I have been a customer of bidz.com for about 3 years now. At the beginning I received some great deals as I worked nights and when I bid on items I had little competition. Now bidz.com advertises everywhere and a lot of items go for more than you would pay in a store. The site has a lot more traffic now.
I have received some great deals on gold jewelry and brand name watches for a fraction of the cost. 3 years ago I was able to buy nice 10k rings that were between 3.5 and 4.5 grams for $20 or $25 dollars. Now these same type items go for about $100 on the site. I have made the odd purchase with coupon codes here and there in the last year, but nothing significant.
Of these orders 2 rings described as 10k had no 10k markings on them anywere. 2 rings were missing very small side diamonds, one watch needed a new battery and some silver gem stone jewelry was so cheap looking and the stones of such poor quality I would have never paid what I paid for the item even with the discounted coupon code. I returned one of the rings with the missing side diamond and received a full refund minus my costs of shipping the item back which was only $6. One of the 10k rings that were not marked 10k I took to a pawn shop to have it tested for gold. The sales lady stated that she would get people coming in with a lot of items with similar tags and she asked where I got it. I told her bidz.com and she was also curious so she tested the gold and diamonds and both were the real thing. She asked what I paid for the ring and I told her $24. The ring was described as 2 lab created sapphires, 6 diamonds and 10k white gold. Most of the weight was in the 2 lab created sapphires and I was told the ring was NOT worth $24. They have auctioned many of these same rings, and usually they go for about $45. Not bad for a ring worth only worth $15 at a pawn shop. Yet bidz.com claims the compare price is $420. Now as far as appraisals go you can get a professional one done at a jewelry store for around $30. Bidz.com charges $33 for a mass produced report that can be used for 100's or even 1000's of the same item sold. You would be better off printing off the auction listing.

Even knowing gem stone grades and diamond grades will not be a big help on bidz.com. The diamonds are listed with color, clarity, carat size and cut style. Any color after J will be yellowish and any grade after SI2 will show flaws visible to the naked eye. Cut is not graded as either excellent, good, fair or poor. So you can buy an eyeclean nearly colorless diamond on bidz.com but if the cut isn't proportioned properly you will get a dull and lifeless stone. So you don't get the full description and the better color and clarity grades can't make up for a poorly cut diamond. Gemstones are only graded by color and carat. The gemstones are not graded as A, AA, AAA or B etc. There are many treatments to change color of stones and hide flaws which makes some stones very common now. Mined sapphires for example are graded commercial in over 99% of the stones. These are a grade not for jewelry. One of the uses for commercial grade sapphires is road gravel. Also, blue topaz, amethysts, citrines etc are all heat treated to hide flaws and change color. I would say that almost all the silver jewelry and some of the 10k jewelry I purchased from bidz are commercial grade stones, most are poor color and very pale compared to the photos, some have pitt marks or scratches on the surface or like on of the 10k tanzanite rings I received the stones aren't of the same color. One is darker than the other 2 which makes the ring look cheap. The synethetic or lab created stones look the best of the bunch.
I have found the quality has gone downhill on bidz and the prices have gone up. The site is no longer somewhere you can go to get decent jewelry for a fraction of cost you would pay at a store. They sell junk, and in many cases for more than what you would pay in a store after factoring in shipping, trans fee etc. Why gamble and pay $45 plus shipping for junk when you can spend a little more at a discount retailer and get a better quality item that you can inspect before purchasing and also be able to return if necessary.

We had an order placed and paid with bidz.com plus several items in our "shopping cart" for purchase and bidz.com canceled paid order and all items in our cart. We spent hours - literally - accumulating these items. They claim there was ANOTHER "technical error" regarding "second chance items" (in other words, bidz.com did not like the prices, in our opinion). If that was the case why were items won outright also canceled??? It is bad enough to all to often receive items that are damaged, dirty and obviously photoshopped. THIS COMPANY HAS THE POOREST IT DEPT OF ANY BUSINESS WE HAVE EVER DEALT WITH. THEY HAVE BEEN CHANGING TO A NEW SYSTEM FOR MONTHS NOW AND STILL CLAIM PROBLEMS ARE BECAUSE OF THAT. BULL BULL BULLSH!T. THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME THEY HAVE PULLED THIS CRAP ON US AND OBVIOUSLY WON'T BE THE LAST IF WE CONTINUE TO SHOP THERE. We will be bidding on items now just to jerk with them like they have us for too long. WHAT A BUNCH OF LOSERS!!!

