Oxford Diamond Co. Oxford Diamond Inc. Cheap substitute shipped instead of item that was agreed upon!!! Los Angeles, California

This might be a bit long so please bare with me....

I bought an engagement ring from Oxford Diamond Co. last June. After already having a bad experience with another company online, I decided to bite the bullet and order it. I paid just under $2000 for it. When it arrived, much to my relief, it was absolutely stunning! Diamonds were good quality and it was exactly what I had paid for, my FI was extremely happy with this ring.

This past March, I contacted Steve again to ask him if he had a matching wedding band to go with the engagement ring I had originally purchased. He sent me a picture of the ring, which did NOT have a HOLLOW BACKING (this is important later). Steve told me the ring would be around $379. I asked him if it was possible to increase the width of the band from 1.7mm to 2.7mm, so it could stand out a little from the engagement ring. Steve wrote back saying this would be possible, for an extra $200. I had no problem with this and he sent me a paypal invoice, which I paid March 2nd.

About 5 weeks go by and I contact Steve and ask him what's up with the ring. He says it's ready and he will ship it. After paying $50 for shipping and another $75 duty (I live in Canada), I got the ring. When I took it out, I was happy with the look of it on the outside. It was indeed exactly what I had ordered.

HOWEVER! The inside/backing was HOLLOW. You could see each individual hole where each diamond has been placed. I thought this was very strange considering the picture he sent me showed that backing, and it was filled in.

First off, I would NEVER buy a hollow ring. Secondly, I basically paid $200 MORE to have the ring made larger, with what looks like the same amount of gold, or LESS, than the ring in the original picture he sent me. After talking to a few other jewelers in this city, they all said that it's basically UNHEARD OF for a diamond eternity band to be made with a hollow backing. It could cost me up to $500 to have it filled in, which is almost how much I paid for the ring in the first place!

According to paypal's policy, you can only make a claim for an item within 45 days of the purchase. I received the ring on day 43 after the paypal invoice went through. That day I emailed Steve about the cheap substitute he sent me, no response. The next day (Day 44) I sent ANOTHER email. Again, no response. My guess is, Steve knew that after 45 Days was up, I would be s**t out of luck for trying to get any of my money back. Luckily for me, I knew about paypal's policy, and on day 45 sent Steve an email for the THIRD TIME, and told him if he didn't respond I would file a dispute with paypal.

Sure enough, no response. So I filed the dispute with paypal. MAGICALLY he comes out of nowhere to fight me against the dispute, a hell of a lot faster than he was emailing me. He claims that the ring was EXACTLY as it was pictured when he sent it, and that they don't do refunds on custom items, and offered $50 as a COURTESY to me. At this point I'm thinking "What a smug SOB!!!!".

After a few more lies of his in the paypal resolution center, I escalated the dispute to a claim. I'm not even asking for the full $600 back, I was only asking for $300 so I could get the ring filled in before our wedding, which is more than fair at this point, I SHOULD'VE demanded a full refund, and since it's "custom", they won't let me return it! I'm currently waiting for the outcome and will provide the end result once notified.

To sum it all up, Oxford Diamond will try to scam you if given the opportunity. The only reason I think it never happened the first time was because I did it through ebay.

Since this item was not listed on ebay and custom, I couldn't even leave negative feedback. So I came on to here.

I have screen caps of the email conversations and original photo of the ring, as well as what was sent, cause it seems he comes on here and tried to lie his way out of his accusations. NOT THIS TIME STEVE! If anyone would like to see them I will post a link on here.

Thanks for reading!