Lpearls.com warning - they will rip you off - NOT akoya

I wonder why it has become a trend of today. Every now and then we get a question from a new member who asks where she or he can get akoya pearls in shells in bulk. Is it because suddenly people realize that they can make money by selling those canned oysters? The thrill of opening an oyster and find a pearl inside? What makes it suddenly so popular?
 
JP, it's a mystery to me. Wish pearl existed since very long. But now suddenly this sham mushroomed uncontrollably that everyone asks about that...
 
Personally, I think it's because of general ignorance about pearl quality. I think many of the folks who buy these oysters (for the pearls) genuinely think they're getting what they pay for and are additionally generally clueless about pearls. Once you've gotten educated about pearls and mechanisms behind the "wish a pearl" thing, it's pretty hard to be so enthusiastic about it. This is what I find icky about the whole wish-a-pearl business; folks who shill out this stuff are basically investing in the ignorance of others.
 
Thank you for posting this story Jeremy. I am unfortunately the guy he wrote this story about. This is a very bad situation for myself and my family especially before the holidays. The open a pearl live business was so much fun for myself and our consumers. I have been reading threads on here over the past several days and educating myself, and I already know that many of you think we as open live people are scam artist etc. I can assure you this was not our case personally, I felt as if I did my homework I studied for weeks before ever making my first purchase and at the end of the day still fell short. I even went as far as bringing them to a "real" jeweler and allowed him to cut some in half to see what we actually had. He said his findings were surprisingly good, he himself even acted surprised of the quality of our pearls. Well I believe the good lord lead me straight to Jeremy (Kind of strange the first person I call happened to be him.)After speaking with Jeremy I felt like I was punched in the gut. For now I would like to remain under an anonymous name until I can figure out what legal obligations I have to take from this point forward.

Just to follow up on the story, we do all business transactions through Paypal we even have paypal debit cards. Paypal had a buyer protection policy however so far our story isn't seeming as if we are going to have a happy ending. Paypal stated a police report has to be filed before we can be refunded our money. Police came to our house and "investigated" the situation. The end result was they had no proof we were not shipped our items and there is no charge that is black and white that they could charge the company with since they are international. So as of now it seems as if we just lost out on the money we spent.

To add to detail that Jeremy himself did not hit on, one of our orders was placed on the ninth at 10.55.11 pm they even sent paypal a tracking number from 4 am on the ninth almost 19 hours before the order was even placed. :(
The box total weight did not add up either, The box had a weight of 3.6 lbs and was roughly 8x8x14 this box was suppose to include a large volume of oysters 100 jewelry boxes and nearly 165 pieces of sterling silver jewelry. So as if the weight of the box was not a dead give away I sure wish someone would teach me how to pack all of this inside of this small of a box.

At the end of the day this is unfortunate and I pray this does not happen to anyone else. I still have 30+ customer orders to fulfill and no jewelry to put it in. As Jeremy stated in the beginning I had taken everything to reinvest into the business. This has been one terrible way to have to learn.

Hello, I am so sorry to hear this. I believe that everyone has a specific reason that leads them to the new open oyster business. I wouldn't say it's a fad I would say it's something that some people just have a passion for. To which I do. I have honestly heard so many times about this happening with not getting what we ordered, and that's not OK. I'd really love to know who is a solid source to get the oysters and jewelry from. Can anyone help with this? Can anyone us and lead us down the right path to buy these items?
 
I'd really love to know who is a solid source to get the oysters and jewelry from. Can anyone help with this? Can anyone us and lead us down the right path to buy these items?

P-G is a forum for pearl education and consumer awareness. Contributors here do not enable perpetuating misinformation nor encourage outrageous markups for any reason.

So, the short answer to your questions are... nobody, no one and no.

Try China.
 
Hello, I am so sorry to hear this. I believe that everyone has a specific reason that leads them to the new open oyster business. I wouldn't say it's a fad I would say it's something that some people just have a passion for. To which I do. I have honestly heard so many times about this happening with not getting what we ordered, and that's not OK. I'd really love to know who is a solid source to get the oysters and jewelry from. Can anyone help with this? Can anyone us and lead us down the right path to buy these items?

Have you missed all the posts about the dangers of the chemicals and how people are getting duped into thinking they are getting a quality item but in reality it is only worth pennies? What part of deception did you not understand?
 
This is Celeste from Kamoka here (and this is my first post!). We have been getting emails daily from people trying to source Tahitian pearls in shells for these parties. It started as a trickle a few months ago and we always try to answer people politely, but the numbers are increasing significantly. I finally asked one of them to give me more details and she claimed to have 5 million viewers to her events (so, you know, a decent percentage of the US population watching pearls come out of a long-dead oysters on Facebook -- um, not likely). After reading this thread, it looks like this is all worse than I imagined! I'll get Josh onto removing that stolen photo on the Vantel page ASAP. Thank you so much Dave for digging that up. Obviously, we want no part of this industry! That sickly yellow shell with the dried out yucky insides on Etsy made all my maternal oyster loving instincts go on major alert. What a bizarre trend. Oyster guts aren't very glamorous even when fresh.
 
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We get them on a daily basis too. We just send everyone here. They've come through our chat, email support, Facebook page and there are even people who call.

I spoke to Bo at the CPAA and he was also getting a lot of people contacting the org.
 
Hi Celeste!! So glad to see you posting here...

I had someone message me via Etsy about this, which I thought was odd.

Jeremy, one suggestion for CPAA...maybe they should make a direct statement on the sale of preserved shells with post-mortem pearl insertion and post it on their website?
 
Thanks Jeremy,

Yeah I'll start doing that too. I've been hoping to find a link I can send people to, so here it is.

And hi JerseyPearl! Better late than never, right?

Happy New year everyone :)
 
Waving a big welcome, Celeste :) Hope we can all help shine light of facts and truth on this misinformation and fraud.
 
Jeremy, one suggestion for CPAA...maybe they should make a direct statement on the sale of preserved shells with post-mortem pearl insertion and post it on their website?

Excellent suggestion!
 
I got a private message on here for the same info, which of course I do not have.
 
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