REVIEW: South Pacific and Jewelweaver (my opinion only)

Kathy,
I giot an error when I tried to go to the beading.com page. Wonder if they
are down or what. I am looking for light jade to go with a pair of tear
drop jade earrings my wonderful DH gave me for our 35th anniversary. I
can't believe he checked it out to find the 35th is jade!

Jan

"Kathy N-V" wrote in message
.com...
I can't give a bad review without giving a good one, or at least other
options. In the Thaigems review, I mentioned that I was sorely
disappointed
with the whole transaction. In return, I got a note from a person who was
frustrated and wanted to know a good vendor who isn't astoundingly
expensive.

Here is my response:

I buy most of my semi-precious stones from a few vendors whom I trust
implicitly. (www.jewelweaver.com and www.beading.com) I've bought
thousands
of dollars worth of merchandise from each of these two vendors, and each
has
been more than honest about condition and pricing. I've had one error
from
each vendor in three years, and both handled the errors immediately and
professionally, and make me feel confident about recommending them to
others.

In the case of beading.com, which is really called South Pacific (even
though
it's in Vermont - go figure), the "peacock" pearls I ordered turned out to
be
baby blue. They were pretty, but not what I needed. I called and Willis,
the owner, insisted on speaking to me then and there. He credited me the
money for the pearls, had me keep the baby blue ones, and sent out the
right
ones to me at no charge. That was far more than I expected, and it's
gained
them a customer for life.

The one error I had with Jewelweaver was mostly my fault - I messed up and
ordered something that was out of stock, and my computer didn't get the
error
message during the order process. Andrea found me a similar set of beads
and
sent them to me as a gift, because they weren't the high quality that I
had
ordered. Again, way above and beyond - I would have been satisified with
an
email saying that the beads were out of stock.

Both of these places aren't rock-bottom cheap, but they are very
reasonable,
and both regularly carry specials that are astonishingly good. (My
favorite
is South Pacific's 100 strands of white freshwater pearls for $100. I've
bought this a couple of times, and split the order with friends) For the
quality I've gotten, the prices are amazing.

Hope this helps,

Kathy