If you want to buy your “significant other” a pair of pink heart earrings for a special occasion and the sum total of your jewelry shopping expertise is zero, where should you go? You’re an avid Internet shopper, but is it wise to buy a potentially expensive item without being able to examine it? Are high priced local jewelry retail outlets the best source for pink heart earrings?
Internet web sites often offer the cheapest prices you’ll find on jewelry since they don’t have to pay the costly overhead of doing business in a “brick and mortar” environment. In addition, they make returning products very easy. However, do you really want to risk disappointing your partner with a gift that isn’t “just right”?
There are two principal reasons for disappointment with jewelry products bought over the net – quality of the materials and size. Go to a web site that includes customer product reviews, like Amazon.com, and you’ll find many comments about the poor quality of the stone or the setting. You’ll find even more along the lines of “they were smaller than I thought.”
Considering the volume of jewelry sold over the net it is amazing that e-Tailers like Amazon have yet to figure out that you can’t gauge the size of a pair of earrings from a simple picture. Amazon appears to be finally catching on, as they are starting to launch a series of customer reviews on video. If these ever get around to including jewelry, you’ll be able to gauge the size by seeing them worn on a real woman. However, that still won’t overcome the quality of materials concern.
The sad truth is that you’ll be safer buying from a local retailer where you can touch and feel the product. It’s tougher to find affordable pink heart earrings this way, but if you have the time and patience you can usually find more expensive earrings at affordable prices when they go on sale or are clearanced out by the manufacturer or retailer and are sold at significant discount.
There’s another benefit from shopping at jewelry outlets. For some reason, some women are as impressed by where you bought the jewelry as they are with the jewelry itself. If that sounds sexist or you doubt that it is true, you have obviously never seen any of the Jared commercials filling the airwaves.
These commercials capitalize on the belief that some women are more impressed with jewelry from Jared than jewelry from Target, Wal-Mart, Kohl’s, or Amazon. If you can afford something a little more expensive, buying pink heart earrings from a well known jewelry outlet may be the best way to go.