Devastating Experience - Don't be fooled by their curated Google rating
Edit:
1) They delete ("hide") bad Google reviews. Don't be fooled by their 5-star rating as we were. We were so confused when our experience and final product were so horrific and different from the reviews - now we know it's because they delete bad reviews where they can.
2) They will copy your custom ideas without even delivering for you. They have since posted rings they've made for other couples, copying our ideas of the exact elements and combinations they told us were impossible to execute.
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We had a very bad experience designing a ring with Michelle and her team. I have to discourage any couples from working with them for a bespoke engagement ring. It was stressful, upsetting, & led to a bad outcome. Our experience working w/ Michelle damaged our engagement process, something we do not ever get back and are grieving - and upset both of us very much. We are paying another designer to remake the ring.
Design Process:
Our experience was nothing like the portrayals on Michelle's instagram, which is full of stories of how much fun she had designing creative ideas for couples (designing a hidden Snitch into a Harry Potter-themed ring, sourcing a Sri Lankan sapphire in a specific orange color for a Sri Lankan bride-to-be, weaving in symbolism meaningful for the couple, etc.). For us, there was no joyful, creative adaptation of our vision into a creative design. The guidance we received was mainly them saying yes to our ideas and tacking them onto the design (without the holistic perspective we'd expect and need from ring design experts), or them telling us what we were asking for isn't possible. No creative solutions. We mainly spoke to Ella, (who told us she's a ring designer, but we saw on the Michelle Oh Instagram she is actually the studio manager) and then Michelle would send us dozens of WhatsApp messages based on Ella's notes. Details were often missed, and it was up to us to catch them and communicate our asks again to Michelle. One of the major issues with the final product is the basket looks unfinished - like someone just melded ring parts together without any cohesive design. We called this out to Ella when reviewing the CAD with her, and she insisted that it's just the look of the CAD and that our basket would be streamlined like the rings in the studio. The finished ring does have the unfinished look we called out in the CAD - it was not just the CAD look - but because we approved the CAD design, we are stuck with what we "approved."
Quality:
Our plan was for me to be involved in the design of the ring but for my fiance to take over once the ring was designed so our proposal would still be a special surprise. Unfortunately, the original ring we received was so far from what we agreed with Michelle and her team that my fiance felt he was left with no choice but to show me the pictures because he was sure it wasn't right (and he was correct). I ended up having to go to Michelle's studio and try the ring on - before being proposed to. So the first time I wore my engagement ring was in a studio, without my fiance, to negotiate the changes that needed to be made to it. They fixed the most egregious issues (prongs that were 4x the length what we approved and looked like eagle talons + metalwork that was unfinished and actually lumpy) but said they would charge us £950 to make further changes.
We asked for my partner's birthstone to be embedded in the inner band, and the gold around the setting is chipped and ragged. The prongs are not set properly and snag on fabrics, regularly catching fuzz.
Professionalism:
Michelle requires clients to purchase their center stones on her database (without seeing them in person and without any return option, by the way, practices we've since learned are frowned upon by diamond and jewellery professionals). After we selected a nonrefundable, multiple-thousand-£ purchase without ever seeing it, the purchase had to go through Michelle, so we let her know via text. She responded with dozens of paragraph-long texts at 10pm, saying she had to build our complete invoice for the entire ring and receive our deposit before she could purchase our stone. She asked us to commit to every cost element of the design (even the gold type) in that moment or risk the diamond being purchased by someone else. I asked Michelle if it would be possible to switch our gold decision (a difference of just £250) after this invoicing but before design so I could do some research, and she made a big deal about the hassle of issuing an adjusted invoice down the line. This is basic paperwork & the minimum expectation for a luxury service costing thousands. So when making the largest purchase of my fiance's life for an item I will wear forever, we made a 10pm rush decision just so Michelle wouldn't have to potentially update a Word document with a £250 change.