One of the fundamental aspects of any decent online diamond business is to provide customers with a great user experience on their website. This is where Abazias does not shine. While the website is fairly easy to navigate, it is very outdated in design.
I feel that the overall layout of the site is in need of a professional design and makeover. One annoying thing I kept noticing was that the text and framed boxes were constantly misaligned on my browser.
Poor Usability Issues
To be fair, Abazias does go to lengths to try and provide its customers a pleasurable experience. To assist consumers with their shopping, they have a live chat system in place.
Now, here’s my main complaint. Even though the Build Your Ring tool may seem like an elaborate and interactive tool, it fails to deliver. The basic process of building your own ring goes like this. First, you need to select a diamond of choice, then select a setting, and finally, view and approve the finished ring design.
Graphic filters are used to help you refine your selection. Basically, there are five features which you can filter to narrow your search. This includes price, size, color, cut, and clarity. For more advanced users, you can further filter your specifications with inputs for table, depth, polish, certification, fluorescence, or symmetry of a diamond.
Wow, everything sounds good and the Build Your Ring feature does look like a promising tool for consumers to use. However, my experience with it is nothing short of irritation and frustration. More often than not, the feature does not load up and a “loading” icon seems to take forever to process.
At the point of writing, I could sometimes get the feature to work by refreshing my browser but most of the times, it doesn’t work at all. My guess is that the issue lies in the scripting/programming of the feature. Point in note: I do not experience any such problems on other sites like Brian Gavin, WhiteFlash and JamesAllen.
All the negative points aside, what I liked about Abazias is their educational articles which they post on their site. You can find this section under the category of “Diamond Information”. Also, there’s a link to the blog where informative content ranging from the latest news to how-to guides are posted. While I hate to admit this, I do find it a pretty refreshing read for most parts.
With that said, there still is no saving grace for our experience with them. At the end of the day, all we care about is shopping for a diamond that offers the best value in terms of cut quality and pricing. Like Bluenile, Abazias.com does not offer sufficient data for consumers to make an educated selection. You are basically buying “blind” and that’s a really bad idea when it comes to diamond shopping.
Payment and After Sales Support And Abazias
Abazias offers all major payment options, from the major credit cards to bank wire transfers. There’s a 2.3 percent discount on cash payments and your purchase is shipped within 24 hours of receipt of payment. Check payments are acceptable but take longer to clear and therefore affects the timing for your package to arrive.
In terms of support, there’s a phone helpline and email support available. However, Abazias does not provide support for live chat after office hours. Another drawback is that they only offer a 10-day money back guarantee, which is quite minimal compared to usual 30 and 60 days for other stores. More importantly, the age old problem of buying blind is still a phenomenon that exists in Abazias. What this means is that it puts additional risks on you, the consumer.
We believe you should get a diamond purchase right the first time…
Overall, it is still a decent online website for buying jewelry. Our findings on Abazias.com is definitely not the worst I had seen with online dealers. However, I personally see no reason to shop at Abazias when other websites like James Allen & Brian Gavin can offer you a better shopping experience, better terms (return policies) and at a lower pricing.
Where From Here?
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SOURCE:http://beyond4cs.com/reviews/abazias/customer-experience/
