Of late I’ve haven’t been blogging as much as I’d like. Truth be told I’ve felt I’d said everything I wanted to say on the matter of valuing. But recently things have happened that have moved me to put some words up into the blogosphere. In some of my previous blogs I’ve explained why not everyone who works in the trade can value jewellery, and what level of detail is necessary in a valuation. It probably sounded a little preachy but I felt, as an expert and a qualified valuer, it was my responsibility to inform the public of things they need to know. However I cannot make the decision for them as to where they go to get their valuation done.
When I started, I calculated a price that I thought was fair for the amount of work involved. After a while I dropped the price slightly in order to be competitive. Colleagues in the UK said I wasn’t charging enough and in a way they were right but when you start out in business for yourself you can’t run the risk of raising your prices so I kept them as they were. A customer, happy with the service, kindly offered to place a comment on boards.ie, which he did. However somebody replied promoting a competitor charging far less than me. This worried me a little and I sat down to think of my pricing structure again. Then last week I was revaluing a piece with a valuation carried out by this person in 2008. What I read appalled me. The description was one short typed line, and didn’t describe the ring at all. The centre stone did have the certificate, the only details that were transcribed from it were the weight of the stone and the report number. There no measurements, no description of any of the marks inside the shank and no total weight of the piece.
First and foremost this “valuation” did not describe the ring and would be of no use to a loss adjuster when trying to replace it. But thats not what made me angry. It was how could they possibly compare what they do to what I do. And more than that, how did the have the brass neck to charge a client money for this “crap”? And this is not the first bad valuation I’ve seen from various jewellers around Dublin. Now I’ve always avoided saying too much and I’ll not name names (only to say the example used in this blog came from a jeweller in the Powerscourt Town House). Valuations that are hand written, or one line or just way off the mark with the value. I’ve seen the lot. In the UK the NAG have worked very hard to bring up the standard of valuing. However there is a minimum standard of work that an insurer will require over there. But what of our insurers? As far as I can see its a mixed bag, some will and some won’t. And as usual Ireland has to happy to accept a lower standard of service and expertise from our insurers and jewellers than our friends in the UK. In the coming week I’ll be writing to all the major insurers in Ireland to make them aware that by accepting badly executed valuations they make it a lot more difficult to settle claims as well as leaving themselves wide open to fraud. I will also ask for their comments which I intend to publish here. However don’t hold your breath. I have contacted insurance companies, brokers and regulatory bodies before and they rarely do me the courtesy of a reply.
I’m sorry for this spleen venting, but this is important to me. I love what I do. As far as I’m concerned its a vocation more than a job. Its cost me a lot more than its earned me, both financially and personally, but I’ve stuck with it. I’ve put my heart and soul into this and I’ll be damned if a bunch of jokers who think they can value continue to cheapen my chosen profession.
David Dupuy
David is the owner of Irish Jewellery Valuation Services, one of Dublin’s only specialised jewellery valuation providers.
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