So early this morning, as I am sitting in my study nursing a cup of Jamaican black, I decided to check my email, hoping to find a new blog submission as the pearl-news has been a bit stagnant of late. Well, no submissions from my favorite posters, but I did receive an interesting email from someone looking to buy pearls and asking my advice.The item in question is listed on that garage-sale site eBay. It is supposedly a black akoya pearl necklace from this seller called diamondeternity.
After a quick read of the description my head got hotter than my java. This black akoya pearl necklace is, and I quote, supposedly natural in color, from Japan, with flawless, AAA grading. The picture is of a crappy-looking Chinese, dyed freshwater. What a load of bullshit.
In my response to the person who emailed me the question, I decided to check out some other auctions so I could show her a real example of a cultured akoya pearl necklace so she could see what one really looked like. I did a simple search for “akoya pearl necklace”.
The results make me sick to my stomach. Every result on the first, second and third page was freshwater, and crappy freshwater at that. Nearly all the auctions are posted by Chinese sellers. When I finally did see a real cultured akoya, it was complete crap, and the seller’s description was equally fecal.
eBay, eBay, eBay! What are you doing? Is there no oversight? I could not find a single, honest, auction for an akoya strand, and I searched for nearly an hour. How many thousands of piteous people have been screwed by those scoundrels? eBay! Clean that shit up!
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31 comments:
Ebay is in itself a scam. Look at how many visits most ebay sellers have? They usually get 10 visits till the end of their auction and no bid. I always doubt ebay. I tried joining ebay buyt got discourage about the joining fee and I'm always smarter than that.
Ebay will be gone soon. Only a handful gets rich from Ebay. It is like direct selling companies and they always advertise success stories from their dealers and like I said only a handful would be successful. Only those who knows what they are selling and knows how to market them and knows how to look like the things they are selling. For example, you are one of the AVON ladies and your selling beauty products and yet your face is full of acne.
Jewelers and gemologists should also wear jewelry. Like me I never go out without some blings bcoz I wan't to promote my passion and I'm a walk in model of the gem and jewelry industry and it works bcoz people I know starts buying jewelry and showing it to me.
I also have a habit of telling online jewelers about their mistakes. Like for example I saw a someone selling South Sea Shell pearl and I told her she should change the product name or else if the FTC will find out she will be punished. Luckily she even ask for my advise and she didn't know it was a misleading term.
And I love watching Judge Judy on Youtube and this link is the funniest case I've ever seen and it is about an ebay seller. Be careful bcoz you will never stop laughing on this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJDK6ctRjqw
As usual, PP and GIA are spot on correct! E-Bay is like the wild west and most anything goes there. They have been successfully sued a few times for issues like this. In the end, how in world could they possibly monitor and check the validity of all the auctions and items for sale.
Along these same lines, most of the “legitimate” on-line pearl retail sites are not any better and are just as equally deceptive. Some of them actually sell very nice product and are “honest” in their descriptions. Though most are making outrageous claims of quality discounts in comparison to Mikimoto and advertising false sales (see here LA County Law - False Advertising), the most outrageously deceptive practice of all is their operation MULTIPLE web sites that are setup to look like competitors. With just a little bit of investigative work doing IP traces, looking up domain registration info and white/yellow pages search, most anybody can figure this out. Why would they do this? Simple, to help create consumer confidence in the crap they are shoveling by making it look like there are many people selling/competing for the sale on a “level” playing field. It’s an age old trick that can very easily be disguised on the internet. For example, if one person is operating 5 different retail sites that all basically promote the same type of products and quality grades at similar prices (obviously the "main site" is just a little cheaper than the rest), the on-line shopper thinks he/she is being frugal and doing their research before buying. In the end, the same person gets the sale regardless of which site makes the sale. I know for a fact that at two of the major the major on-line sellers operates numerous sites in this fashion; all under different IPs, names and addresses. They use a distorted “franchise” type of business model that has worked very well. This type of scam is run all day and night at the jewelry stores located in the jewelry districts of major cities.
One of these days people will wise up! In the meantime, let the buyer beware!
I think your link to the law was incorrectly formatted.
THE PP
Something tells me that this anonymous comment was once again directed at me! I feel so honored. Anonymous mentions two of the major, major online sellers operate in the multi-site fashion. He must be referring to my brother and me!
I agree with the PP post on eBay, by the way. It is a dangerous place to play and most auctions are completely fraudulent.
But let’s look at these assertions that anonymous knows “for a fact”!
