Talking Trash

To many of my new and regular readers, I may come across sometimes as a broken record (Gee grandpa, what’s a record?). Okay, then, a CD? Wait a second, aren’t they obsolete too? That’s right, I forgot now you download music from some sort of imaginary cloud! You young whippersnappers can look it up; it was a large black vinyl disc you played on a turntable and listened to music. 

The good old days are gone and have been replaced with total nonsense and chaos; we now live in a world where truth or proven facts don’t mean squat. Not a thing you purchase works or lasts like it used to. Take today’s appliances, for example. If you pay extra for the three-year warranty you can bet that refrigerator will self-destruct the day after the warranty expires. I have an old, and I mean old - I bought this old GE fridge over forty years ago - in my barn up in North Florida. That relic has lasted longer than my two former marriages and my current one combined. She may not look pretty on the outside, but she still works, darn it! 

Nothing is normal any longer; no one trusts anybody and I totally blame the internet for all of it. Not a week goes by where a potential customer will question my integrity before leaving their piece of jewelry to be repaired. I tell them to ask around town about my honesty - if I were a disreputable scoundrel, I doubt I would still be in business on this spit of sand and concrete for thirty years. 

Today, Mom and Pop retail stores barely exist. At first, you could blame this work in progress on the fact that folks wanted to go to an indoor mall that had multiple places to shop - this was so much better than a strip mall that had limited shops and you would get wet in the rain, broil in the summer and freeze in the winter. The Super Malls became a new American icon; people would drive for hours just to go to a major mall to shop, dine or just walk around and hang out with friends.

Then within ten years, the World Wide Web killed that American icon. I just returned from North Central Florida, the Gainesville area, and saw vacant strip malls one after the other. I saw the same thing driving from Maine to Marco this past summer. I’m even told the indoor mall in Naples “Ain’t exactly what it used to be either.” I don’t even remember the last time I went there.

The internet even put a hurt on the television home shopping thing and that was at one time the cat’s meow, a billion-dollar industry in just jewelry sales alone.

I can remember cringing when ladies brought in those poor excuses for fine jewelry that, even back then, was a nightmare to size or keep the stones from falling out.

Let me tell you, those folks fell for the drama-filled sales spiel, “Only so many left; order now or lose out! These are genuine Russian Czar pink cubic zirconia’s and are very rare!”

Thousands upon thousands of inebriated insomniacs called some long-distance phone number then gave a complete stranger their credit card information and hoped the jewelry they bought would be the bargain one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry they saw on the TV channel. They would believe every word the bubble-headed bleach-blonde salesperson said. But when they received it in the mail… “Gee! It looked bigger and a lot better quality on the TV screen?”

I was once informed by a Home Shopping Queen that she was told by the nice lady on TV that they only had the rings she ordered in small sizes, but not to worry because any jeweler would only charge $5 per ring to make the four 10kt. gold rings she purchased three sizes larger. When I explained that it is impossible to add gold to a ring, especially three sizes for $5, he pulled a "Karen,” insisting I do them at that price because that’s what “The lady on TV said I would do it for!” 

Today we have internet shopping. This phenomenon is the new outlet for the fleecing of millions on any given day! And the jewelry they purchase… I thought the stuff the home shopping queens from the 1990s was bad enough, in comparison, the TV junk was better, at least it was real gold and not 1/1000 of an inch clad in real gold-like-looking metal! 

It’s like the jewelry road show in my shop some days 

“I got this ‘genuine’ sterling silver Tiffany link bracelet worth hundreds for $50 plus postage. Did I get a good deal????”

First of all, it is not an actual Tiffany bracelet. It’s a knockoff!

Second, it is not sterling silver but a brass bracelet that has been silver plated and not very well, I might add. 

Thirdly, if you are mad now, it’s about to get worse… It’s worth about ten bucks. If that internet shyster sells ten or twenty a day, that’s pretty good money he or she is making. 

I see diamond engagement rings made so crappy you can literally remove the diamond* from the ring with your fingernail (*I use the word diamond loosely here, it’s more like some undeveloped carbon substance!) then when I heard what they paid, I lost my breath.

It’s criminal…And there is not much you can do after you pay for it. 

I’m still waiting for my refund on a home alarm system I purchased four years ago - I’m still being told I’m in line. Stupid me - I should have checked with The Better Business Bureau first, this company has more complaints than Enron. 

I give up… I can’t see things going back to the way they used to be, and every time I go to jewelry shows, I can’t believe the large amount of garbage jewelry they try to sell me. I have to scrutinize everything with a magnifying glass and check every piece when it arrives at my shop to make sure it’s exactly the quality and item that I ordered.

To sum today up in a nutshell, here is a famous ancient Roman saying… CAVEAT EMPTOR. Translation - let the buyer beware.