Zales

Full review
This is mostly a review of a Zales store, not the website, but I do have some comments about Zales.com at the end of this review. I'm a guy who had never worn or bought jewelry, but decided to get a gold bracelet. I wasn't going to spend days combing through the zillions of jewelry stores here in New York City, so I went to Tiffany's, the Diamond District on 47th street, Macy's, and Zales. Tiffany's is good because you know that you are getting quality. But the selection of men's jewelery was quite limited, and there was nothing there that I wanted. Lesson No. 1: buy something because you like it, not necessarily because of its pedigree. Macy's was pretty good, but again, nothing really struck my fancy. The famous Diamond District is a place to be avoided unless you really know what a fair price is for the merchandise you want AND you know how to haggle. Otherwise you will get hosed. Being an amateur, I ran, not walked, away. Despite the negative comments about Zales, the bottom line is they had a piece I really liked at a fair price. The salesperson was friendly and low key, which was a welcome relief from the high pressure sales tactics in the Diamond District. Lesson 2: Never let a salesperson try to convince you that you love a piece that you really don't, or convince you that you don't have to love it to buy it. One thing that department stores and chain jewelry stores do is have a "sale" price on an inflated suggested price, and Zales is no exception. This doesn't really bother me as long as the "sale" price is fair. My bracelet was "marked down" from $3,800 to $1,499. Even to my untrained eye I knew that this was complete nonsense, that the bracelet never sold for anything near the "suggested" price, and that the $1,499 was probably a fair everyday price: not a steal, and not a rip-off. (Although I'm pretty sure the item could be gotten for less somewhere on the internet, as someone who knows little about what looks good on me, I wanted to physically try things on before buying. If this meant I ended up paying more, so be it.) Overall, I had a perfectly decent shopping experience at Zales. As to Zales.com: out of curiosity, I browsed the website and looked up their most expensive diamond engagement ring available online, and plugged its specifications (carat, clarity, color, type of setting) into the bluenile.com diamond ring builder, and the price was $13,000 cheaper on bluenile.com. Additional comparison shopping between these two sites shows that Zales.com is either not very competitive (to be charitable) or outright preying upon people who haven't done any homework on diamonds. Therefore, I am lowering my rating from **** to **, because after all this category is for the website, not the stores.