When buying engagement rings, do your research. Diamond prices are complicated, and if you leave all your trust in a salesman, they can turn your head around and convince you to pay more than you want to. When I went into Kebadjian's, I played dumb to see how honest they would be, and they tried to get me to buy a diamond that was, frankly, bad. Of all the jewelers I met with, Mike was the ultimate salesman that made me feel like a buddy, but he was not someone that I trusted by the end of our meeting.
As any jeweler will do, Mike showed me a few different diamonds in my price range. But the largest one, by a very noticeable degree, was one that he called "SI-3" on the Clarity scale. Mike combined this information by reminding me a dozen times that he was one of the first in town to get a GIA certification - trying to boost my trust in him, and confuse the fact that his GIA certification would mean the diamond itself would be GIA certified. (For the uninitiated, if you want to have any trust that your diamond is actually worth what you paid for it, you need to receive a third party certificate from GIA or another reputable lab, or to be a gemologist yourself.)
Well, spend 2 minutes on Google, and you'll find that "SI-3" doesn't exist on the GIA rating system. Which means he either would not send it for GIA certification, or that when he did, that would come back as an I-1 or even I-2, not as "SI-3." Those are the bottom of the barrel for clarity, which means the flaws in the diamond are visible to the naked eye. Who wants to pay $10K+ for a diamond any Joe Schmo could tell is bad? His personal GIA credentials had no bearing on making that bad diamond into a good one.
Even though the other diamonds he showed me were just fine, I was so turned off he would try this SI-3 move that I walked away. No other jeweler in my shopping showed me an SI-3 diamond.
As other reviewers noted, their business is by referral only. My personal opinion is this was just another salesman move in building trust. After all, you already know someone who bought here, so why shouldn't they be trusted? But even putting aside the SI-3 garbage, sitting with Mike for a while completely eroded my trust. He showed me his personal computer and walked me through everyone's engagement ring he had recently worked on, including people I know. There was no anonymity - names were all over the files. Which made me realize that anyone I referred after me would see all the details of my purchase, and maybe even figure out what I paid. While Mike was very friendly and made it seem like he was giving me an "inside scoop" on how his business worked, I just felt like I'd violated other people's trust.
I'm not saying everything is bad at Kebadjian's - the jewelry looked great. But be warned that there are salesman moves going on here that might not be in your best interest. read more