn’t be any sticking here, none whatsoever. Make sure that there is such an offer available, and check to make sure it’s a full refund. You do not want to get deceived by a half-price back guarantee embedded into the fine print, so make sure that you find out exactly what is offered in terms of a guarantee.
Multiple Images
You always want to know exactly what you’re getting when you purchase jewelry. That means that you should never buy any item that has just one image. Jewelry is three dimensional, but pictures only show two of them. Something might look great from one angle, and then, when you get it, it looks nothing like what you imagined. The more images you can see, the better idea you will get of what you are buying.
