Expose: The Dirty Truth of Indian Gemstone Market

A first hand account of a client of the dirty secrets of the Indian Gem Market & how Gemstones are sold on false promises & ridiculous justifications.

Screenshot of Original Email Sent by Client

Lucky Strike is a validated user at Trustpilot and He has given a review at Trustpilot. A Validated user is one who can be verified by Invoice and proof of delivery by a 3^rd party verification platform like Trustpilot. He suggests changing the title of the classic piece of work Do Gems work-No They Do Not for 90% of the People to No They don’t for 99.50% after his extensive research in a major city of India. You can read his validated review at trust pilot by clicking here.

He has given his extensive experience of the Indian Gem Market and sent this mail about how people are just interested in selling Gemstones and justify treatments by equating them to drinking Glucose etc and equivalent Rubbish. We can all benefit from Lucky Strike’s experience and the important observations he has sent by experiencing it himself. If you have similar experiences do not be surprised.

Note: Areas have been blanked out to protect privacy. This e mail is reproduced as it is without any change in grammar or language.

Don’t Let This Happen With You

I would like to suggest your good self one thing and share my small research on Gem Stone Market in (Blanked out for Privacy).

Kindly change the heading of the article “Do Gemstones Work - No They Don't for 90% of the People”.

I am not telling you this just for the heck of it, kindly note my reasons,

When I 1^st encountered your website in July 2015, I had 16 Gem Stones and 3 Diamonds in my possession. Most of them were mounted in talismans and a few were loose.

These latest Gem Stones among the 16 were procured in November 2004 and rest were beyond that period.

All these 16 Gem Stones were purchased for Astrology Purpose only for different members in the family.

Only 4 Gem Stones were having certification from a totally unknown laboratory of whom nobody has ever heard and rest all were without certification.

So after going through your website, I thought let us test these Gem Stones from a reputed Laboratory.

My cousin happens to be a dealer in loose Diamonds, so I requested him to kindly suggest me at least five trustworthy places where I can go and confirm with them which of the 19 stones are worthy of testing?

He suggested me and I went to the 5 places in (Blanked out for Privacy). Now, these 5 guys were the biggest names of Gem Stone trade in (Blanked out for Privacy). Some of them been so big that they did not even entertained retail customers; they were like the Super- Distributors to the whole sellers. But, nonetheless every treated me welcomingly due to my cousins reference.

After I showed the stones to them, almost all of the 5 were of the opinion that only 9 stones are worth testing (out of which 3 were diamonds), so only 6 Gem Stones were worth testing. Rest they said are of very very low quality and are not worth spending Rs. 3202 per stone of Testing Fees at (Blanked out for Privacy)

At this moment I took out our Gem Stone Pyramid (As shown by GU) and asked them approximately where these 6 Gem Stones which we need to test would fit in the pyramid.

First of all none of them understood what is the Gem Stone Pyramid and so after some explaining to them, all the five said the 10 Gem stones which are of very Low Quality would fit in “Non Gem Grade Material” or “Lowest Grade” according to our pyramid classification.

The rest 6 Gem Stones which they recommended for testing would fit in “Middle Grade” & “High Grade”, but almost all of them suggested that out of these 6, 2 Yellow Sapphires & 1 Blue Sapphire might even go in the “Top Grade” according to our Pyramid.

So I decided to put these 6 Gem Stones and 1 Diamond out of the 3 for testing.

In testing only the Diamond and 3 Gem Stones came out to be natural and rest all the Gem Stones although Natural were Heated/ Treated etc.

Yes, you guessed it right only the 2 Yellow Sapphires & 1 Blue Sapphire came out to be totally natural WITHOUT any treatment etc. and these 3 stones were purchased by us in November 2004.

I was totally shocked by this and decided to investigate the matter and went on to visit the old 5 and another 9, total 14 so called big names in the Gem Stone market in (Blanked out for Privacy)

I entered (Blanked out for Privacy) at around 1200 hrs (this is when the actual market stars here) and left at around 2000 hrs i.e. 8 hours at a stretch without a break. This I did on 3 different occasions i.e. total 24 man hours.

These are the shocking revelations from all the 14 merchants I visited,

1) No body understood a damn about Astrological Gems and Gems for Jewellery. They said the Gem Stones are one and a same for both the purposes.

2) So armed with the knowledge from GU, the next obvious question was “What if the Gem Stones are Heated/ Treated etc.?

To this question, the answers were still more shocking,

2.1) Yes, absolutely the Gems Stones will be Natural, but, they WILL BE Treated/ Heated.

2.2) Sir, only after the Treatments the effects of the Gems Stones will increase. It’s like drinking glucose water and getting your energy back after you feel dehydrated. So sir treatments are like Glucose for Gem Stones.

2.3) Two of the merchants went ahead and started explaining me how the gem stones are treated/ heated when they are in the mines itself and compared the same with fertilizers been used for farming when the seeds are in the ground.

3) Nobody knew anything about the Gem Pyramid at all. Their definitions were quite vague about the quality parameters, which I really did not understand at all. For example at one place the merchant showed me a Blue Sapphire of 2.3 Cts which was for Rs. 77,000/- and another Blue Sapphire of 1.8 Cts which was for Rs. 88,000/-. I told him that I am liking the 77,000/- one hands down over the 88,000/-. The merchants started explaining me that the bigger one which I am liking is of low quality since it is from different mines, has lot of inclusions etc. I asked him how the hell you make it out without the certification. They said “Sir we are in the trade, we know it all, Certification is just a waste of money in front of our experienced eyes, you have come from a trusted source, now you will have to place your trust on us, simple that is how the market operates.”

