lary007
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2015
- Messages
- 661
I am not a person to post about this kind of thing, but it has made me really angry to think of all the people (including people I know personally) who have fallen into the trap of believing this stuff. If you have not seen what I am referring to, you can youtube vantel pearl party and kinda get the jist. If you would rather not watch it, I will give a synopsis.
So, I ran across a "pearl party" on facebook the other night. It was a girl (called a consultant) opening what looks to possibly be akoya oysters (hard to tell on fb, though) that when opened housed a single (sometimes two) pearls. She would then measure the pearl, described its color and on the basis of color and size alone, determine a price at which the pearl was supposedly valued off her "cheat sheet". No mention of quality. I ended up watching two shows from the same consultant on two different nights and saw round to near-round pink, white, cream, and "rare black pearls". Yep. So then I asked the consultant what kind of pearls these are. She says freshwater. I figured that could be true, because of what I can tell from the slightly grainy video, but what these pearls are being plucked from are not triangle mussels and there would not just be one pearl in each mussel. That also still leaves the problem of dyed black pearls being sold as "rare" instead of what they really are. I am 100% positive this girl is just saying whatever answer Vantel pearls as a company has instructed her to say and she probably believes it, because why shouldn't she?
I kept watching and she would call out people's names from a list for them to select their oyster they wanted. I figured out through what she said on this live stream that people would order a finished piece of jewelry from a Vantel pearls catalog and their name would get put on this list for the next pearl party for them to pick their oyster and resulting pearl which is then sent off for several weeks to be set into the jewelry setting they chose.
After being a tad disturbed at what I was watching, I wanted to get all the information I could on this consultant, company, etc. I learned that consultants pay a fee (kinda like Avon) to get a pearl "kit" and the oysters to open on a live pearl party. The consultant then get shipped all of the things they need to get this party started and apparently there is training in the form of online education (this is information I got from both the BBB and the website vantelpearls.com). They then start these parties up and draw in crowds using Facebook's live feed feature. That is how I came across this one consultant I had been watching.
I obviously had issues with the dyed thing, as I said in the beginning. So, I decided I would contact somebody on the company end (not a consultant) with my concerns and just ask them to be a little more transparent in how they were presenting the pearls. I wasn't very hopeful I would receive any reply, I really just wanted them to know there were people catching on to what they were doing. To my shock, I was replied to within just a few minutes at 9 PM. I was told that the pearls are not dyed, that they "come out of the oysters that way" and that they come "in a variety of colors as a result of the oysters". Then I was offered to join their consultant team once their hiring hold was lifted in October after telling me how fast the company was growing. I then replied that I would like more information about the type of oyster that these pearls are coming from, because the oyster in the picture is not a freshwater mussel like the consultant I asked claimed. He/she said they were sorry the consultant was misinformed, that they are akoya oysters and pearls. To which I replied that akoya oysters also do not create dark black pearls that I was aware of and again asked for more information about the oysters and if they used a new technology for culturing pearls that I was just not aware of. Of course, I got a reply that said thanks for my input and they would look into my concern, no straight answer.
My thing is, like I told the rep in the message I sent, I love the idea of people being interested in pearls and this company has obviously created a lot of interest very quickly. What I am not a fan of is consumers being deceived and then being turned off pearls when they come to PG to ask about the pearls they get from places like this and are shocked when we tell them they are not natural colors when they've been explicitly told they were. It can make people not want to buy pearls again.
At the end of the day it's mostly just annoying to me and whether or not they continue their deceptive (and frankly, disgusting!) practice of opening days or weeks-old dead oysters or whatever on live feeds is really not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but I at least wanted there to be a thread on here so that if somebody is doing their research on this company before purchasing they would maybe see this pop up in a search and help them to decide to maybe purchase pearls from somebody more reputable who is being forthcoming with information regarding what they sell.
And please do let me know if I've gotten this wrong. I am not trying to spew lies, this is just how it appears from my view.
So, I ran across a "pearl party" on facebook the other night. It was a girl (called a consultant) opening what looks to possibly be akoya oysters (hard to tell on fb, though) that when opened housed a single (sometimes two) pearls. She would then measure the pearl, described its color and on the basis of color and size alone, determine a price at which the pearl was supposedly valued off her "cheat sheet". No mention of quality. I ended up watching two shows from the same consultant on two different nights and saw round to near-round pink, white, cream, and "rare black pearls". Yep. So then I asked the consultant what kind of pearls these are. She says freshwater. I figured that could be true, because of what I can tell from the slightly grainy video, but what these pearls are being plucked from are not triangle mussels and there would not just be one pearl in each mussel. That also still leaves the problem of dyed black pearls being sold as "rare" instead of what they really are. I am 100% positive this girl is just saying whatever answer Vantel pearls as a company has instructed her to say and she probably believes it, because why shouldn't she?
I kept watching and she would call out people's names from a list for them to select their oyster they wanted. I figured out through what she said on this live stream that people would order a finished piece of jewelry from a Vantel pearls catalog and their name would get put on this list for the next pearl party for them to pick their oyster and resulting pearl which is then sent off for several weeks to be set into the jewelry setting they chose.
After being a tad disturbed at what I was watching, I wanted to get all the information I could on this consultant, company, etc. I learned that consultants pay a fee (kinda like Avon) to get a pearl "kit" and the oysters to open on a live pearl party. The consultant then get shipped all of the things they need to get this party started and apparently there is training in the form of online education (this is information I got from both the BBB and the website vantelpearls.com). They then start these parties up and draw in crowds using Facebook's live feed feature. That is how I came across this one consultant I had been watching.
I obviously had issues with the dyed thing, as I said in the beginning. So, I decided I would contact somebody on the company end (not a consultant) with my concerns and just ask them to be a little more transparent in how they were presenting the pearls. I wasn't very hopeful I would receive any reply, I really just wanted them to know there were people catching on to what they were doing. To my shock, I was replied to within just a few minutes at 9 PM. I was told that the pearls are not dyed, that they "come out of the oysters that way" and that they come "in a variety of colors as a result of the oysters". Then I was offered to join their consultant team once their hiring hold was lifted in October after telling me how fast the company was growing. I then replied that I would like more information about the type of oyster that these pearls are coming from, because the oyster in the picture is not a freshwater mussel like the consultant I asked claimed. He/she said they were sorry the consultant was misinformed, that they are akoya oysters and pearls. To which I replied that akoya oysters also do not create dark black pearls that I was aware of and again asked for more information about the oysters and if they used a new technology for culturing pearls that I was just not aware of. Of course, I got a reply that said thanks for my input and they would look into my concern, no straight answer.
My thing is, like I told the rep in the message I sent, I love the idea of people being interested in pearls and this company has obviously created a lot of interest very quickly. What I am not a fan of is consumers being deceived and then being turned off pearls when they come to PG to ask about the pearls they get from places like this and are shocked when we tell them they are not natural colors when they've been explicitly told they were. It can make people not want to buy pearls again.
At the end of the day it's mostly just annoying to me and whether or not they continue their deceptive (and frankly, disgusting!) practice of opening days or weeks-old dead oysters or whatever on live feeds is really not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but I at least wanted there to be a thread on here so that if somebody is doing their research on this company before purchasing they would maybe see this pop up in a search and help them to decide to maybe purchase pearls from somebody more reputable who is being forthcoming with information regarding what they sell.
And please do let me know if I've gotten this wrong. I am not trying to spew lies, this is just how it appears from my view.
