Sold ring to jeweller now he wants his money back

[Chopsticks2829]

Hi can anyone give me advice for a friend…
My friends mum enjoys buying bits and bobs of costume jewellery and beads from eBay as she enjoys arts and crafts and making things.
She bought a bag full of rings, beads and other bits and bobs recently, and inside it was a men’s gold ring. My friend took it to her local jeweller, she signed paperwork to say she had the right to sell the ring and was given £425 for it.
The jeweller has now come back to her several weeks later and said he wants his money back as the ring isn’t what he though and is just heavily plated.
The ring was sold to an experienced jeweller in good faith. The price was agreed and the deal was done. Had the opposite happened, and the jeweller made a mint, my friend would have had no come back.
Is the jeweller within his rights to ask for the money back? He’s been sending my friend screenshots from the internet about sale of counterfeit and fake goods which I don’t think applies to this case.
Thank you for reading 🙏🏻

The OP in the link says he's an antiques jeweller and he is telling people [customers] to refuse to return the money , what to say and to block the jeweller they sold anything to .

So he doesn't sound like a bad guy .

Do not return the money and tell them to take a running jump. If they were unable to test the ring they should not have offered to buy it.

For all you know a different ring will be returned.

I would say something like ...

"I had no idea of its value and that's why I took it in to you, as an experienced jeweller, to value it for me and to buy it.

Therefore I did this in good faith and did not try to mislead you. Therefore I cannot be held responsible for your error"

Hang on, sorry if already suggested, what if the ring was indeed solid gold and this scammer is outright lying to scam these people?

Shame the bullies get to win again 😢

Why didn't they just block him?

If I were you I'd be leaving a review saying what happened. Those messages are very unprofessional and uncalled for, and it was a horrible experience overall. Plus what if he'd put it out and sold it and then the person found out it was fake (or even worse, didn't), and this is why he's acting like this.

Telling whether something is gold or not is pretty easy unless it is a really sophisticated fake made out of fairly exotic material like tungsten.

For a start gold is a seriously dense material, there are very few common materials that get anywhere near it. So a simple mass/volume calculation should enable someone to tell whether something is gold or not.

Any person who buys and sells gold for a living should be expert at figuring out whether something is gold or not. And the amount of times they are wrong (which will happen on occasion) should be factored into the price of all the items so that when they do get it wrong they are covered. There's a reason scrap prices are relatively low. That's because scrap is not always what it seems to be and you need to factor that into the price you give across your entire purchase base.

I certainly wouldn't be giving the money back.

Out him! Report him to trading standards! This is absolutely not on, and like others have said if he’d made a tonne of money on it he wouldn’t be sharing with you! People giving into these types of bullies is half the problem of why people keep getting screwed over! Absolutely do not repay him, block him and report him and out him!

This is an empty threat too - the bank won’t just take the money and return to him! The jeweller is an absolute idiot. He would only be reporting himself to trading standards, the idiot!
the only honest thing to do would be for him to accept his own stupid mistake and leave your friend alone!

They took the ring to what they considered to be an expert in their area to assess the ring. If they assessed it wrong and then valued it wrong, that is their fault. It is their job to know real from fake or in this case solid from plated. If that had been me I wouldn't have a clue and would be reliant on the so called expert opinion, no error of your friend here in my opinion, tell the jeweller to naff off

I get why people think the jeweller might be planning to give back a plated ring instead of the original one, but as scams go, isn’t it pretty high risk? You pay out £425, then claim a mistake and say you want the money back - planning to return a very similar looking ring worth considerably less.

What happens if they laugh in your face and say “no chance”? If, when you come back with your supposedly killer jab and calling in Trading Standards, they laugh again or, as the majority of posters on this thread have suggested, they’ve already blocked you? And this is all before you consider that you need a) a ring that looks just like the valuable one, but which is worth buttons and b) a client with no real attachment to the original who is unlikely to notice the value. The OP’s friend could actually fit the bill there, but it was still a big gamble.

Wouldn’t it have been a damn sight easier to say “Sorry love, it’s only plated - worth 50 quid at best” and hope she fell for it?

They are trying to scare her - the bank wouldn't agree to this type of chargeback.

Bet he’s going to give a different ring back.

Plus what if he'd put it out and sold it and then the person found out it was fake (or even worse, didn't), and this is why he's acting like this.

You may well be on to something there, actually. If he fouled up and sold what he thought was a valuable gold ring to a customer and then the angry customer found out the truth and came back, calling him a thief, scammer, charlatan etc. - he might have found it easier to build an elaborate narrative around the devious seller deliberately scamming him and it all being her fault - and he promised to pursue her to deflect the blame from himself.

Still ludicrous, unless he's suggesting that the 'scammer' forced him to buy it from her at gunpoint; but if he is trying to make out that she is the bad guy and pass all the blame along, that's probably where he got the idea of Trading Standards in his head: from the person he resold it to threatening to report him to them.

He's sounding to me very like he set up a jewellery shop as part of a task on The Apprentice and (like they always are) is woefully out of his depth!

"OK, Sir, so please tell us when this unauthorised payment was taken from you without your knowledge or consent... right, so it was after you suggested the amount, told the seller that it was worth that to you in your professional opinion, having had full opportunity to thoroughly examine it - and then you transferred the payment to her yourself...Thank you, we'll let you know..."

This!

Yeah the story has more holes than Swiss cheese. My guess is money laundering in that if this person doesn’t fall for it they will find another way to launder the money.

But am more and more leaning towards theory that this thread is not genuine. Don’t really care if I get reported for that!

Meh, £425 is the cost of being a wet lettuce.

I have sold gold rings to my local jeweller.
He always tested the gold right there.
I can't remember whether it was some sort of machine ,or a liquid. But he was definitely able to pick out the solid golds from the gold plated ones .

Buyer beware is an expression for a reason. If he made an error when he valued the ring, it’s on him. Absolutely no come back.

This situation sounds awful. Contact Citizens Advice for clarification on the law and then report the jeweller to Trading Standards and also the police for harassment. It sounds like a scam or a very unpleasant person who wants to make their mistake your friends problem. They are gaslighting your friend trying to convince her that she’s done something wrong and needs to make amends, which is not the case at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if the police didn’t already know about this jeweller. Their reaction is odd and they sound shady.

Absolutely not give him a penny. He is the professional here like you say if he realised it was worth 20k, I'm sure he wouldn't be contacting to share the money!

I don't think it's trading standard issue as your friend isn't a trader. Sold as seen, Sod's Law.

How is she to know he didn't sell her gold ring and replace it with a plated one? She sought a professional's advice and he bought and paid for the goods. He cannot come back to her now demanding to swap a different product to the one her purchased for her cash. No.

OK but that's why they have multiple methods of testing jewellery mark, so there's no excuse as much as you want to make one..its quite simple especially if he claimed to have solid knowledge in his jewellery business

The "jeweller" is trying to pull a fast one.

Any jewellers shop would check hallmarks or test the metal for purity etc before even giving a price.

Even when you take a item to be repaired or altered they give you a reciept with for example one carat platinum ring vs2 clarity so they know which is yours when you colllect it when its ready.

Sounds like he is trying it on to me.

Oh, OP don’t give the money back. he could give you back a different ring. we had some dealers come into look at DH’s mum’s books. we knew they weren’t worth a lot, but as their shop was a short distance away, though they might take them as a job lot. They cherry picked some cookbooks, offered £10 for those, refused the rest, and said, well if you put them in a skip let us know, and we’ll go through the skip and take them off your hands! We contacted a different dealer, took some photos of the shelves, and he collected them and paid us £200.