James Allen Review

Get a thorough answer to the question “Is James Allen reputable?”


In the fast moving world of the web, James Allen has been established for longer than most. While the business was renamed James Allen in 2006, it was actually established way back in the dark days of dial up – 1998 – when the founder found himself dissatisfied with the process of buying his engagement ring and saw a business opportunity.

Today James Allen is in the top two online engagement ring sites and has got a great reputation as a leader in technology to give buyers the best experience possible.

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James Allen provides by far the best images and videos of their diamonds on the entire web, which means that buyers can choose their stones with more confidence. Being able to see each diamond in 360 is a feature that James Allen have had for years and other retailers are just now starting to catch up. To ensure that they stay ahead, James Allen now allow potential purchasers to zoom in up to 40x on each diamond to check out the clarity and ensure that it looks great.

As with all of my review, I’m going to look at James Allen under the following categories:

  • Diamond Selection
  • Ring Setting Selection
  • Website Design and ease of use
  • Customer Service

International James Allen Guides

If you’re outside the USA, there are additional things to consider when making the decision on whether James Allen is the right retailer for you. Click below to access your local guide:

James Allen Diamond Selection

At any one time, James Allen has around 400,000 diamonds available for purchase on their site. They’re not technically in their ‘inventory’ as, like most other retailers, James Allen don’t hold all of the diamonds offered in stock – that would be way too expensive for any company to do. Instead, they’re held by a network of suppliers that are close to James Allen’s New York HQ.

However, James Allen doesn’t just have a random list of diamonds that it doesn’t know anything about – it ensures that it have inspected each and every one of the diamonds that appears on their site. Each diamond is assessed by a gemologist and a detailed picture and video is taken of each stone.

round brilliant colour E

Of the 400,000 diamonds that are available, around half are ‘round brilliant’ stones, while the rest are fancy shapes.

For more popular fancy shapes like the Princess cut or cushion there are around 4,000 stones to choose from, while for the more niche shapes like the Asscher there may only be around 500.

Although James Allen may have fewer diamonds on its website than some of its competitors (Blue Nile usually has around 200,000 available to buy at any one time), James Allen’s photography and videos mean that is actually the best place to buy shapes other than round.

Images and fancy shapes

Shapes other than round diamonds are known as ‘fancy shapes’, and this is where James Allen is head and shoulders above all of its competitors.

For diamond shapes like ovals, pears, marquise or hearts it’s extremely important that you see what the individual stone looks like, so that you can judge whether you like the cut and how much of a ‘bow tie’ is present.

In the examples below, the pear on the left has a good shape, with evenly rounded lobes which look good and will reflect light and sparkle.

The pear on the right has a dumpy squared off shape at the base which doesn’t look as elegant and won’t reflect light as well. Without actually looking at the images and if you were only judging them based on the values on their grading report, you wouldn’t have been able to tell which was a better diamond.

Pear semi circle shoulders e1457340974443

Pear diamond with good shape

pear square shoulders

Pear diamond with rounded shoulders and too much weight in tip

Bow Tie

Another reason that James Allen is so good for buying non-round shape diamond is that it allows you to see the ‘bow tie effect’. The ‘bow tie’ is a dark area in the middle of the stone and, while it can’t be eradicated completely, you do want to try and minimise it as much as possible.

Oval diamond bow tie

It’s hard to see how much of a bow tie effect a diamond will have from a still photo, but James Allen’s 360 images allow you to see the stones from all angles and judge how much of a bow tie effect is present

If you spin a few of these oval diamonds then you should be able to see a clear difference between some of them. Some have ridiculously large Kanye-style bow ties, while others are more of a smaller, more debonaire, Roger Moore-style bow tie. (Best Bond ever, btw)

roger moore bowtie e1453717010525

^^ Look for a small, 70’s era Bond bow tie in your elongated diamond.

kanye bowtie

Avoid a massive honking great big bow tie 

The ability to judge the shape AND the bow tie means that James Allen is the best store to buy pear, ovals, marquise or heart shaped diamonds.

