Monday, February 2nd:  We've completed the move to our new server!:  We've moved to our new and more powerful webserver this weekend, which was why the message boards were down.  Everything is now up and running, including our chatroom and messageboards.  We will be moving our email server later this week, and after that, we should be fully able to handle our web-growth for the next year or more.

*Rings, rings and more rings!:  We will be unveiling a number of new rings over the next two weeks.  Based on your feedback, the number one request we keep getting is to add more rings to pick from, and we'll be rolling out micro-pave styles, a Harry Winston Repro, and our new Trinity 3-stone rings for starters. 

Our new Trinity 3-stone ring, w/o center stones (center prongs can be yellow for yellow Takaras, 
rose gold for pink Takaras, or platinum for Asha or white diamond).

Important: Return policy changes for rings!:  While we will be increasing our ring selections, we are making an important policy change for returns on sized and set rings.  We have had an increasing number of customers window shopping our rings (order and return, order another one, return, etc), which has resulted in us losing money overall for January due to the high amount of unrecoverable labor that goes into each ring.  Because we allow customization of all our rings to your exact specifications (your exact ring size, prong style, choice of stone orientation, set high, set low, etc) there is a now a 5% restocking fee for all returned rings that have been shipped as ready-to-wear rings.  Our goal is to deliver you the ring of your dreams, and to do that we allow you to customize your ring order to your specifications and our setters strive to complete your ring to Tiffany's quality.  

However, to continue to do this at our current pricing requires that we charge restocking fees on returned rings due to the high amount of unrecoverable labor costs, and the near impossibility of matching returned rings (which we have been customized by you to your taste) to future customers.  Returned rings must be torn down to their component parts, and the prong heads melted back down (prongs are non-reusable), which incurs further unrecoverable labor costs on our part.  We are charging this restocking fee to begin to partially offset (5% does not cover the full labor costs incurred) our unrecoverable labor costs in order to continue to sell our rings at internet-direct pricing.   

If you wish to simply view a ring in order to decide on a purchase, you may order an unsized and unset (no center stone) ring shank or semi-mount which may be returned with no restocking fee.

Additionally, all rings are now being shipped with a security tag on the ring shank.  This tag is to prevent customers from ordering a ring for a special event, wearing it and then returning it for a refund.  If you remove this tag, the ring is no longer returnable.  There are no exceptions to the removed security tag rule.  

You can view our updated return policy via the "return policy" link above.  If you have any questions on the return policy, please email us to have them clarified before placing an order.

We have tried to resist having any restocking fees for the past six months, but after losing money this month due to the high amount of window-shopping and having customers order three or four rings before finally deciding on which one to purchase (if we have to make four rings to sell one, we lose money due to the lost labor on making the first three that were returned), we have to ensure that we begin to recoup the amount of labor lost for these types of orders.  

For all other items besides ready to wear rings, our 100% refund policy remains in effect.  It is only because of the high amount of unrecoverable labor which is unique to completing ready-to-wear rings that we have introduced the 5% restocking fee.

*Another Phoenix (HPHT processed) Diamond under way:  We have another Phoenix diamond (HPHT treated natural from Brazil) nearly completed.  This one is a heart cut, and we expect will finish around 1.10cts, hopefully G-H in color.  The Phoenix program is still on tentative ground, as we had very poor yields from the first batches of rough.  However, we will complete this heart diamond, and possibly a few larger rounds this spring before making a final decision as to the longevity of this program.  We will have more details on the heart Phoenix HPHT diamond after the cutting is completed in the next few weeks.

Tuesday, January 26th:  We've switched to UPS for our shipping!:  We've officially switched over to using UPS now for all of our order shipping.  Going forward, all Asha and jewelry shipments will ship UPS 3 Day Air, and pearls will ship via UPS Ground.  There were several reasons for this move including: UPS ground now averages one day faster delivery than Fedex Ground, UPS offered better software to integrate with our order management system, and UPS Ground and Air are serviced by the same driver, versus Fedex Ground and Fedex Air being nearly two different companies.  We hope the faster ground delivery and the significant automation will help us to deliver your orders more efficiently to you!

