Every Katastrophe begins with Kay

"Every kiss begins with Kay..."

The commercial now haunts me.

Two and half months ago I ordered a wedding band for Blake. I looked all over to find the ring he wanted: plain titanium band, brushed finish, with no embellishments. You'd think it would be fairly easy to track down a ring like that...but no. The gods were against me. After several weeks, and multiple stores, I finally found the ring in a catalogue (they didn't even offer it in the store) at Kay Jewelers.

That was --obviously-- my first mistake.

I paid a down payment and signed a contract saying that it would arrive by January 30th. A couple days before January 30th they called me to say that the ring was finished and I could come pick it up in the store. After work, I rushed (as fast as the metro could carry me) to the store to pick up the ring.

When the salesman showed me the ring I thought (and/or maybe said out loud to him): "Well, this ring is great...it's just not the ring I ordered." Because it wasn't the ring I ordered. This one was ultra-glossy. Not brushed. Not acceptable.

Let's try again.

They re-ordered the ring and promised to have it ready in a week and to call me when it was finished.

A little more than a week later (I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, even those people), I called the store to see what the status was. "Oh, we ordered another ring, but it is still not the right one, so we're ordering another."

This time I was fairly understanding.

Until last week. I called the store again, wondering where the ring was.

"Well m'am, we've ordered 4 rings now and they've all come back incorrect. We didn't call you because we didn't want to tell you that your ring isn't in yet."

"Well, I'm getting married in two weeks, so this is a big problem."

"I just don't think we can help you anymore. You'll have to order your ring elsewhere. Or, you can use this ring as a loner and then bring it back after the wedding."

I went in the next day to pick up the loner ring and to give a piece of my mind to the salesmen/women. With only two weeks to go, there was no way I'd be able to find and order another ring. It's just not possible.

The saleswoman who had originally ordered my ring was there. Her name is Lucy. She is a b**** (sorry, but that's the only word to describe her). I have never been treated so poorly in my life.

Now, I'm not proud of the way I acted, but I felt justified in speaking my mind when she was being so horrible to me. She never apologized to me. She refused to look me in the eye. She would not give me any sort of discount or compensation for my time and trouble. Right about the time she said "I'm not going to risk losing my job for your wedding," is when I got really mad.

I spoke to her in a way I've never before spoken to a sales associate. Then again, she spoke to me in ways I would never dream of speaking to anyone. I won't repeat the rest of the conversation, but it wasn't pretty and ended with me red in the face, nearly in tears, and wanting to punch Lucy square in the nose (or at least stand in front of the store shouting "don't begin anything with Kay!").

My project this week -in between writing thank you notes to the generous people that have given us wedding and shower gifts- is to write a strongly worded letter to Kay's corporate offices telling them the ridiculous ordeal that their Pentagon City store put me through.

I will also be writing a letter to the Better Business Bureau.

I'm not kidding around.

Also, I secretly hope that now when people google "Kay Jewelers," they'll come across my blog and think twice about ever making a purchase there.