This note is to notify and forewarn potential customers of our experience with SIMONETTA antique jewelry store business, located in Bologna, Italy. While on vacation in Bologna, my wife and i stopped in to view several SAPPHIRE rings and pendants at SIMONETTA's jewelry store. It was late in the afternoon. One pendant particularly caught our attention. It was a large antique sapphire pendant which Simonetta herself took out of her vault. The price was approximately 40,000 euros. We wanted to buy it on the spot after we viewed its gemological certificate. Unfortunately, there was no certificate for this blue sapphire. We remained very interested in the sapphire pendant and insisted on a certificate before we were willing to finalize payment. We tried to pay for the pendant at that time but could not wire transfer the funds on time since it was the end of the day. We left the jewelry shop with an oral agreement (and hand shake) from SIMONETTA, the shop owner, that she would honor the price once the certificate was in hand (even though we would be philadelphia and time will have passed). There was no set timetable. We agreed to buy the blue sapphire pendant for 40,000 euro's subject to reviewing the certificate which would verify the fact that this was an untreated blue sapphire. Simonetta, the owner of the jewelry shop said she would follow through and send the sapphire pendant to a gemological org in switzerland and would honor the agreed upon price. We returned to Philadelphia, PA., USA from our vacation since the gemological review would take more time than we had available (approx 2 weeks). When the gemological certification was finalized it was sent to us by Simonetta via email. We made provisions to pay by wire transferring funds.in the meantime, Simonetta's term of sale changed (without notifying us) and the price went up. Simonetta refused to honor the terms of our original pricing agreement for the pendant. Simonetta arbitrarily and unilaterally increased the price of additional work we asked her to do on the pendant without notifying us in advance and obtaining our approval. At no time in our communications did i suggest or indicate that i wanted to back out of our agreement to buy the pendant. Simonetta independently changed our agreement to purchase and made the purchase of the sapphire pendant contingent on the purchase of the additional work (which was never started) of which she significantly increased the price from 3000 euros to 5000 euros. When we refused to agree to the additional cost for the modifications, Simonetta promptly voided the invoice for the sapphire pendant she prepared for me (and emailed to me) and unilaterally backed out of our deal. My suspicion is that the certificate indicated the sapphire had a greater potential value to the price of our agreement and Simonetta "greedily" wanted to take advantage of this. This is no way a respected, honorable and trusted jeweler operates and behaves. I suspect this was not the first time this sort of behavior was implemented by Simonetta jeweler.in addition, this serves to prove that Simonetta's agreements and sense of honor and trust is unworthy.By this email I would like to forewarn others of SIMONETTA jewelers conduct and dishonorable practice. EditDelete
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