6 Common Customer Misconceptions and How to Shut Them Down

By Amy Elliott | June 18, 2025

One of the liveliest panel discussions during the 2025 JCK and Luxury shows in Las Vegas was June 5’s “Common Jewelry Customer Misconceptions & Myths,” a conversation moderated by JCK contributing editor Karen Dybis.

She and the featured guests—Kathleen Kimball, president/CEO of George Thompson Diamond Company; Sara Yood, CEO and general counsel, Jewelers Vigilance Committee; and Aleah Arundale, diamond wholesaler and founder of the “Jewelers Helping Jewelers” Facebook group—identified misunderstandings (and misinformation) that jewelry customers tend to harbor in advance. Each shared unique experiences, anecdotes, perspectives, and advice for retailers who encounter the same levels of cluelessness.

“There are people who come in and say that black pearls are black because they have cancer, and white gold comes from a white gold mine,” said Arundale. “And ‘Can you take all my small diamonds and melt them down and make one big one?’ One client showed me the big black spot in their diamond and said, ‘Do you see that? It’s carbon—that’s rare.’ You’re always going to get people that don’t know the facts and say something ridiculous.”

But moments like those are an opportunity for jewelers to educate their customers. And there’s a benefit to that: “Any time you tell someone something they don’t know, they start listening.”

Ahead, see if our panel’s discussion resonates with what you have observed. Then use the pros’ insights to redress the misconceptions effectively—without busting a gut laughing (or blowing a gasket).

“Fine jewelry is an investment, not something to live in and wear.”

Most retailers already know how to handle this one and habitually encourage discretion-inclined customers to wear and enjoy their fine jewelry—even rings with enormous diamonds and other high-value pieces—instead of hiding it away.

“Jewelry is meant to be worn and shared,” said Yood, who reinforced her point with a personal anecdote. “My mother bought herself a beautiful three-stone oval diamond ring when she was about 60, and she does not wear it.” Her reasoning will sound familiar: “She said, ‘I have nowhere to wear it.’ And I was like, if I owned that thing, I would wear it to the grocery store. Having it sit in your jewelry box does no favors for anybody.”

Still, retailers should not shy away from impressing upon their customers that they are purchasing something of considerable value. “If this stuff isn’t worth something, what are we doing?” quipped Arundale. “You don’t sell diamonds as something for their investment portfolio, but you have to tell people these are valuable, these are rare, these are treasures.

“Anywhere you go in the world, you know that this diamond is worth something,” continued Arundale. “It used to be a dowry. We gave goats because we wanted to give something valuable to consummate a marriage. So now we give something that’s a lot better than a goat. And when I look at my own ring, I feel secure for two reasons. One is I have someone that loves me who gave me a ring. But I also feel secure because I have something of value.”

“Engagement rings and other jewelry are one-time purchases that will hold up to a lifetime of wear.”

“I tell my customers: Just like a house, just like with a car, anything you use and wear every day needs some maintenance. So bring your jewelry in every six months to get it checked and cleaned,” said Kimball. “We offer a lifetime warranty on all our jewelry—it comes free with anything you buy with us— but it is only valid if you come in every six months to get it checked and cleaned.

“And this is a useful way to keep in contact with your clients. It brings people back into our store. Our point-of-sale system automatically sends a text message or an email to them to remind them,” Kimball explained.

“People love warranties,” Arundale added. “My buddy Robert Irwin Jewelers makes more money on his warranties than he does on jewelry. He charges from $50 to $120 per piece. I mean, it can sound a little bit like the Mafia—‘You like this ring. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to it, would you?’—but reminding them to come in every six months is good for your customers, just like seeing their dentist.”

“Diamonds are indestructible.”

Retail jewelers who deal in diamonds know just what to say in response to this customer misconception—and the warranty talking points noted above are a great place to start.

“We tell people that diamonds are very strong,” said Kimball. “They probably won’t scratch, but they will cleave. How they cut diamonds for years and years and years is with a hammer and chisel, so they cleave. So yes, there’s a good chance you could chip your stone.”

In fact, she noted, “we don’t offer a warranty on eternity bands because they’re going to chip, or they’re going to fall out, they’re going to break. It’s going to happen.”

“High-quality stones stones are prettier than lower-quality stones.”

Arundale and Kimball both expressed frustration at clients who shop with rigid requirements regarding the 4Cs—they want only D-E color or VVS clarity, for example. “You can’t buy diamonds by letters and numbers,” Arundale said.

Her advice: “You make them feel like they have outdated information. You say, ‘The old way of thinking was that certain grades and letters equate to beauty. We now know that’s not the case.’ Another thing you can do is show them an ugly-ass D color/VS quality stone.”

Arundale also mentioned a tactic she learned from Adam Fried, who is now director of retail at IDD Luxe (and formerly a global trainer for Hearts on Fire). If a customer is set on a G-color VS stone, you might say, “Have you ever seen a G-color car? Have you ever seen G-color hair? Do you know that G is not a color? G is a degree of rarity. And an H will perform just about the same as a G.’ So now you’ve told them something they don’t know. They thought G was a color, and all of a sudden it’s not a color. You shook them up.”

“GIA stones are the best you can get.”

While some customers are 4C literalists, others are sticklers for what the trade calls “GIA stones.” The dossiers provided by the GIA (or another lab) for diamonds “are not certificates,” Yood said. “We use the certificate terminology a lot in the industry, but the document is a report of what one gemologist who looked at the stone saw.

“It is a snapshot in time, it was looked at by one person. So just because a gemologist from one lab looked at it doesn’t mean that a gemologist from another lab, or even a gemologist from that same lab, might look at it on a different day and see something different.”

Plus, stones are graded incorrectly all the time, according to Kimball: “I bought a ‘D, SI1’ stone that has a GIA report, and I can see a big black dot in the center with my naked eye. It just got misgraded. It’s in my inventory, and I show it to clients to show that you can’t just buy a stone because it has a GIA report.”

“Lab-grown diamonds are the same as natural diamonds.”

Yood acknowledged that this misconception—which is really more a perception—is technically accurate: The Federal Trade Commission has laid out the definition of a diamond, and it’s all about the physical, chemical, and optical properties of a diamond.

“While laboratory-grown diamonds are absolutely the same crystallized carbon [product], we know that the process to create them is not, in fact, the same,” Yood said. “So from a legal perspective, the material technically has the same physical, chemical, and optical qualities, scores a 10 on the Mohs scale of hardness.

“But they get to the market in very, very different ways,” she pointed out.

Kimball said she tries to counter the “sameness” argument by highlighting the difference in value of lab-grown versus natural diamonds. “We tell customers, the cost that you’re paying right now [for a lab-created stone] is the cost to grow it, cut it, and set it. After they leave our store, there is no value left at all. And people still buy them hand over fist. They want what they want.”

Younger generations tend to have a negative view of the mining business, said Yood. They may not realize they buy other products that depend on mining. “Not all mining is bad,” she noted. “And everything that went into your iPhone is mined. There are minerals used in the manufacture and processing of every product that we buy.”

Officially, “the JVC is product-neutral,” Yood qualified. “We just want everybody to tell the truth about what they’re doing. So if you’re going to sell laboratory-grown diamonds, great—please disclose them correctly, and don’t confuse your consumer.”

Top, from left: Aleah Arundale, Kathleen Kimball, Sara Yood, and moderator Karen Dybis discuss “Common Jewelry Customer Misconceptions & Myths” at JCK. (Photo by Camilla Sjodin)

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