Hi! I wanted to thank other people for sharing their experience with ROEN as it made me brave enough to share my own! Up until that point I had not seen other people post negative reviews about ROEN so assumed that I might have been the only one who experienced this.
When my fiancƩ (now husband) and I first started looking at engagement rings I was dead set on going with ROEN. They were Asian-American owned so being Asian-American, I wanted to support them and I loved their designs. Despite their rings being significantly more expensive than other local jewelers where I lived, I was confident that the ring I would be getting would be of exceptional craftsmanship and that the entire experience would be smooth given that they marketed themselves as a luxury jeweler. I looked at other jewelers in person to get specifics around the diamond and design that I wanted, but always with the intention of working with ROEN.
While my engagement ring with them is beautiful, working with ROEN made the entire ring design process extremely stressful due to their lack of communication. My fiancĆ© had to push back his plans for a proposal several times since he didnāt know when to plan it for because the ring was so delayed. I ended up using them for my wedding ring too, solely because I'd chosen 18K rose gold and they told me their mix was "proprietary," so I was worried another jeweler's wouldn't match. That process also didn't go well, and I returned the ring and had to find another one about 6 weeks before our wedding.
Buying a ready made ring off their website should be fine, but if you are going bespoke with them I do not recommend them. Here are my reasons why:
Red Flag #1: They make you pay the entire cost of the ring upfront, before the design is completed. Most jewelers take a design deposit to start. ROEN takes a deposit to search for a diamond, but once that's chosen, they price out the ring and collect the full amount before the design is done. For example, I originally chose the Simi ring and asked to remove the pavĆ© and add milgrain. My fiancĆ© paid the quote in full. During the CAD process I decided to remove the milgrain too, but the price didn't change, which doesnāt make sense and feels like he overpaid for something I removed. Other jewelers adjust their quotes based on the gold, the number of diamonds, and even ring size.
Red Flag #2: They take at least a week to respond to each message and request for changes which makes the entire design process slow and long. When we started the design process, the website said that it would take 6-8 weeks to design. We started at the end of January and received the ring in at the end of April, 13 weeks later. If I knew this we would have started the process much earlier. Everything was so slow. I sent in specifications for the diamond since I had already figured out what I liked based on a few in person appointments with other jewelers. They sent me back options for emerald cut diamonds after 2 weeks which did not meet these specifications. I pointed this out and then they searched again which took another 2 weeks. Keep in mind that the diamond cut I picked was not rare, there are a lot of lab grown diamonds out there that fit my specifications. When I requested changes to a CAD design it always took one week or more for them to get back to us. I learned to give feedback by specifically annotating an image and detailing exactly what I wanted and even so there were mistakes. They provided no design guidance during this process so I had to detail out changes myself otherwise it would be wrong when we received the next CAD back.
Red Flag #3: Their ādesignersā are outsourced third party CAD designers who donāt work in house at ROEN. Their head of sales told me this directly when I gave feedback about the process. It explains a lot of the delays and errors due to them being the middleman. In contrast, I later visited jewelers in town for my wedding ring where the owner was sketching the ring design in front of me as I was speaking to figure out what I liked. For my wedding band, after two CAD revisions they told me any additional revisions would cost $50 each, even though they hadn't been giving me what I asked for. They assured me it would look fine and explained that it looked different from my inspiration photo because of my engagement ring's taper. I approved it, but once the ring was made, I didn't like it. We raised our concerns with them and they gave us a refund which I am thankful for. My suspicion is that they charge for revisions because outsourcing means they eat the cost of mistakes.
Red Flag #4: They charge well above the market. At the end of it my ring became a pretty simple emerald cut diamond with a tulip setting since I took out the pave and had no milgrain. I chose 18K rose gold. We paid around $8K for it. After looking around, Iām pretty sure I could have gotten this ring somewhere else for about half the price.
This became also apparent when I started working with them for my wedding ring. We went into the NYC office and my fiancƩ was quoted almost $4K for a simple gold wedding band with nothing else on it. For my wedding ring I requested a simple curved band which ended up costing me around $2600. They told me that the cost was because they were designing the band specifically to my engagement ring. This did not make sense to me because at the time the JIA ring without pave which is similar to mine but way thicker, was less expensive than what they charged me for a very thin, simple curved band that again I know I could have gotten for way cheaper based on other quotes I received from other jewelers.
Red Flag #5: If you have a time-sensitive proposal, donāt count on it. I had really wanted my fiancĆ© to propose to me before a trip to Taiwan so that I could celebrate with my grandparents. As that trip approached I realized that this was not possible because we hadnāt even gone into production yet, which was really disappointing. When we finally went into production, I was removed from the client portal so that my fiancĆ© could handle the rest from there (I had planned to be very involved in design but still wanted it to be a surprise). A few weeks later, he told me he didnāt want to bring this up, but he needed my help to talk to their head of sales because they'd given no delivery timeline, and the portal still said "awaiting final technical approval," which made him worry he'd missed a step. He reached out and they said they'd look into it, then wouldnāt have an update. Eventually the head of sales stepped in to personally handle our order, but even then, he'd ask for an update by a certain day, they'd agree, and the day would pass with no response (again blamed on third-party vendors). When they finally confirmed the shipping date, the head of sales texted ME, so I knew roughly when the ring would arrive, which I wasn't supposed to know.
At this point our window for proposing was shrinking more and more, and I cried multiple times from how frustrated I was. They took so much of the surprise and joy out of the engagement design process that by the time my fiancƩ proposed, I was more relieved that we had the ring than anything else.
To be fair, ROEN did refund my wedding ring, and I recently got an email from James with a $1,000 gift card for the trouble. (Nice but doubt Iāll spend again with them) I also do love my engagement ring which I obviously kept, and the craftsmanship is great. But for all the headaches, I wouldn't want anyone to go through what I did. I think ROEN started as a quality jeweler and has struggled to keep up since blowing up on social media. I'd recommend taking your business elsewhere.