4) I said I will buy good quality Up-Ratnas if I do not have the budget for some Gem Stones and everybody was quick to bounce back and say “Sir why buy Up-Ratnas, it’s better to WEAR A LOW QUALITY, TREATED GEM, then buying Up-Ratna, at least it will give you better results.”

5) Everyone was of the same opinion that I should buy a Gem Stone with more Carat Weight (and yes as Guruji said in his articles, at 3 places I was told Rattis) and compromise on the quality if so desired. I even saw some customers who were advised a particular weight and they were getting a stone of that weight, but the merchants very easily convinced them to spend a little bit more, compromise a little bit on quality and take a weight which was almost 1.5 to 2 times greater than that was suggested , absolute COLD BLOODED MURDER of the Gem Therapy.

6) When I asked about the certification from a reputed laboratory like (Blanked out for Privacy), everybody unanimously told me the same thing. That they do not provide certificates for Gem Stones whose value is below INR 1,00,000/-. If I want it then I have to pay 5% more. If the value of per Gem Stone goes above INR 1,00,000/- only then they will provided certification from (Blanked out for Privacy) for that particular Gem Stone.

7) I said I will pay 5% more, but show me the samples of the certificate. Everybody pulled out certificates of (Blanked out for Privacy). I asked them where is the Origin, it is not mentioned, then they showed me some certificates of GII with origin mentioned, but, said that it will cost me INR 6,500 extra, whether I buy a Gem above or below INR 1,00,000/-.

8) Then I asked them why are you people charging me so much for the certification? A Gem stone certification from (Blanked out for Privacy) up to 10 Cts WITHOUT Origin is INR 2,800 + 14.36% tax = 3,202.08 per Gem Stone for Non Members like us and for people who are in trade like you and are members of (Blanked out for Privacy) the charges are 1,300 + 14.36% tax = 1,486.68.

9) For Origin Certification the charges are a flat INR 5,000 + 14.36% tax = 5,718/- for members and non-members alike.

10) They said the markets operate in this way only, you can go and check out anywhere you like. We are answering all your questions just because you have come with a high reference, otherwise we do not have time to even talk all this rubbish.

11) In my 24 man hours of research, some shops which I visited were dealing in retail also, I saw lots of people just come ask for a particular stone suggested by whosoever to them and just buy it in maximum 5 to 10 minutes.

12) At one instance, I saw a guy sacrifice a Blue Sapphire of 1.27 Cts which was very appealing to him and had immediately felt a connection when he saw it, just to buy a Blue Sapphire of 1.23 Cts since it was suiting to his Numerology.

13) Lots of people came to buy a particular Gem Stone and went out buying a totally different one on the recommendation of the merchants.

14) Lots of these people do ask for certification, but get the standard reply discussed in point no. 6 above and hence they buy the stones without any kind of certification. These form the majority of the people I saw in my research.

15) Fortunately at 2 different places I got a chance to see prospective buyers buying Gem Stone of more than INR 1,00,000/-. Yes they asked for the certification and at both the places (Blanked out for Privacy) certificate was given. Out of sheer curiosity I asked the buyer can I see the certification and in both the certificates Origin was not mentioned at all and either of the buyers had no clue about it. Why, see point no. 7 above.

16) Nobody had a clue about Planetary Gemmologist Association (PGA) at all.

I am not giving you this story to boast about me, but as I mentioned I had 16 Gem Stones and from that only 3 came out to be totally natural without any treatments etc. So this time I had decided that I will not take any chance.

So armed with knowledge from your website and my correspondences with your team, I decided that enough is enough (ONCE BITTEN TWICE SHY) this time I will do the research myself and hence took 3 months 25 days to order the stones.

But, I personally feel that due to the comprehensive database on your website, your team’s support and the above research I was able to take decision and purchase all the 10 stones in one go.

When I asked my cousin approximately what must be the reach of the Gem Stones at least in (Blanked out for Privacy), handled by these 14 people whom I visited, he told me that altogether these 14 people have 88 Gem Stone shops in (Blanked out for Privacy) including their own and their franchisees and some of them are the biggest whole sellers and some are biggest retailers and must be having a reach of around 70 to 80 % at least in the (Blanked out for Privacy) Gem Stone market.

In my 24 hours of research, I saw more than 2 dozen people buy gem Stones for astrology purpose and very sadly none them will benefit from the purchases they have made. It’s a TOTAL and COMPLETE MAYHEM AND BLOOD BATH OF GEM THERAPY in (Blanked out for Privacy)

After going through the experience above and sharing the same with my associates who had already read your article “Do Gemstones Work - No They Don't for 90% of the People” on our reference before, the first and foremost thought which came to everybody’s mind was that the article heading should be changed from 90% to 99.50% (or to whatever you feel right after reading the above research) and so I thought I should share this collective thought and this small journey of mine with you and hence this mail.

I thought maybe if I bring this to your attention it may help you people further, if at all.

Warm Regards,

(Blanked out for Privacy)

Mass Produced Junk Quality Beryl Mineral Quality Sold as Emerald rings from INR 500/- to INR 15000/- depending on Vendor/ Agency that appears cheap to the client. The production cost of this is INR 125 or below

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