We usually send exports by EMS, which is the default cost-effective and safe delivery method offered to gemstone exporters by the Sri Lankan government body in charge of gemstone and jewelry exports (the National Gem and Jewellery Authority).
EMS, or Express Mail Service, is a co-op service formed by the global Universal Postal Union which gets handled by the domestic post of each participating country. The parcels are tracked, fully insured and need to be signed for on delivery.
We’ve never had a parcel go missing but if greater security is required, FedEx, Brinks, Malca Amit and G4S are all options too. Please note that these come at an additional cost, as charged by the respective companies themselves.
It's also worth mentioning that shipping options can vary slightly by country/geographical region or due to global logistics-related events (Covid, lockdowns, etc.), but in such cases we will notify you over e-mail well prior to the stones being shipped.
From experience, EMS and air mail usually take:
North America
7-14 working days for EMS, 14-21 working days for air mail
Europe
5-7 working days for EMS, 14 working days for air mail
Australia
5-10 working days for EMS, 14-18 working days for air mail
South America
7-10 working days for EMS, 14-21 working days for air mail
Asia
2-7 working days for EMS, 7-14 working days for air mail
Africa
8-10 working days for EMS, 14-21 working days for air mail
...Not sure about Antarctica, but we’ll ask the penguins.
FedEx and other courier options usually deliver within 3-4 days worldwide.
In any case, we will update you with a tracking number, detailed documentation and an ETA once your order is sealed for export with the local customs and is on its way to the airport.
While we cannot influence customs duties payable on delivery to various countries, it should be fairly easy to find these out beforehand: a call to your national Customs hotline should put you on the right track.
With that said, we'd be happy to assist you in finding this out, so for more info please just contact us about it.
Loose gemstone shipments regardless of value are normally free of import fees and taxes in the U.S., Israel and Malaysia; while buyers in Hong Kong only pay a 0.35% government fee on loose gemstones.
We currently accept wire/bank transfers, PayPal and cryptocurrency.
Please note that some high value stones or combined parcels will only be payable via direct bank transfer or crypto to ensure maximum security on our end and protect ourselves from chargeback fraud, as well as to avoid the exorbitantly high PayPal fees which usually accompany high value transfers.
If your purchase falls under this category, we will definitely let you know beforehand.
All of our images are extensively, carefully and thoroughly edited and color-matched to reflect how our gems look in diffused daylight outdoors, which is considered the default grading standard for colored gems by the global gem trade. We do this by editing them with the stone and the monitor side by side in ambient daylight.
This long and very meticulous process is an absolute necessity, as anyone who has ever had the chance to photograph gemstones with high accuracy in mind can attest to. It’s all the same whether you use a smartphone, a $5-10k Canon or Nikon or a $50k Hasselblad, no modern camera system will capture a gemstone’s color accurately at all times (or even most of the time for that matter). “No editing” simply means “no consistent accuracy”.
The colors in our photos are purposely made to be as close as they get to reality when viewed on an average modern monitor with a generic (s)RGB display calibration profile.
This includes most mobile devices but please always check the images on a desktop/laptop to be sure, since many mobile devices have a tendency to oversaturate colors.
If you’d like more info on this, or want to ensure you’re seeing what we’re seeing, please drop us a mail.
One other thing to note is that no gem looks exactly the same at two different geographical latitudes on Earth. Anecdotally, we’ve noticed our stones looking ‘sharper’ and crisper in more northerly latitudes for example than they do around the equator – and how gems look varies with the viewing environment, light, time of day, atmospheric conditions (even pollution) and so on. The same stone can appear slightly different on different days even in the same location, but these are mostly minor changes that are stated more as a pro forma fact than because they'd make any significant practical difference.
We usually edit to reflect an ‘average’ of a gem’s possible looks – they are never ever edited to show their absolute best, but neither are they at their worst.
The idea is to replicate ‘usual’ diffused daylight conditions outdoors but you can request additional media showing fluorescent, incandescent, indoors, outdoors, and just about any other lighting scenario you'd like. Just drop us a mail and we’ll get back to you showing the stone in whichever light setting you’d like.
Simply put, we want happy deals.
We’re not here to take your money and pass you inferior stones as something worth wasting your time, effort and resources on. We don’t consider them worth ours, and we don't think they're worth yours either.
We work closely with everyone who orders from us so there's no strict ‘return policy’ as such – it’s more of a relaxed ongoing conversation. We want people to be completely satisfied with their new stones and to that end we spend and inordinate amount of time making sure they are accurately represented in all of our photos, videos and descriptions.