We operate one retail site. Yes, just one. We own one retail site. Yes, just one. The same goes for my brother. Do we sell to other sites? Sure we do. How is this so different than the companies like Mastoloni and Imperial that sell to many different companies that charge various prices? We have a wholesale operation and a retail operation.
What sites do we sell to? Well, why should I offer that information? Anonymous just stated it was easy to determine by checking IP addresses and domain name listings. Well, knock yourself out, anonymous. Go and find them. You did say, after all, you know what you know “for a fact”. I will give you a hint! We sell to two major sites in Germany, one in the UK, one in Canada, one in Korea and one in France. The largest, I might add, pearl Web sites located in those countries. But because we “own” none of the sites we sell to, I am at a loss how you expect to find a connection via IP addresses and domain names!
The truth is, you obviously are making a lot of assumptions and you really don’t know the facts. As for your accusation of false sales, every sale we hold is a genuine sale, and they are very few and far between. We simply tell customers what retail, brick and mortar dealers charge for the same pieces (but often of lower quality) than we sell. We state this clearly on our site.
I once told someone at the Mastoloni Pearl Company that was anonymously posting on the CPAA forum, pretending to be a retailer getting out-competed by the online guys (Mastoloni is actually a B&M wholesaler and someone from the company was dishonestly portraying their identity as something else), that it is absolutely impossible for a retail store to compete with a large online company on quality and price. There is no getting around this. It is simple economies of scale.
Look at BlueNile, look at NetFlix, look at Amazon, look at my company PearlParadise.com. We are essentially giving consumers the same thing; selection, value, price and convenience that no B&M retailer could ever provide.
A B&M can compete on quality! But they charge a lot more for it than we do. They can compete on price, but the quality of the product is one we would not even consider selling (like highly-flawed baroque akoya to a major retailer in the US for the same price we sell perfectly round, clean and lustrous strands). When it comes to a combination of price and quality there is no comparison. The consumer has already “wised up” as you so put it. That is why we are successful and still growing year after year.
LA Law Link:
http://dca.lacounty.gov/tsFalseAdvertising.htm
LA County Law - False Advertising
Thanks anonymous! Now I understand. You are referring to the bait and switch tactics that happen on eBay with the stolen photographs that do not even remotely resemble the product the buyer receives.
I can see by your link you were not inferring that my company breaks any of those rules as we, for one, certainly do not.
Thanks for clearing that up!
Why don't I give you a hand with this link-thingy. I know the Internet can be so darn confusing!
LA County Law - False Advertising
how many sites do you operate jshepherd?
I found two so far w/ your name:
pearlparadise and pearlsofjoy
Sorry Senator! That domain was sold to another pearl dealer quite a long time ago. My good friend Kevin Canning bought it and has been operating it, buying pearls, traveling to China, for several years now.
Got anything else up your sleeve? I figured you would come up with that.
As I said before, we own and operate one retail site only. Keep digging, though.
Best of luck on November 4th, by the way. It looks like old-school might lose - again.
PS
Here is a link for the PearlofJoy domain information. I will just type it out to make it easier;)
http://whois.domaintools.com/pearlsofjoy.com
Good hunting Senator. You bagged one on your first search. See how easy that was! Keep looking there are more..I promise you will be surprised at how many you find. He probably is just setting up all the domains using his friends and family members names.
Eddie Bakash has at least 2 sites plus the pearl education site, which is nothing more than a self promotion tool, like the pearl guide is for jshepherd and I guess his brother too. Bakash is so stupid, he actually runs them all from the same IP... At least jshepherd mixes up the IPs. See if you can find which sites Bakash is running.
jshepherd...you can run but you can't hide ;)
Anonymous senator, eh? You know, talking to yourself could be considered an early sign of dementia. But who are we kidding calling it early;)
Oops! You used "self-promotion" again. Where have I heard that before - with the same grammatical mistake?
So I mix up the IPs, eh? And then what? Set up offices and mailboxes all over the world? And what about family and friends? Never, ever have I had a family member or a friend set up a domain for me or my company.
Things you "know for fact" are really nothing more than faulty assumptions. In the end, you're actually doing me a favor. Tell everyone you can that all the other Internet sellers are owned by PearlParadise.com where pearls can be purchased for less! That would be great!
Oh, and by the way, PearlofJoy actually sells many of their products cheaper than we do. Now, that doesn't seem to make any sense, does it? It kind of goes against your whole argument!
