I had some pearls that I had purchased in southeast Asia and wanted to get the turned into some earrings for my girlfriend. I walk into the place thinking that this is a custom show full of artists who will know exactly what I can do within my budget. The boy helping me was nice enough but after explaining to him what I wanted to try to do - rather then suggesting solutions busted out a parts catalog of jewelry stuff. Not knowing what anything was or how it might go together it was all a foreign language to me - how was I supposed to know what pieces to put together? I instead looked around at the samples in the store until I saw something simple I liked. He showed me the pieces that were used and I could see that they only costed about $10 total and asked him to let me know how much the whole thing would cost and that I would be right back. He said to ask for a different person when I came back cuz he was leaving store to do a deposit . Upon retuning I asked for the boy ""Mike"", but apparently he was too busy, but another boy - ""Johny"" came with a hand written quote that he couldn't even read. When I asked a question he would have to go back and ask some other guy... In the end he wanted to charge me $100 to drill a hole in the pearls and then $40 for the $10 post that you slide through it. It was going to be close to $200 when it was all said & done. And it would have looked totally ordinary. I almost went for it but decided to try another Jeweler - Guess what? The other Jeweler (Glazer) - $30 and that included customizing a pair of vintage silver earrings so that I would have a pair that were truly unique.
If i was dropping 10G's I'm sure things wouls have been different.
Cons: a whole bunch of Middle-eastern illegal aliens ...Engrish
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