Peoples Jewellers ring repair leaves Abbotsford woman fuming

Peoples Jewellers ring repair leaves Abbotsford woman fuming

Dara-Lynn Gatin of Abbotsford was outraged over her experience with Peoples Jewellers and wants to share her story about what happened to a family heirloom that she had taken to a store in Abbotsford to be repaired.

“I trusted them enough to leave a $35,000 ring with them,” Gatin said.

Now she wishes she had never taken it there. The ring needed resizing and some work on the prongs but she says it was an ordeal to get the job done and when she finally got her ring back she says it broke while she was wearing it.

“And I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,'” she said.

On June 18, Peoples gave her an estimate of $967 and a completion date of three weeks for the job. However, after more than two months, the ring still hadn’t been returned and Gatin says she had to constantly call to find out what was going on. At one point she says Peoples couldn’t find it.

“It came to a point where I actually called the store and I said ‘I don’t care where my ring is, you need to get my ring back, and if it’s in pieces, bring it back, because I’m done with you,'” Gatin said.

She says it was only after she reached out to CTV Vancouver on social media that that she started getting action.

In an email to CTV News, Peoples wrote, “We have sincerely apologized for the delay. Our team has been in regular contact with the customer and we’re pleased that she will receive her ring today (August 29)."

When Gatin picked up her ring, Peoples waived the repair cost. However, four days later she says the band cracked while she was wearing the ring, and when she took it off, it broke into pieces.

Again, she says Peoples offered to fix it at no cost.

“‘Don’t worry we’ll pay for it and we’ll get it fixed,’ and I said, ‘Over my dead body. I am not bringing it back to you,'” Gatin said.

CTV asked Peoples for comment about the repair, the delays and what issues the company might be experiencing in its repair shop. The company declined to address those questions. After the ring broke we reached again for comment and received no response.

“I’m shocked to be quite honest with you. You’re really taking me aback. It’s not common in our industry," said Ashley Myerson, speaking on behalf of the Canadian Jewellers Association.

Myerson’s family has been in the jewelry business for generations, working in both manufacturing and repair, and she says the kind of work that was done to Gatin’s ring should have taken no more than a week to 10 days - barring unusual circumstances. CTV also surveyed three well known Vancouver jewellers who confirmed that.

As for the repair, an independent jeweller who examined Gatin’s broken ring told CTV News it was a crude job.

Myerson says mistakes can happen but when things go wrong a jeweller needs to address the issues.

“There’s always room for human error in any business but I do believe communication is key. You will keep your client happy as long as you communicate. I can’t really imagine how something like this got that far. If you’re a professional jeweller you’re doing it right the first time.”

Gatin says Peoples Jewellers has offered to pay to have the ring repaired wherever she chooses to take it.

Last two men who robbed Kitchener mall jewelry store sentenced

Baseer Ahmed was sentenced to four years in prison Monday, while Mohammad Kermani was sentenced to a little more than one year.

The two were the last to be sentenced of the four men who robbed People’s Jewellers in Kitchener’s Fairview Park Mall in December 2010.

In a quick robbery that even the Crown admitted was well-planned, the quartet grabbed more than $200,000 worth of jewelry and speedily made their way to a getaway car.

During the heist, Ahmed was wearing a wrestling mask – later recovered nearby – and using a fake gun to order people to the ground.

None of the jewelry was ever recovered.

In court, Ahmed said he is now considered a “disappointment and disgrace” to his family.

“My sister is going to graduate from medical school, my brother from law school,” he said.

“Me … I’m going to jail.”

Unlike his three cohorts, Kermani was not involved in a similar robbery in Guelph.

In Kitchener, his role was to break display cases with a hammer, grab as much as he could hold, and run.

Crown prosecutor David Russell said the main reason for Kermani receiving a lesser sentence was his past as a “straight-A student” who had never been in trouble with the law before or since.

“It was amazing that he did this,” Russell said.

