Posted by ellie on January 1, 2009 · Leave a Comment  

There’s a lot of information on the home page – including a letter from the founder and a monthly update/letter. Like other elements on the site, it’s slightly overwhelming but not off-putting. An information library, with everything from recommendations about safe metals for piercings to piercing aftercare to birthstone information and legends, is a nice resource for customers. Also beneficial is the company’s recognition that not everyone who shops their site is located in the UK, so they provide conversions for their metric measurements (13 mm/US 1/2?) and also supply prices in UK pounds and U.S. dollars.

BMG breaks their products down into a lot of categories, and those categories are further broken down into lots of sub-categories. This set up makes it easy to shop for what you want – if you know exactly what you want, that is. There isn’t a huge selection of jewelry within most sub-categories, however. And it would be helpful if there were tabs on the homepage where you could simply click onto the category you want. Instead, customers much click the “shop by category” tab before selecting the type of jewelry they’re interested in.

There are pages and pages of customer testimonials – seemingly everyone who’s ever bought anything from the company wrote to tell them about it. Which is a fine tribute to the company’s products, but the sheer volume is slightly overwhelming, and I found myself reading only one or two reviews when I discovered how many pages were involved.

Unfortunately, shipping isn’t free – all orders cost 5 British pounds to ship. Which means that depending on the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar against the British pound, Americans can expect to pay up to $10 for shipping.

BMG packages all of its jewelry in plastic, which they say allows customers to view the product and see if it’s okay before opening. Once you get into the packaging, however, the jewelry can’t be returned. This is a rather poor policy because it’s very difficult to view the details of the workmanship through layers of plastic and impossible to know whether a piece will fit. To their credit, they have a huge, red, can’t-miss “Warning” label on the packaging that explains the policy. But even if you don’t open it, you only have 14 days to send it back – on your own dime to the UK, of course.

The company offers a three-year guarantee against normal wear and tear, as well as a guarantee that the stones are exactly what they claim to be in the letter of authenticity. Any guarantee is better than none, of course, but it would be nice to know that they’re confident the workmanship will hold up past three years.

The product descriptions aren’t fancy, but they do include important information such as the material used; the cut, clarity, and weight of the diamonds (if applicable); and the gauge. Another pro is that the product descriptions for the nose jewelry include a photo of how the nose jewelry will look on you. Sometimes it’s hard to picture the difference between a 1 mm and 2 mm, for example, so it’s very helpful to have a model for each product. The downside to the site is that you have to click on the product information to get to the price. It would be nice if the price showed up a page or two before that so shoppers know whether the product they’re interested in is within their budget.

Based on the written guarantee from their own supplier, BMG guarantees customers that its gemstones are procured from sources that don’t fund conflict, which is in line with UN regulations.

BMG uses nickel-free gold in its creations.

All of their pieces are made in the UK in BMG’s own workshops.

Tell us what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!

View the original article here