The list of complaints I have relating to this companies lack of service, lack of engagement with it's customers, bizarre penalties on returns, items that don't turn up, the rudeness of their staff, the rudeness of their directors, the very poor quality of some items and items not even coming close to their descriptions...is just to long for me to give my effort in writing about here. You have all suffered it so I am hardly telling you anything new. However, what I want to talk about, is this companies preoccupation with scamming and defrauding it's customers. I say preoccupation because they seem to choose to do these things, rather than simply doing business honestly. Here we have a company, run by shady Russians with criminal links, who have been and are presently under investigation by a number of agencies. For goodness sakes, even as I write this, their bloody ad appears on this site, supported by Google whom I take, just don't care where they get advertising revenue from...given Googles own search results are full of complaints pages like this one.

OK...it is my experience bidz is guilty of shill bidding. It's just so easy to pick up on, their own staff or agents bidding on items against you to inflate the price. Bet plenty of you have been initially disappointed when you have lost an auction to someone else, then just as quickly as the auction closes, you have it offered to you at your last bid price. Huh? Someone else won it didn't they? Many of you have also noticed sudden jumps in bids, considerably higher than what is required. This is a scam, you know it, I know it and so does bidz.

If an item does not meet very accurately the description found on the site, this is fraud, misrepresentation.

The recommended retails...oh dear...these are nothing but fictions, it's another example of misrepresentation.

I see a lot of positive feed back on some sites...yeah right, many of these feed back items are generated by bidz own staff and agents. So at best, lets just call them liars.

But here's a real good one and pure fraud. I examined an item sent to me. Apparently a genuine designer piece from Italy. Further investigations revealed this to be not the case at all. Lifting the bidz bar code label on the box showed another label underneath, 'Made in China.' But the bidz label clearly states, 'Made in Italy.' Now bidz knew exactly what they were doing, they must have, they stuck their label over the original with the express intent of hiding it. This is blatant fraud, there is no kind way of putting it, fraud, fraud, fraud!

I have made complaints to the Better Business Bureau, the Attorney Generals Office, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the FBI through their Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Please, if you have any evidence at all of possible fraud or just complaints about the way this company does business, I encourage you to do the same as I have, make complaints to the authorities.

There is interesting info on bidz on the facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2893&id=100000550064203&saved#/profile.php?ref=profile&id=100000550064203

I made several purchases on the auction web-site Bidz.com for jewelry.
The two necklaces which I purchased were dissapointing, as they were kind of chinzy.
I kept them, as I thought that I may have miss interpreted what I was getting. In other words,
I gave Bidz the benefit of the doubt. On 9/9/09, I bid and purchased a garnet ring. I received the
goods quickly. When I open the box and saw the ring, I was shocked and very upset! How could this
be the ring I was expecting!?? It was the worst piece of junk I have ever seen. The setting was paper
thin and the whole ring was quite small in scale as compared to what was shown on the web-site.
I asked via internet, to a michale damian at [email protected] twice, for an authorization number and an
address to return the ring to. (This person had sent me an email asking about my necklace purchases).
To-date, I have made two requests to return this merchandise for a full refund. I have not heard
anything from them. At this point, and after reading all the negative experiences other people
have had with Bidz, I doubt that I ever will get satisfaction.
PLEASE, PEOPLE - - - - - - - Do yourselves a big, big favor! Don't ever buy from this web-site!
Sincerely,
Barbara S.
Andover, NJ

I've just spent the last hour or so reading the complaints about bidz.com, the online jewelry (and I use that word loosely) auction site. PLEASE, if you are tempted to spend one penny on this low quality (no quality) jewelry, let me advise you that you would be money ahead to just set fire to your money or flush it. You can go to WalMart or K-Mart and find better quality. AND don't even try returning the junk for a refund.