That’s just its nature
Last summer, three consumers sued a jewellery retailer in Tennessee, each claiming EGL International reports they had received for diamond jewellery they purchased overstated the stones’ clarity and colour grades. Though the three lawsuits were settled out of court, the story doesn’t end there. With the publicity and online chatter that erupted regarding the lawsuit, Martin Rapaport delisted all EGL-graded diamonds a few months later from his diamond trading platform, RapNet.
Now I do need to clarify that EGL International and EGL USA, the latter of which has been active in Canada for the last 12 years, have no business affiliation and only share the acronym, EGL. Although the industry is generally aware of this distinction, Rapaport felt consumers would not know the difference—EGL is EGL is EGL. Polygon, another diamond trading platform, disagreed with Rapaport, choosing to delist only EGL International-graded diamonds.
In December 2014, the trade publication, National Jeweler, reported a class-action lawsuit against EGL International and unnamed major retailers was in the works, charging the “lab systematically over-graded diamonds the retailers then knowingly sold to consumers.” (As of this article’s writing, no lawsuit had yet to be filed.)
My first thought when I heard the news was why did it take so long for a retailer to be taken to court over the issue of an over-graded diamond? After all, over-grading had been the topic of conversation in diamond circles for many years.
I can say quite confidently that many, if not every member of the jewellery industry, is aware that grading diamonds is a subjective endeavour. However, this vital piece of information is not always what a consumer is told. Rather, grading terms are presented as absolutes and unwavering. When called out on what appears to be conflicting grades for the same stone, the answer usually given a consumer is that grading diamonds is subjective and that even graders at the same lab routinely come up with different grades. That’s just the nature of grading diamonds, they say.
