Shopping for an engagement ring

JamesCC

Hi all,

I have been snooping around the forum for years, more recently for engagement ring info.

Some a question to those that have shopping for one

Obviously I am looking to haggle for the best deal. Should I state my correct budget or state a little less? And should I dress smart or just casual? I am conscious they will be stereotyping me the second I walk in to try and up sell!

Hoping to go shopping for the ring on monday, GF has no idea

Thanks

J

daivid

Good Luck!

There is lots of good advice in this thread so have a read, if you haven't already: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/192077

The advice on style and size of ring, and were to go to shop is particularly important in my opinion.

For price I knew the style and the approximate diamond size and qualities so passed that on to the shops and said I was happy to spend up to xxxx, all the shops I went into showed a range of rings from a few hundred under to a couple of hundred over budget. Except for one small shop that only made to order who quoted to my specifications. Haggling - I had a target price from online and backed up by the made to order price so used this and got satisfactorily close .

As for clothes, I went for respectable but comfy as was prepared to spend all day and didn't see the need to put on a show. If it's any help: Casual leather shoes, best jeans, open shirt and a smart jumper, none of the jewellers seemed to cast judgement and had I 'dressed-up' I might have felt self concious. Had I been popping over in my lunch hour I could have been dressed much smarter and felt fine so I guess there isn't a hard and fast rule.

Finally don't be afraid to walk away from a shop if anything is bothering you, there are plenty of other shops (especially in the Jewellery Quarter or Hatton Gardens). One shop put forward their 'self-certified' diamonds that looked poor to me (I had asked for certified anyway) so I went to get some lunch and never returned. Also I told the shop I eventually bought from that I was going to have a look round the other shops, the lady was perfectly friendly, wrote down the details of the rings I'd been looking at and wished me luck.

Gloomendoom

We shopped in the Brum jewelery quarter for a wedding ring and made a day of it so we had plenty of time to visit the various shops, some more than once.

Just one point, the traders aren't all out to squeeze every last penny out of you. When we went back to collect the ring after it had been made, the final price was less than they had originally quoted us. If they had charged us price as quoted, we wouldn't have known any different.

JamesCC

thanks for the advice folks, excited and nervous about tomorrow :rotfl: