The Singapore Forum

I'm just taking a poll here: When local jewellers promise you a full value guarantee (FVG) for upgrading your jewellery purchase within a specified time period, say 2 years, what do you understand it to mean?

What do you understand it to mean ?

That they will take the the current value of your jewellery, talk it down as much as possible and make a profit on taking in your used jewellery and selling you new one.... basically try to screw you as much as they can

It means that they used a worthless sales gimmick to entice you to buy. Caveats and conditions will abound

another spamming troll...

The key word here is "value". Before I actually tell more about the experience my wife and I had with this local jeweller pertaining to the matter of the FVG, I'll love to hear from you more about your personal experiences. Suffice to say that the customer and jeweller would have a different understanding as to what "value" refers to, and that the latter's aim is to maintain the ambiguity of terminology to their advantage.

I'm on the edge of my seat...

JC wrote:Before I actually tell more about the experience my wife and I had with this local jeweller pertaining to the matter of the FVG...etc.

This is absolutely vital information which it is in the interest of everyone to know, so please don't keep us all in suspense - give us all the details!

It's quite simple, really. And it's a policy that goes un-communicated to the public. I may need to first say that maybe, just maybe, it's just my wife and I who are ignoramuses here but I have a feeling that it's something that the staff at the local jewellers have been trained to omit in their sales talk. Their focus is on: Full Value Guarantee, and going back to my earlier post about the varying definitions of the word "value", the local jeweller's definition is... and drums roll, pls... the amount that you actually paid for the item, i.e. meaning, if you had actually received discounts for it (whether it's a festivity promotion e.g. during Christmas, or a card-membership, or the redemption for the reward-points for earlier purchases), the "value" that you can then bring into the upgrade is substantially lower than what you would've expected. It's no longer Full Value Guarantee but "Full What-You-Paid-For-It Guarantee".

Illustration:

a. Retail price = $10,000
b. Membership Discount = 10% of $10,000 = $1,000
c. Redemption of points (equivalent of dollar value) = $400 (example only)

"Value" of your item for next upgrade = $10,000 - $1,000 - $400 = $8,600

So, what really happens is that the item you'd bought suddenly drops in value to the amount which you paid for it. And what's more, the points that you were supposed to have been rewarded with for earlier purchases, are suddenly withdrawn or lost as a result of the upgrade.

I suppose it's a build-in mechanism that the local jewellers put in place to prevent endless profiteering. That, we understand. It's the fact that the staff are deliberately unclear about what FVG means, and their omission of these details that can leave you terribly uninformed. So, basically, when my wife wanted to upgrade her jewelled ear-rings for another item, what was originally "valued" (Retail price) at $800 became only $200 simply because we had used the redemption points for that purchase, and all the time, the salesgirl who convinced us to buy the ear-rings kept saying "No worries, m'am, you can upgrade this at FVG within two years".

Thank God, before we did the upgrade (which we didn't do eventually because of the principle of the matter), we asked why the "value" has dropped so drastically. And despite my persistent demand that the salesperson show me the policy governing this understanding of the FVG, she kept insisting that they do not have such a document. I checked the standard T&C in the card that's given to customers, and all it says is this: "For Trade-in items, we will take it in at the prevailing rate". Prevailing rates? Talk about another ambiguity of terms. Once again, forummers, it's NOT "Full Value Guarantee" but "Full What-You-Paid-For-It Guarantee".

Another conclusion of the matter: If you're buying the item for permanent keeping, it's fine. You won't have to worry about losing any of those redemption points that you'd earned with your earlier purchases. So, that's our story. If you've had similar encounters, share with us your story! We'll love to hear it.

You think it reasonable that you expect a retailer to buy something back from you 2 years after you bought it for more than you paid for it?

So in a roundabout way, you're renting jewelry.

I'm no expert, but I reckon the "value" of jewelry is somewhat arbitrary at best, and I would have thought that most used/secondhand jewelry would be worth no more than the materials that can be recovered from it.

Unless you can redeem loyalty/reward points for cash, it's difficult to attach any value to them.

Thanks for your comments. The principle of the matter is really not about creaming off more than what I paid for. But perhaps what mightn't have been clearly stated in the post earlier, the jewelled ear-rings we wanted to upgrade from was only about 4 months old. In fact, if you think about it, it doesn't matter how many days old it is before you attempt to get an upgrade. It's what you pay for that matter in the final analysis.

Although I think that jewellers have to make clear what are the "costs" of using those dastardly redemption points, etc in the purchase of their merchandise, question is which logical profit-making retailer would do that?

Of course, as I'd mentioned, it's logical that jewellers would've to have a build-in mechanism to ensure that there's no undue profiteering from customers' upgrading attempts. The fact of the matter is that the definition of the FVG is deliberately left ambiguous, and that to me, is the real bugbear.

I guess it's a simple case of caveat emptor then. It would never occur to me to trade in jewellery thatch had bought but if it was something I planned to do I would make sure I knew exactly what the conditions were upfront

'Value' is quite different from 'Retail Price' especially when we're talking about jewelry. The retail mark-up on jewelry is excessively high - something like 300%, so you can't base the value of it solely on what you paid for it at all. Have a look at what jewelry goes for on ebay, it's nowhere near what the owners paid for it, because it's not worth that price.

If your interest in buying a piece of jewelry is to upgrade it later, you'd probably be best off just saving the money to buy what you really want and buy it later when you can afford it and then keep it.

If crackers ever convinces me to "upgrade", the original value of the stone, minus setting, will be deducted if I decide to trade it in.

It was made quite clear when we bought it and it seemed to make sense.