*Pink Takara updates!:  We recently added four new pink Takara cultured diamonds to our TakaraDiamonds.com website, including: .41ct VVS Pink Princess (sold), .33ct Pink round (sold), .31ct pink round and a new cut, a .29 pink passion cut.  Details on these cultured diamonds are available at our TakaraDiamonds.com website here!

.29ct pink Takara cultured diamond (passion cut)

*Chatroom added to our message boards!:  We're pleased to announce that we have made available the premier version of Raidersoft chat on our message boards, allowing those interested to chat live with other jewelry connoisseur's and diamond afficionados, 24 x 7!  To use the chatroom, you must be a registered message board user.  We hope to offer scheduled chats (designated meeting times) as well as hosted chats (with guest gemologists, etc) in the near future.  Our message boards can be found here!

*Micro-pave and other new ring/earring/pendant settings are coming!:  We have contracted with a very high-end design firm to help us roll out new jewelry offerings for both TakaraDiamonds.com and BTD.com for our current Asha/Takara cuts as well as the upcoming cushion Asha.  One highly requested item that you have requested is micro-pave pieces, which are jewelry items set with incredibly small individual diamonds (.005ct and smaller) but produce an amazing diamond encrusted look on the finished piece.  These will be higher end-pieces owing to the extreme amount of labor and specialty skills involved in order to do micro-pave (a laser is used to drill the pin-point holes for the individual diamonds, and the setting work itself must be done under a microscope).  Micro-pave is usually only seen at extremely high-end jewelry stores, but we are pleased to be bringing this amazing level of workmanship to our customers via the web.  We will try to post an expected schedule of jewelry offerings shortly; the first piece that will be released will be a platinum micro-pave pendant with a center pink round Takara cultured diamond.  Additional details will follow!

*Fiscus Jewelry & Design carrying the Asha diamond simulant!  We're pleased to announce an additional brick and mortar jeweler who will be carrying the Asha diamond simulant for those of you living in Iowa.  They offer skilled setting work with setters experienced in setting the Asha, as well as custom design work.  Their contact information is below:

Noel Fiscus Jewelry & Design
1701 S.E. Delaware Ave. 
Suite 250
Ankeny IA 50021 

phone: 515-964-5256 
email: [email protected]

*Important virus warning (Novarg email virus):  Unrelated to jewelry, but pertinent to all web users - there is a new email virus rapidly spreading via emails with an attached text file.  Don't be duped into this one.  The text file is really a disguised zip file with an included malicious virus called Novarg.  If you receive any emails with "Mail Transaction Failed", "Hi", "Status" or "Test" and an attached "text" file, do not open the text file.  The body of the email often reads "The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent as a binary attachment." or "The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent as a binary attachment.".  Since we've had these emails rolling in all day long, its clear that many people are being duped into opening the attachment, which then allows the virus to send emails to people in your address book and it then attempts to monitor the infected computer and steal personal data.  Details can be found at this MSNBC news article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4065701

Tuesday, January 13th:  Additional pink Takaras will be available shortly!:  We hope to have two more round pink Takaras (.31 and .33ct) as well as our first pink *princess* Takara (.41ct) available by the end of the week.  Details and photos will be forthcoming!    

*Polishing clothes will no longer be included with ring orders:  Please note that going forward, we will no longer be including the polishing clothes with ring orders.  The polishing clothes will continue to be available for purchase on our website however.  

Saturday, January 10th:  First pink Takaras now available for sale!:  We received both grading reports back for our first two pink Takaras, and they are now available for purchase as loose stones on our Takara cultured diamonds website, TakaraDiamonds.com.  The first two are a .26ct Fancy Vivid purplish-pink, and a .33ct Fancy Intense Pink round.  We are working on several different size three stone rings, and these Takaras will be used in those if they are not sold when the new rings are ready.  Of interest, we were informed by the gem lab that if the .33ct Takara was a natural diamond, that it would sell for about $20,000.  Our price is $1626, or about 92% savings vs the natural equivalent.  More details are at our TakaraDiamonds.com pink page here!

