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 🙏🏻

I bet he would hesitate doing it to a man. He'd be worried the man would come round and thump him.

Any so-called jeweller who just takes a customer’s word for it deserves to go out of business.

All irrelevant.

No professional jeweller is this stupid. Not even a backstreet pawnbroker would make this mistake.

There are two possibilities here:

“Jeweller” thinks friend’s mum is a clueless old dear and he’s trying to scare her or appeal to some sense of morality, or both.

The ring is worth what he paid or a little less - and he’s found out when trying to sell it on that he’s overvalued it and there’s no profit in it. He’s now annoyed at himself so is trying to shift the blame to make up his losses.

What has definitely not happened is that a professional jeweller has mistaken gold plated for solid gold. It just doesn’t happen.

“On the hop”? You make sound like you’ve somehow been thrown by being asked for a valuation and got all confused. This is literally your job! I would consider a change in career.

The thing is... we know for a fact that he never thought the ring was worth £425. In fact, he most probably thought it was worth £500, £600, £700 or more - and he offered the price based on what he believed was much less than the true value, so that he could make a decent profit. For all we know, he may have offered her a lower price, with a higher margin for him, than he normally would if, say, it had been a ring bought new by somebody in her family that she still had the original receipt for.

He would doubtless have explained this away as "That's business" - and I wouldn't blame him, because that is the nature of business: you buy things for considerably less than you can sell them for.

When it comes to gold that's going to be sent away to be melted down, it's easy money for him, really - as with any of these "We buy gold!" companies. There's no need at all to use multiple skills to add value to a wholesale item and work hard at selling it retail to your buyer for a profit, nor to run the risk of being left with unsold stock; you're just passing it straight on to a big gold buyer, with a prescribed price that they WILL pay (for the correct grade of gold), purely relying on the fact that members of the public don't know how to get in touch with the big buyers themselves, nor to avoid being potentially ripped off by being 'assured' that valuable gold is just costume jewellery by the buyer.

He thought that he was going to make a very good deal on the ring, based on its true value; but it turns out that, on this occasion, the woman who sold it to him made a very good deal - one that HE initiated! As you might say, "That's business".

I agree with everyone, I just wanted to request that any reply to this cheeky bastard begins with "now listen, Del Boy..." 😆

The onus is on him to make any checks before even offering a price let alone paying.

Lots of people here are quite distrustful of jewellers (and rightly so if they come across people like this) but equally as a jeweller why would I take anyone's (who i didnt know and was not qualified) word for something without doing my own checks first - which are not difficult?

He's a jeweller. Who hands over several hundreds pounds without checking the level of gold in the item? I'm surprised he's not bankrupted himself.
Just say, 'I had no idea of the value of the ring, you as a professional, offered that amount and I accepted. I will not correspond on this further.' Then block him.
Silly bastard. Lol.

I had to sort through my MIL's jewellery box after DH died. I was getting items repaired before sending them to his granddaughter.

A lot of the jewellery was broken and it was all jumbled up. I thought it was tin and brass.

It turned out that the 'tin' was silver - no hallmarks on any of it. Some of the 'brass' turned out to have teeny hallmarks that I'd not spotted - gold.

An elaborate looking tie pin with its stones missing had no hallmarks. The jeweller tested it on the premises. Gold. They didn't have the equipment to do a more accurate test, but it was "above 9 ct gold."

Good grief! Did you get yours back?

Just to add to my previous post: one of the items I handed to my jeweller was a metal cuff, completely black. He cleaned it up.

He was able to tell me that it was plated in three colours of gold - yellow, rose/red and white. No damage to the cuff.

Tell your friend to go to trading standards about the jewellers…

Sadly not I'm afraid; I learned a hard lesson to always get a receipt for repairs detailing exactly what the item is, and anyway the jeweller went out of business not long afterwards

Edited to add sorry, @WearyAuldWumman - I posted before seeing your question too, but guess the above will answer it

Really sorry to hear this @Puzzledandpissedoff.

Not all jewellers are gemologists. It’s quite common to have to send stuff away for a 2nd opinion.

We are really busy and often have large queues of customers in store… and we are human… so mistakes happen.

Have been in this career for 30 years and we have a good reputation so don’t think I’ll take your advice thanks!

@YourLoudLilacGuide you're right, mistakes happen.

But if it’s your mistake, it’s up to you to deal with it. You can’t just ask for your money back like this.
I think it’s up to the jeweller to understand why that mistake happened and put things in place to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Whatever that might be (further training, sending jewel away, asking fur more time, second opinion, whatever).
The customer certainly has nothing to do with it!

That’s exactly what I said in my post.

If we make a mistake (rare) we just suck it up and get on with it. That is the industry standard.

A £425 mistake is not a lot in a jewellers so, yeah, it’s annoying but we just have to chalk it up to error.

What the jeweller in the OP is doing is beyond bizarre. Doubt they’ll be in business much longer.

HI OP, I'm unsure how much your friend's mum paid for the ring but I'm pretty sure that she made a significant profit. If the ring isn't what the jeweller assessed it as being ( and we've all made mistakes), I think that your friend's mum should return the cash and collect the ring. Even if she's not legally bound to (sold as seen etc and I don't know the legal position on this), she is morally obliged to

All Relevant

No she fucking isn't.

Despair1, as others have pointed out, a simple magnet check and examination would have been the best check for the jeweler. He may have been in a rush and thought " got a good item here, worth 600+, I will offer 450"
Customer agrees, takes money and leaves the shop. Jeweler checks PROPERLY, realises his mistake then he has two options... he tries to bully the customer into giving back the cash in return for A ring (is it the same ring?????) Or secondly, does he accept HIS OWN ERROR and move on?
Nah, he goes down the bully boy route.
Had the ring been bought from the Mum for 40 pounds and found to be worth 4000 do you think HE would chase her up to pay her more???? Nah.
Report him to Trading Standards and keep any messages and calls for a possible police complaint. I wouldn't be surprised if both authorities had visited him before .
Stand firm, ladies!

Absolute rubbish.

But would you not ask people to make an appointment to come back when you will have time to properly consult with them over their proposed sale and verify the value and authenticity of the goods? Or even just say "Sorry, no more purchases for today"?

Surely, if you don't have the capacity to devote sufficient time to the matter in hand right now, you wouldn't just make a quick guess, would you?!