First, I don’t know the Senator. I’ve never seen him before on the blog. Next, I’m not sure what you are referring to when you say that you have heard “self-promotion” before. By the way, the term self-promotion is often hyphenated and considered the proper grammatical use of the expression. Next, I don’t know why you get involved in all the discussions. Don’t you have a few websites to run? In my original post I was referring to other pearl sites, AmericanPearl.com being one of them. Why do react so violently to this post? Maybe because you truly are guilty of what I accused others of doing. I actually like your site and thought that you were one of the “honest” guys out there. But obviously I was wrong.
Now back to unearthing the scam, which I guess you are also guilty of. What difference does it make where the con man makes the sale? A sale at one site is just as good as a sale at “competing” site. By having some “competing” products cheaper on the scam sites than on the primary brand site actually gives more credence to the confidence scam. As I said it, it’s an age old scam that many sites are running perfectly.
If you haven’t seen this run “live” in the Hong Kong, LA, New York, Miami, Chicago and London jewelry districts, I suggest you see it firsthand. It’s scary to see how easily they pull it off. The “mark” picks a nice piece of jewelry and to close the deal, the con man takes the mark’s ID and credit card, and lets the mark take the piece to the “competitor” for an appraisal who obviously tells them “wow, this is beautiful. If you want to trade this in I’ll give you big $$$ for it”. The con is complete. The marks get shuttled back and forth like this all day long and everyone thinks they got the best deal in the world. I’m not saying that they necessarily got a bad deal, but they didn’t get the “deal of a life time” like they were lead onto believe. Obviously, you can see how easily this scam can be done on the web with multiple websites.
Wow Senator Manonymous. You are really all over the place here.
There are only a couple of people in the industry that I know of who use the term self-promotion as an insult when those who are in the marketing business understand as a compliment. The lack of the hyphen is what I was referring to.
This is what I am willing to bet. You are a wholesale pearl dealer, most likely based in New York, who is has been losing a lot of business to successful online companies that provide a better value to customers. You didn’t “like” our site. You hate our site and every site like it.
As I have previously stated, we own and operate only one Web site. Your description of a scam is baseless. The same thing could be said about YOUR retail accounts. Same product, different stores, customers comparing one against the other … this is called selling for resale, or wholesale. The scam you referred to describes a single seller acting as multiple sellers.
Answer, if you can, this!
Take a look at this post on the CPAA forum started by someone claiming to be a brick and mortar seller called pearldiver52865. Now, I want you to know that Peter Bazar, owner of that Web site and board member of CPAA confirmed that the IP address belonging to pearldiver52865 belonged to the Mastoloni Pearl Company in New York. This means everything the writer posted, about comparing our pearls and being a customer of Imperials, and losing ground to the online companies, was a lie. In fact, it was an attempt to smear the reputation of online sellers in general
Hanadama - Truth vs Reality
Now take a look at my response on Pearl-Guide.com.
Thread On The CPAA Forum!
My question is this! Do you think the actions of those at Mastaloni Pearls in New York were ethical? Is this a company you would ever trust doing business with? Would you consider anonymously posting on that forum, as Mastoloni did as PearlDiver52865, dirty business?
To all readers of the Pearl-Professor Blog:
I guess I should reveal some info about me. To begin with, I am certainly not the only anonymous poster here in this blog. I love the Pearl Professors “candid” take on real, and some not so real (but funny), issues. However, I do know just a “little” about the jewelry industry. I have been working in the retail business for over 25 years. I’m a graduate of the GIA and also hold an MBA from Duke University. I manage a location of large well known, multi-store Mid-Atlantic chain. I guess jshepherd used his “keen” detective skills to check the times of my postings to figure out that we work on the East Coast. I am not in New York. I work in the southern area of the Mid-Atlantic region. Way to go “Dick Tracy”. Regardless, I need to stay anonymous.
We deal primarily in medium/high and high end products. Our pearl business has been doing very well this year (gold products are just so darn expensive these days). I don't know any of Mastoloni people personally, and have not dealt with them in many years as we are a long time Mikimoto customer for our Japanese akoya. Our freshwater pearl styles come from Honora (Joel is “nut” but we love his designs and consistent quality) and also directly from dealers in Hong Kong. We get our south sea and Tahitian styles, necklaces and loose goods from Assael , Baggins and TriGem. I have meet Nick Paspaley in Hong Kong a few times. Personally, I found him to be one the most pompous and arrogant people I have ever met in this entire jewelry industry. He certainly qualifies as a “self-promoter”. Unfortunately, his products gorgeous (necklaces and loose pearls only – his jewelry styles look like puke) and he is channeling through Stuller. I avoid Stuller like the plague, too. Stuller has got to be the world’s most expensive places for a bench jeweler to buy and the quality/craftsmanship on most of their products truly does suck.
