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Woman received Pandora rings for her Mother’s Day present. Then, they allegedly turned black as coal: ‘It’s not worth the box they put in’

Her roadside flee market jewelry allegedly outlived her Pandora rings.

Woman received Pandora rings for her first Mother’s Day present. Then, they allegedly turned black as coal: ‘It’s not worth the box they put in’Woman received Pandora rings for her first Mother’s Day present. Then, they allegedly turned black as coal: ‘It’s not worth the box they put in’

ThriftyThirties (@chickensgold7) told TikTok shoppers to skip Pandora jewelry this holiday season. Her experience with Pandora sterling silver rings that her husband gifted her has soured her view of the brand.

“I’m telling you to save your money,” ThriftyThirties told TikTok. She warned anyone considering buying Pandora for themselves or a loved one as a holiday splurge to rethink. The content creator prefaced her story by sharing that she and her husband had little to spend when they first got married. She added that they drove beat-up cars and lived in a suboptimal apartment.

But over time, ThriftyThirties said her financial situation with her husband improved. Because of that, ThriftyThirties said her husband bought her a Mother’s Day present from Pandora. She said she received a trio of rings, which she appreciated.

“They were the first expensive gift that he had gotten me while we were married,” ThriftyThirties recalled. It was the first set of rings he could afford, and she cried when he gave them to her. They quickly became her favorite rings, and she said she wore them every day. After a while, she looked down at her hand and noticed her rings were turning black.

She told her husband about the rings turning black. However, her husband told her that she needed to get her rings cleaned at the Pandora store. The saleslady allegedly told him that if the rings are used regularly, they also need to be brought in for cleaning because they will tarnish. ThriftyThirties had her rings cleaned, and the metal looked polished after. But then she looked at the cubic zirconia stones and noticed they were getting cloudy. The rings didn’t sparkle like they used to. But because she was sentimentally attached to the rings, she still wore them every day.

Her Pandora rings were never the same

“Tarnish, clean, tarnish, clean—a never-ending cycle,” ThriftyThirties commented. Whenever they tarnished, she took them to Pandora to have them cleaned. She also said that she got two more rings from Pandora over time to add to her collection. But ThriftyThirties also has 925 sterling silver rings that weren’t from Pandora. She claimed her unbranded rings haven’t tarnished, unlike her Pandora ring. ThriftyThirties said she didn’t think much of it until they moved to their new home.

She stored all of her sterling silver and gold jewelry in one box because she didn’t want to damage any of it. ThriftyThirties said it took her three to four weeks to unpack her jewelry box. When she opened it, her sterling silver rings looked fine and shiny.

“But guess what I see when I look over my Pandora jewelry? They might as well have been enamel-coated for how black they were. Black as night, black as coal,” ThriftyThirties alleged. It wasn’t the quality she expected from brand-name jewelry. She was as disappointed as this woman who bought a $6,000 Van Cleef bracelet, with its stone already shifting inside the setting. ThriftyThirties said her rings were “unrecognizable,” and she started crying over what had become of them.

After calling her husband, she took the rings to the Pandora store for cleaning, hoping they would be restored to their former glory. But the saleslady allegedly told her the rings were “ruined” and that, because she hadn’t come in for a cleaning in a long time, they had likely tarnished from chemicals on them.

An unhappy customer

“Please explain to me how my hundreds of dollars of Pandora jewelry, that’s supposed to be this fantastic quality, turns black as coal. But my cheap, roadside, flea market, sterling silver jewelry, and my Etsy sterling silver jewelry have lived to tell the tale,” she compared. ThriftyThirties did not show photos of her allegedly blackened sterling silver Pandora rings. She says they could no longer be worn, even though she has allegedly tried to clean them because even the crystals were ruined.

“It’s not worth the box they put in,” she said of Pandora jewelry. She isn’t the only customer to complain about a retail jewelry brand. Earlier this year, a man warned against buying David Yurman pieces, arguing that their sterling silver pieces are not worth the price tag.

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Vanessa Esguerra (She/They) is a staff writer for The Mary Sue. She speaks three languages but still manages to get lost in the subways of Tokyo with her clunky Japanese. Fueled by iced coffee brewed from local cafés, she also regularly covers every possible topic under the sun while queuing for her next match in League of Legends.