So once you receive your stones, check them freely and decide whether you’re happy to keep them.
And remember we’re here to answer your questions and provide as much additional info and media as necessary before shipment to help you make the right decisions to begin with. Loads of questions are totally expected, so there's really no need to be shy – these are gems, not groceries, and it’s completely understood they’re difficult to buy online.
It doesn’t matter if you need a week and a hundred additional questions, photos and videos to decide – the idea is to make well-informed purchases and only be pleasantly surprised (or not surprised at all) whenever you receive the stones.
If for some reason you aren’t happy with the stones, you are of course free and welcome to return them. Nothing is ever considered “sold” until we hear back from you after you’ve seen the stones in person.
We don’t charge restocking fees, but refunds do come minus the shipping, insurance and transfer costs that we actually had to pay to send the stones your way.
As well as cost reimbursement, this is also in place to prevent disingenuous orders – we don’t want to encourage people to order several stones knowing they’ll be returning half of them and incurring import costs for us, or order and keep them for a week, then return them.
Export of gemstones out of Sri Lanka is a long and complicated process full of red tape, government oversight and hoops to jump through. We put a lot of work into seeing every minute of it through perfectly so please only order if you actually want the stone, or if you wish to consider it and need to see it in person to decide (which is completely understandable and justified).
We don’t charge import fees to receive stones back, although returning parcels do in fact incur import taxes on our end (as strange as it is, return taxes are still charged for the same stones that were just exported and paid export fees for).
Finding the exact gemstones you’re looking for takes a lot of time, effort and resources and return conditions for those are usually always agreed on in advance.
They’re settled on an individual basis, in agreement between you and us.
Generally speaking, returns for these are discouraged if we buy a stone on your behalf that we otherwise wouldn’t want to consider keeping in stock ourselves. On the other hand, there are also sometimes stones that we wouldn’t mind taking back even if we didn’t buy them intending to keep. It’s always open for discussion and can be agreed upon as required.
Every country/continent has their own preferred gem labs. Lab marketing, terminology differences and method differences all account for this. And that’s just as well.
We know our sources very well, and we stand behind our identification of treatments without reservation. So if for example we send you a stone that we are certain is unheated and you submit it for a lab report and it comes back as heated, we will refund you in full, including lab report fees, insurance and shipping. Treatments are nothing to mess with and we take this very seriously.
Treatment ID should be sacrosanct and inviolable in the gem trade – if something is said to be unheated/standard heated, it must test as such in any reputable gem lab worldwide.
In short, enhancement identification needs to add up wherever you get the report from. Any discrepancies would be grounds for a full refund for the stone, lab report, shipping, insurance, export fees, PayPal/bank charges, etc.
The main advantages of buying online are a wider range of stones to choose from, a pricing structure substantially friendlier than what you could normally expect to pay in brick and mortar jewelry stores, and being able to order from the comfort of your home.
While development and maintenance of an online store can be costly, it’s nowhere near the overheads paid by retail stores. No real estate mortgage/cost/rent, no utilities and no retail insurance means that considerable savings translate into lower final prices.
Our excellent position at the source and our wide contact base also ensure that we get stones from as close to the mines as possible, rather than further down the supply chain with multiple markups included into the cost.
You will know pretty much the moment the stone is delivered and you see it for yourself, in person.
This is why we back stones with a return and refund policy. We want everyone we deal with to be completely content with their purchases and we do understand it’s impossible to know whether that’ll be the case before a person sees the stones for themselves live.
Nothing is ever considered “sold” until you see the stone and specifically state that you wish to keep it, but we also do our best to inform people as well as possible before they decide to order something to begin with.
With thousands of scammers scamming their merry way around the web, a bit of skepticism is in everyone's best interest. Caveat emptor, of course.
But as trained gemologists and experienced dealers, we know what we deal in and we stand behind our stones unreservedly. No excuses, no exceptions.
It’s in no one’s interest, least of all ours, to try and portray them as something they’re not. Doing so would translate to returns and losses in time, shipping and non-refundable import taxes paid on our part (not to even mention unquantifiables like reputation and trust that takes years to build).
So to help you visualize the stones you’re looking at as closely and as accurately as possible, we’ll provide you with high quality photos and videos and take great care to portray all of their internal and external characteristics as objectively as possible. Our practically nonexistent return rate is a good testament to this approach working well over the years.
The laws of the universe? The meaning of life? Anything - feel free to just contact us!