For more regular shapes like the Princess or Emerald cut, where you can look at the grading report and see stats which indicate how well a diamond has been cut, like the ratio between the length and the width or the depth %, images are less important, but still very useful.

Images and Clarity

Having access to magnified images also means that you can examine each diamond for clarity, and check whether any inclusions, or ‘flaws’ in the diamond are likely to be visible.

With retailers that don’t have magnified images of each stone, I recommend that buyers don’t go any lower than VS2 on the clarity scale if they are looking for an ‘eye clean’ diamond ie. one that doesn’t show any inclusions when examined with the naked eye. At VS2 and above a gemologist has verified that a diamond is definitely eye clean, so you don’t need to worry about any inclusions being visible. SI1 and SI2 diamonds may be eye clean, but also very well may not be, so need to be assessed on an individual basis to check.

James Allen’s ultra-mega-high zoom images (if you register and log-in, you can zoom up to 40x actual size) mean that you can look at SI1, and even SI2, stones and filter out those that are obviously not eye clean and then ask the James Allen in-house gemologist to examine the stones and verify whether they are eye clean or not.

For James Allen, eye clean is defined as ‘if the diamond appears to be free of inclusions when viewed face up in daylight (or fluorescent lighting) by the naked eye (with 20/20 vision) from a relatively short distance (6-12 inches).”

0.5 carat sI1 250

Eye clean SI1 diamond

SI1 visible shadow

SI1 diamond with visible inclusions

Other online stores that don’t show images can sometimes get access to them and verify that they are eye clean, but most cannot.

GIA and AGS grading reports

The vast majority of diamonds in James Allen’s database have been graded by the GIA, which means that you can trust the grading reports and the stats that are shown on the website. The diamonds have been graded by an independent and reputable lab and the assessment is as accurate as it can be. You can access each diamond’s grading report from the detail page of the diamond.

A selection of diamonds have also been graded by AGS which, while equally as reliable as GIA, is less common and uses a different grading scale. Almost all of the True Hearts diamonds carry an AGS grading report. The good thing about the AGS grading reports on the James Allen site are that most of them include a computer-generated ASET image of the diamond, which can be used to judge the light performance of the stone. The general rule for judging these is that the more red and less green and grey, the better.

james allen lab selection

A very small selection of diamonds have an IGI grading report and I would recommend that you disregard those stones. You can deselect IGI under the ‘Lab’ tab in the Advanced Options on the search page

James Allen Ring Settings

James Allen has a wide range of engagement ring settings, across each of the classic settings styles: solitaire, pave, channel set, side stone, three stone etc.

As well as these, James Allen has a good selection of more unique and individual ring setting styles with categories such as Vintage, Tension and the cunningly named ‘unique’.

These categories give much more choice with the style of ring and if you are looking for something less common then James Allen definitely provides more of a choice than most other retailers.

Arched Scroll Diamond Engagement Ring1

One thing to note when viewing engagement ring settings is that if you have selected a diamond shape first, you will only be shown setting styles that can be used with that setting style.

This is great if you know that you want an oval diamond, for example, so you don’t get shown setting that you love but can’t use with your diamond.

Metals

Almost all ring setting styles are available in

  • 14K White Gold
  • 18K White Gold
  • 14K Yellow Gold
  • 18K Yellow Gold
  • Platinum
  • Rose gold

When you’re looking at a ring, it’s easy to switch between the different metals using a drop down menu, which also allows you to see the difference in price between the different options.

Cable Solitaire Engagement Ring2

James Allen doesn’t offer palladium, which can be a less expensive alternative to platinum and is increasingly popular. However, some jewelers are also shying away from it as it is difficult to work with and very difficult to resize, so James Allen not offering it is not a huge loss.

James Allen Website

James Allen relaunched their website at the beginning of 2015 and have continually improved it since then, adding new features like the ‘inspiration gallery’ of recently purchased rings, an instagram feed and a comprehensive education section.

