Consumerist readers may fault Michelle for patronizing a chain jewelry store, but she and her family have a solid relationship with their local Kay Jewelers store. Such a solid relationship, in fact, that when her boyfriend’s pocket watch needed repairs, she brought it back to the store in her hometown when it needed repairs. This turned out to be a mistake: she would have done just as well putting the watch under her mattress.

I have had an experience with Kay Jewelers that I’d like to get some advice on. I bought my boyfriend a pocket watch for our 4 year anniversary. It broke about 3 months later, and I took it to a Kay store on Nov. 28, 2010 for repair. The reason I waited so long to get the repair done is that I wanted to drive back to my hometown to the Kay store my parents have always used. We’ve done business with them for years and have never had a problem until now.

What happens next is a long string of incompetence and mistakes. First, the watch was sent to the repair shop when it should have been sent back to the manufacturer for repair. When questioned about this mistake I was told, “We’ve never had a pocket watch break. We don’t really know where to send them.”

Then, after the manufacturer takes a month to inspect it, they claim that nothing is wrong with the watch. It won’t keep time! When I contested this issue, the manufacturer did say that something was wrong and the pocket watch was not fixable. So, Kay offers to order me a new watch. This is of course after this ordeal has been going on three months. So another month later the watch that gets sent to Kay from the manufacturer has a large scratch on the front. So now we have to get yet another watch.

Kay offers to engrave the watch for me for free. I hadn’t quite decided which font to put on the watch yet, so on the cover of the box in big letters was a note saying DO NOT send to engravers. Somehow it got sent out anyway. The engraving shop was called and was asked to send the watch back to the store (without engraving) so I could pick it up. I was assured they would overnight it. When I arrived at the store, the pocket watch was not there. This is a pretty big deal since I live 2 and 1/2 hours away.

At this point Kay has had the watch for 5 months. This is the same amount of time my boyfriend had the watch and two of those months it was broken. So now I just want a refund. I was told before by the assistant manager that I could have one, but today the store manager told me that not possible. So I contact Ms. [redacted] (ext. 6264) in Customer Relations to obtain the refund code the store manager assures me I need. Ms. Amy offers a new watch or an exchange for some other product in the store only after speaking with her manager. I asked to speak to Ms. [redacted]’s manager since I know she can only authorize so much. I was offered her voice mail number, but I was told that I could not speak to the manager despite me offering to wait until she became available. This is pretty upsetting since I was told by a member of that store that I could have a refund. I just want my $77 dollars refunded!

I left the store 3 hours later no watch in hand and feeling pretty helpless.

I feel that I have been wronged here.

The parent company of sibling jewelry stores Kay and Jared (as well as other regional brands) is Sterling Jewelers, which in turn is a subsidiary of UK-based Signet Jewelers. Using customer service ninja methods, try contacting someone on the US side of Signet to see if they can help.

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