I purchased a college graduation ring approximately 4 months ago via a Balfour college rings representative that came to my school. The ring itself was definitely not cheap - about 700 dollars total. When I made a joke about having the ring surgically grafted to my body so that I wouldn't have to pay 700 bucks if I lost the ring, the representative helpfully explained that Balfour 'keeps track of everything' and that I have a warranty for 'as long as I live'.
When the product came, I was fairly pleased with it. The engravings were a little off-kilter and hard to read, but I didn't worry about it.
Last week, I set my ring down next to my plate in a restaurant and was unable to locate it when getting ready to leave - I don't know whether it was stolen (it got pretty busy around us at one point) or if I just clumsily knocked it off the table. Regardless, it was gone.
I called Balfour and explained to them that I wanted to get a replacement ring under my warranty - fully expecting to pay the 100 or so that a new ring would cost them just in gold prices. The overseas tech support explained to me that without a physical paper copy of my warranty and the physical original invoice, I would not be eligible for a warranty replacement ring. I told her that the fact that she was able to look up my order on the computer should tell them that I had a ring, that I ordered it recently, and that I am covered under warranty. She reiterated that unless I snail-mail them a copy of the warranty, I will have to pay the non warranty replacement cost of $275 - which is about $100-150 more than I would have to pay if I had the paper warranty.
En when they had a complete record of my order, they refused to honor my warranty deductible. Lorie Peach - the ring loss manager - told me that they don't keep records of the warranty that they send out with rings, only the original order. That is obviously false or else anyone trying to use a warranty to replace a ring could just edit the deductible shown on the warranty card to whatever they please and Balfour would have no way of knowing.
Anyways, this is all very anti-consumer and pretty dishonest of them to pull. They already made a large profit off of me and should be able to at least replace my ring at cost plus 5% or so regardless of whether or not I can provide a copy of a thin sliver of paper that came with my ring.
In my experiences, I would say that this is not a good company to do business with and I suggest that, if possible, you get your college/high school/etc rings elsewhere.
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