I have never dealt with the CPAA and, frankly, think their site sucks too. As a result, I never even bothered to look at their forum. However, thanks to your above links, I read most of the postings and found the CPAA forum be more on the “up and up” than the pearl-guide or pearl education sites. Until just a few weeks ago, I never really paid much attention to the pearl-guide either. After spending some time there and really looking at the threads, like the pearl education site, it too is a complete joke. The pearl-guide is a funny place; always the same posters that basically have nothing to say. As a matter of fact, most of the posters give me the impression that they are nothing more than the E-bay sellers referred to in this article. Also, most of the threads are just like facebook or myspace posts. I guess the poor content in the forum is a primary reason why search engines avoid its postings. Other than the original pearl information content, the forum is a complete bore and nothing more than a chat room for jshepherd and his cohorts. In the end it really is a marketing extension of pearlparadise and its "franchisees"/network of affiliates, plus a few completely bored looser who might as well be exchanging cooking recipes. In addition, after reading the aforementioned links you posted, I am further convinced of your purpose and direction at the pearl-guide.
As further proof of this claim/”FACT”, the pearl-guide CLEARLY states in its “Forum Policies and Rules of Conduct” that posting signatures that drop URL’s is prohibited, unless the other site has a link back to the pearl-guide. Here is the rule “A link within a signature is not considered link dropping, however all vendors with links within their signatures are required to post a reciprocal link from their Web site.” In all my searching you and your cronies have NO LINKS on your sites back to the pearl-guide. Gee I wonder why the pearl –guide continues to allow you and your “franchisees”/affiliates to post comments with signature links back to your websites, which is a CLEAR violation of its policies. Furthermore, you said in the post that you traced the IP of the users posting on the forum. Who but the forum owner would access to that kind of information?
I think am going to write an Op-Ed piece for the trade magazines about this scam you and Eddie are running here and see if it gets published. Do you care to formally add any comments before I start writing?
My question is this! Do you think the actions of those at Mastaloni Pearls in New York were ethical? Is this a company you would ever trust doing business with? Would you consider anonymously posting on that forum, as Mastoloni did as PearlDiver52865, dirty business?
Not for nothing here, but what the hell does Mastoloni have to do with what I wrote? Mastoloni is one of the oldest players in the pearl business, with what I would consider to a very boring line of jewelry and old school business practices. However, they do have a ton of very good quality south sea and Tahitian necklaces on display at the major jewelry shows. They are very yummy! I highly doubt that was written by one of the Mastoloni family members or any of the executive staff. It sounds like somebody there got sick of your BS and tried to do something about but maybe underestimated jshepherd’s access to confidential information at the pearl-guide. Also, I didn’t see where the folks at the CPAA backed up your claim as you say they did. In the end who cares.
I too believe your use of the term Hanadama as a quality grade is completely wrong, misleading and inaccurate. All of our Mikimoto pearls are considered “Hanadama” and that is where their grading scale begins. Therefore, the term “Hanadama” is not a quality grade, but is more like a threshold where true Japanese Akoya quality starts in the grading process. I think you are just so miffed that someone else called you and your cohorts out on it.
If you did just read all the threads you claim to, you would have seen Peter Bazar's post stating the IP address of PearlDiver52865 belonged to Mastoloni.
So!
My question is this! Do you think the actions of those at Mastoloni Pearls in New York were ethical? Is this a company you would ever trust doing business with? Would you consider anonymously posting on that forum, as Mastoloni did as PearlDiver52865, dirty business?
If you consider the business practices that you and your cohorts conduct as being ethical and on the up and up, then yes, I would do business with Mastoloni in a heartbeat. Again, they have a solid reputation for being some of the most honest people in the entire jewelry industry. But they are expensive.
Do you think you are ethical, given the scams that I can prove you are guilty of and your use of the pearl-guide as a veiled marketing arm of pearlparadise?
I suggest you look in the mirror if your looking for an unscrupulous business person!
Gotta hop, we are closing the store! TTYL
My final hope is that the pearl-professor puts this dialog up as an atricle on the website.
I cannot say I am surprised to hear that you cannot disparage the Mastoloni organization.
Actually, I am not surprised at all. You can run sir, but you can't hide. What you are doing to your personal and professional reputaition is remarkable.
Mr. Anonymous, or can I just call you Edward Mastoloni?