It’s now pretty much the best looking website out there, which is all well and, but when you’re looking for an engagement ring it’s really the functionality that you are more worried about – whether it can help you find your perfect diamond and setting combo in the least confusing way possible.

Diamond Selection

We’ll start with diamond selection, as getting the perfect stone is key to getting a beautiful engagement ring. As with most online retailers, and all of my recommended retailers, James Allen offers a diamond search tool which allows you to enter your search criteria and narrow down your search. At the top level you can narrow by shape, the 4Cs and price. If you want to whittle it down further then you can click the ‘advanced options’ tab and specify symmetry, polish etc.

james allen search

While the search tool looks great, a minor frustration is that it reloads and updates the search results every time a new search criteria is entered, which can make for a slow experience as you input your requirements.

When viewing a diamond in detail and then clicking back to the search page, the search criteria often reset themselves to the default setting, which mean that you have to input your requirements and then wait for it to load one by one all over again.

Those are both pretty minor issues though, and using the search tool is very easy and makes it a cinch to find the diamond that is right for you.

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The diamonds have nice big images that you can make a quick decision on and you can roll over the symbol with three dots to see more information about each stone without needing to click into it. You can also compare diamonds easily by adding them to a shortlist, and then if there are any that really tickle your pickle you add them to a wishlist, which is saved for later review. This doesn’t mean though that the diamonds are reserved for you. As with many online jewelers, the inventory of diamonds is turned over very quickly, so if you don’t act quickly then the perfect stone that you added to your wishlist may have been snapped up by the next time you log on.

Engagement Ring Setting Images

Like with diamonds, each engagement ring setting can be spun around 360 to allow you to see if from any angle. This is a great feature to allow you to see more of the detail, especially for rings like the vintage rings, which have a lot of detail. Again, this is something that most other online sites can’t match at the moment.

shape dropdown menu

With the ring settings, one thing to note is that the default images all feature round brilliant diamonds, even if you have chosen another shape of diamond. If you want to see another shape in the setting then you can click through to the detail page for that setting and then click on the drop down menu on the bottom left of the image

Tax and shipping calculator

One feature that James Allen has that no other online retailer currently does is a widget to help people from outside the USA calculate the tax and shipping costs that they will incur. It’s tucked away in the bottom right of every page of the James Allen site and is extremely useful for working out whether you can fit a particular ring into your budget.

Tax and shipping calculator

Overall, the James Allen site has had a lot of thought put into making the experience as easy as possible. They present all of the information in an upfront and honest way and the site intuitive to use and makes choosing a combination of diamond and engagement ring setting as stress free as possible.

James Allen Service

Pre-purchase

Something that many websites are including now is a live chat, where customers can ask questions directly to customer service representatives and get an immediate answer, rather than flinging an email into the abyss and hoping to get something back in a couple of days.

The link to James Allen’s live chat is featured prominently on the left of their site and is available 24/7. Customer service reps are available almost immediately and on the several occasions I have asked them questions regarding the choice between two stones, or for a detail further detail the response has been instant and honest. Country-specific phone numbers are also provided, which are all routed through to customer service assistants in the US.

If you have a question that requires a more detailed answer, then the assistant may need to refer your question to a gemologist who will get back to you over email at a later date.

As mentioned earlier, a nice feature is that James Allen will provide ASET images of up to three diamonds free of charge if they are available. The reason that they only provide three is because taking an ASET image involves collecting the diamond from a storage facility and then setting up the diamond for the pic, which can be a painstaking process. They certainly don’t want to have to do this 20 times for each casual enquiry, so three is a fair number to supply.

Overall, James Allen do a great job of providing information and assistance to help you find the best diamond from within their inventory.

The Purchase

James Allen offers free shipping both within the US and to all other countries that it ships to. Something to note if you’re not in the US is that you will need to check the import charges for your country and factor that into your budget.