.33ct Fancy Intense Pink Takara (grown by Chatham)

*Email problem identified, emails are now flowing!:  We were finally able to pinpoint the problem with our new email server but it will take several days to fix.  Therefore, on Thursday evening, we rolled back to our old email server, and emails have been working again.  If you received any bounced emails last week, please re-send and they should work as expected now.  To assist, we have setup an autoresponder on our support email ([email protected]) - if you email us, it will respond with an immediate confirmation email back to ensure that you know we have received it.  We will roll forward to our new email server at some point next week, but not until we have been able to confirm the fix has been effected for the problem that caused the bounced emails last week.  Order were not affected by the email problem as the shopping cart runs on a different server, however, we do apologize for the inconvenience!

*BTD's message boards are rocking!:  We're pleased to note that our message boards hit a new record of 380 posts in 24 hours last week, and there are nearly 18,000 total posts available for you to browse.  We are planning on adding a chat room to the message boards, and will be looking at scheduling hosted chats, where we can bring various people such as expert gemologists in to answer your diamond and jewelry questions.  Our message boards are here!

*Platinum and gold prices continue to make new highs...:  This is a good news/bad news item, but the price of gold and platinum continue to set new highs.  Platinum has nearly doubled in price since 2 years ago, going from $450/oz and now approaching $900/oz.  The good news is if you bought platinum jewelry last year or the year before, its value has gone up!  The bad news is we correspondingly have to move to reflect the increased cost of precious metal for our jewelry - we will be reviewing the metal cost for all our items, and changing their prices accordingly, which means going higher since we now have to pay more to purchase the metal for casting.

For your information, here is a web page which shows the weekly prices of platinum for the past two years:  Platinum weekly price chart (2002 - 2004)

*Chinese saltwater (Akoya) pearls will be available next week:  We received our first shipment of Chinese Akoya pearls from our growers on Friday and were very, very impressed with their beauty.  They are now at Elliot Gem Lab for independent grading (all our Chinese Akoya's will ship with an independent appraisal card).  We will be offering AAA grade earrings, and A and AA necklaces in both white and *natural* silver!  Details, photos and pricing to follow!

Thursday, January 6th:  Snow is melting, back to normal today!:  We have weathered the winter storm that hit Seattle, and will be back in the office for normal business hours again today.  

*New cut for Asha coming!:  Due in large part to a grassroot efforts on our message boards, along with a request from one of our larger wholesale accounts, we will be introducing a warm colored (I/J or K color) Asha cushion cut by March.  We expect sizes to range from 2ct - 6ct in size, again based on the requests coming in from our various customers.  We are planning to do a Harry Winston style reproduction ring to house the new Asha cushion, but have not finalized the ring design.  If you are interested in suggesting ring designs for the upcoming cushion cut, please post your photos on our message boards!

*New webserver for BTD.com coming next week:  With the increasing popularity of our website, we are in the process of moving to an even faster dedicated webserver.  Currently BTD.com and TakaraDiamonds.com serve up nearly 10 Gigabytes of data a month to visitors, and we've reached the upper ends of our bandwidth...so we'll be moving both servers to even more powerful configurations, and are moving to plan that will allow us to serve up to 700 Gigabytes of data per month (which should hold us for a while).  As part of that move, we will also be able to offer a chat room for our message board users, something that has also been frequently requested.

*Nice customer feedback on Asha:  We received a nice email feedback from a new customer, and are pleased to have permission to reprint it on our site (thanks to that customer for allowing us to do so!):

"So far we are VERY satisfied with the BTD purchase.  Our jeweler set it for us and commented that he couldn't tell it from a real diamond.  And that he'd never seen a better simulant.  He had shown us some moissanite stones that were much more expensive and looked horrible.  The color was very greenish yellow.  We love the E color BTD [Asha].

Thanks again."

*New master diamond setter joining BTD next week:  We are also pleased to announce that we have hired a new master diamond setter, Stefan, who will be joining us from BlueNile.com!  Stefan brings over 18 years of stone setting and precious metal experience, and will help us continue to keep the workmanship of our rings and jewelry to top standards.

*Possible switch to UPS as our default shipper:  We are in the process of implementing new software from UPS which will tie-in with our order management system to allow us to significantly automate our shipping label preparation.  As a result, our free shipping will most likely change from Fedex to UPS 3 day shipping.  We will have a final decision next week after a complete evaluation of the software, and will announce accordingly.

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