Wow - I can now understand why small businesses are failing in Ridgewood and Ridgewood Ave. is littered with shuttered storefronts. My family had shopped at Paris Jewelers for years (including my mother and my aunts) and we recently had the worst experience. My wife and I had our registry here, as did my brother and his wife and as did my cousin and her husband. It took months and months for us to finally get all of our china. When my wife and I finally got around to using all our china, we noticed that two of the plates, while in very good shape and very nice, were not the exact same pattern from our registry. My wife called and told them of the mistake. We assumed that we would be able to simply return the two plates that they had mistakenly given us and receive two of the correct pattern. The response was unbelievable. My wife was told that the registry was closed and was too old and that they had no way to know "what really happened." My wife told me what happened and I assumed that something most have been lost in translation. We weren't trying to return defective or chipped plates, in which case the response would be completely reasonable. We were trying to exchange the two plates that had been given to us mistakenly for the two we should have received originally and which matched our pattern. I called back to clarify and was met with antagonism and accusation. The owner told me that what I was trying to do was akin to buying a car and trying to return it years later because there was a scratch on it. This obviously made no sense. I wasn't saying there was anything wrong with the plates - they were very nice - just not the plates for which we had registered. She also told me it was not the store's responsibility to make sure we got the correct plates. I pointed out the folly of that comment; a store is not responsible for fulfilling the correct order? Again she said she had no way of knowing what really happened. What did she think we did - break two plates, go out and buy two of equal value and then want to get one over on them by returning two perfectly good plates for two of a different pattern? What a masterstroke! Who knew that the cutting-edge criminal mind was plotting away in a corner of Bergen County. Lastly the owner said that there was nothing she could do and that no store could do anything under these circumstances, even a "department store." I explained that this was exactly why you shop at a local "mom and pop" store so that you can build relationships over years and receive the personal touch. Alas, I realize I was wrong and I learned a lesson. You should shop at the megastores, because when a misunderstanding arises there and you are faced with a completely irrational person, you can write a letter to the president of the company, reach someone reasonable and receive some redress to your grievance. Well Paris Jeweler's, you may be right, we may never know "what really happened." But what we do know is that we'll be buying two replacements at Macy's... read more