You sound like the most pathetic, washed up loser. Just reading your comments anyone can tell you are the kind of person who stands outside a lion’s cage poking at the larger, stronger animal with a stick.
Your market share is slipping. What your daddy gave you, no, entrusted to you, is slipping away. Instead of pulling your head out of your ass and figuring a way to save yourself and your company, you resort to attacking someone who is kicking your ass in business. And you never, ever have the balls to do it publicly. You are always anonymous, coming off like a raving, pathetic idiot.
Why could you not answer Jeremy’s simple question? In fact, you did answer.
Sir, you are a liar. One of the worst liars I have ever read.
Someone who has to remain anonymous because they are a big-wig (or at least has a big ego), yet is now going to write an Op-Ed piece about this supposed scam? Are you going to write that one anonymously too, Eddie boy?
So let’s see, anonymous starts his comments entirely directed at Jeremy, calls Jeremy’s business a scam even though he certainly does not seem to understand Jeremy’s business model. Then he back-pedals saying Jeremy’s site is one he liked. But because Jeremy posted a response to his comment he is a con-artist. The he talks about hanadama, pearl-guide and cronies. And finally, he threatens to write a piece and hopes that the Pearl Professor will post this thread as an article – just like PearlDiver52865’s last post on CPAA.
For any of us hen-pecked fools who’ve read the disgusting, unethical, dishonest, pathetic posts written on CPAA by Mastoloni, this all looks really, really familiar. It is an attempt to smear their betters because they cannot best them.
About your reputation, as Nora pointed out, do you realize how many pearl lovers, enthusiasts, farmers, processors, wholesalers and retailers read pearl-guide and greatly, greatly admire Jeremy for what he does? You *sir* are now a pearl-pariah to many, and your ego won’t let you slink away into the dark hole from where you came. You have to keep coming back, again and again, turning up like a bad penny.
Loser. Liar. Luddite.
Jeez all this hostility. I somewhat agree with the messages of anonymous or Mastoloni, who ever they are. The pearl-guide most certainly is a marketing extension of pearlparadise. With regard to the multiple websites, I have no idea how that could be completly proven. I don't agree that pearlparadise is being deceptive in its quality grades, as they NEVER actually say it mirrors the Mikimoto grading system. Just american pearls does that.
You all are complaining about people posting anonymously, but you all run businesses behind the same cloaks of disguise. I for one have no problem with it. jshepherd, how do you respond to the accusation that pearlparadise is in violation of the pearl-guides rules of conduct? I couldn't find the link back to the guide on your site either.
hey anonymous, what are the other american pearl sites?
You already made it home! Quick trip from the city.
So you both searched all over PearlParadise.com and could not find a link back to Pearl-Guide.com? Neither of you, two separate people, of course, thought to check the section on our site labeled links?
http://www.pearlparadise.com/jewelry/links/links8.html
It looks like more than a mere coincidence to me.
Senator acorn, can you answer this question?
Do you think the actions of those at Mastoloni Pearls in New York were ethical? Is this a company you would ever trust doing business with? Would you consider anonymously posting on that forum, as Mastoloni did as PearlDiver52865, dirty business?
American Pearl also has American Diamond.com and for the most part their diamonds are cheaper than Bluenile.
Blue Nile is the best deal for diamonds on the internet, bar none!
There is more to the stone than just color & clarity. Blue Nile offers "clean" papers. I have seen people offering cheaper prices (based solely on size, color and clarity) on the web. However, try to read the Cert on the "cheaper" stones. The proportions are way off, and spotting is usually right in the center. I have yet to see anyone on the web deliver a better value on a more consistant basis than Blue Nile. American Pearl is certainly not someone the folks at Blue Nile feel is competition.
Thank you "anonymous Blue Nile" for your contribution.
Damn! I am gone for two days and I come back to 7 more pending comments on this post. This is turning into a discussion-like forum post.
Just a thought, if someone has a post, send it to me and I might just publish it. That is what "Perlemeister", "Watcher", "Bafoon" and "Olga Noitapitsnokovna" have all done.
"gia13615093 said...
American Pearl also has American Diamond.com and for the most part their diamonds are cheaper than Bluenile."
As far as the diamonds go, the best place to buy those is www.dirtcheapdiamonds.com. Don't be fooled by the name, that's were all the jewelers shop, too. Balu Khatod has some pretty good fancies right now but you absolutely positively have to talk to him about those in person to make sure you get the color and grade you want.
Anybody who lost the money on Ebay should report it as loses then they filling tax declaration.
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