As a US-based retailer, James Allen are obliged to charge sales tax in the majority of states, but not all. As this changes frequently, we have a post to help you understand whether you will need to pay James Allen sales tax in your state.

As well as credit cards, James Allen also accepts direct money transfers and offers a 1.5% discount on the purchase price for doing so. You’re probably not going to be able to retire on that, but it’s not to be sniffed at either – on a $5,000 ring that’s $75 that you could put towards your proposal meal at Olive Garden!

After you have clicked the ‘buy’ button you are sent an email asking you to verify your ID and then you’ll be able to track your ring through the James Allen system as it is built, from ‘preproduction’ to ‘production’, ‘quality assurance’ and finally – ‘shipped’ James Allen doesn’t provide photos prior to shipment, but most customers receive a personalized page (with video) about two weeks after shipment.  

James Allen Box2

When you buy, your ring will be sent out in a high quality ring box inside a larger box, with all documentation for the ring and diamond safely stashed in a drawer at the base. The larger box can be used as a jewelry box in the future, which is a nice touch. Overall, the feeling of all of the packaging is extremely premium and the ring box is definitely nice enough to use for your actual proposal.

Post purchase

If, for any reason you change your mind about your ring then James Allen offer a 100%, no questions asked refund policy within 30 days, even paying the return shipping if you’re in the US. 30 days isn’t a huge amount of time if you are trying to find the right time to ask the question (I held onto my ring for 6 months before the time was right), but it is plenty of time to make sure that you like the ring.

If you love the ring but it’s not quite the right size then James Allen will resize it within 60 days. This only really makes sense to do if you’re in the US – if you’re in another country then shipping it back and then getting it back through customs to you is likely to cause significant headaches.

If in the future you change your mind about the ring or want to trade up to a bigger rock then James Allen offer a couple of schemes that can help you out.

Their ‘Two Year Buy Back’ policy means that they will buy back your diamond at 70% of the original purchase price, providing that it’s in good condition and you have the grading report. Diamonds are like cars and lose a huge chunk of their value as soon as you drive them off the forecourt, so this is a very fair deal. If you tried to sell a diamond to any other jeweler, you’d be lucky to get 50% of the purchase price back.

The second policy that can help you out is the ‘Lifetime Upgrade Policy’, where James Allen will credit 100% of the purchase price of your ring to a new ring, providing that it is at least 2x greater value than the original. This is a pretty generous scheme, although the fact that you need to double the value of the original purchase means that taking advantage of it may be beyond many peoples’ means.

Not many jewellers look after their customers quite so well for so long after their purchase though, but James Allen is looking to lock in the loyalty of their customers and these policies are sure to help

James Allen Review
Overall
4.8

Do we recommend James Allen?

James Allen is one of the top online jewelry stores for a reason – they provide high quality products at fair prices through an easy to use website, with excellent service policies.

The imagery of the diamonds on their website has been in the best in the industry for over 5 years, despite competitors trying to catch up. The benefit of this to you is that can see exactly what you’re buying, which makes it possible to buy VS2 or even SI1 diamonds and be confident that the inclusions won’t be visible.

Having images of all of the fancy shaped diamonds also makes it much easier to choose a good stone, as buying a fancy shape sight unseen can mean that you end up with a diamond that has been shaped poorly.

Of course, no retailer is perfect and a large frustration with James Allen is the need to request individual grading reports from their online chat team. This greatly slows down the process, but isn’t an insurmountable obstacle.

Overall, James Allen remains the jeweller I use the most when sourcing recommendations and continues to provide a great service at excellent prices.

Pros

  • Excellent imagery of diamonds, allows you to understand exactly what you’re buying
  • Huge selection of diamonds, means you should always be able to find what you are looking for
  • Very competitive prices

Cons

  • Grading reports have to be requested on an individual basis, which is time-consuming
  • ‘True Hearts’ diamonds aren’t always perfect hearts and arrows