Sci-fi just got sexy: Gabriel Byrne and Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones in War Of The Worlds

When he first decided to take on the role of neuroscientist Bill Ward in sci-fi drama War Of The Worlds, which is returning for a second series this week, Gabriel Byrne faced something of a dilemma.

‘Playing a scientist is not the same as playing a gangster or a villain, because it’s pretty hard to make a scientist exciting,’ he laughs.

‘Maybe Frankenstein did, where we actually see a monster come out of it… but being an investigative scientist presents challenges as an actor.’

In fact, it turns out that neuroscientists can be quite exciting when they’re dealing with the prospect of an alien invasion, as Bill Ward did in the first series of the drama, an Anglo-French re-imagining of the famed HG Wells novel which explores the fallout of the attack on survivors in London, Paris and the French Alps.

Gabriel Byrne, 71, (pictured as Bill) plays neuroscientist Bill Ward in sci-fi drama War Of The Worlds and said playing an investigative scientist presented challenges as an actor

Throw in the fact that a real-life global pandemic has shifted the focus on to our scientists in a way that could barely have been imagined when the show was being filmed, and playing a boffin takes on a more seductive slant.

With series one ending on a cliffhanger – no spoilers here for those who haven’t seen it but it’s safe to say mankind’s survival is hanging in the balance – it makes a fascinating backdrop for the second series, with its dystopian city landscapes and focus on humanity’s battle for survival against a terrifying threat.

Then again, as Gabriel says, the themes of what he calls Wells’s ‘provocative’ novel – written more than 120 years ago and said to be the first story to detail a human conflict with an extra-terrestrial race – are timeless.

In the book, an unnamed narrator in Surrey recounts an invasion of Earth by an army of Martians with military technology far in advance of human science.

It’s been adapted for the screen many times since – indeed there was a BBC1 version starring Eleanor Tomlinson and Rafe Spall that aired in 2019, just a few months before the first series of this production, proving its enduring appeal.

‘The genius of the novel is that there will always be threats to our survival,’ says Gabriel, 71. ‘Fiction allows us to resolve our fears and our desires about existence. What HG Wells did brilliantly was concentrate that fear in a story and allow us to imagine something beyond the reality we inhabit day to day.’

He is joined by co-star Daisy Edgar-Jones, 23, who plays Emily, a survivor of the alien invasion, and says there’s much more drama to come in the second series. Pictured: Daisy as Emily

He says the new series promises to reveal more nuanced layers to his character, who spent much of the first eight episodes trying to fathom the nature of the enemy, along with his ex-wife Helen (Elizabeth McGovern). ‘All the characters deepen emotionally because the crisis spreads; more people are affected. That’s what makes viewers identify with something. If you can identify emotionally with it you can put yourself in their position.’

Gabriel’s sentiments are echoed by his co-star Daisy Edgar-Jones. Fresh from her breakthrough role as Marianne in the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s best-selling novel Normal People, the 23-year-old actress plays Emily, a survivor of the alien invasion alongside her mother Sarah (Natasha Little) and brother Tom (Ty Tennant).

‘The story’s relevant now because it’s about human beings coming together to fight something, which is something we’re all experiencing at the minute,’ she says. ‘It’s also inherently about human connection, about love and friendship and about how important that is, which I think is a special thing to celebrate.’

Daisy’s character went on an intriguing journey in the first series. When the Martians all but wiped out mankind with a magnetic signal, only isolated pockets of survivors remained.

Emily, who was blind, developed a strange kind of affinity with the invaders as the series progressed, while the signal seemed to be responsible for her sight returning. And Daisy says there’s much more drama to come.

‘Viewers have a lot to look forward to in series two,’ she says. ‘There are a lot more fight scenes, a lot more alien and human action and a lot more development of characters. In series one they’re at their most terrified. Now some time has passed and there’s more fight in them.’

The first series proved a hit with viewers, but Gabriel insists he’s too long in the tooth to let himself be affected.

‘When you embark on any project you have no idea whether it’s going to be good, bad or indifferent. You have to just do the work and let go of the result. I’ve worked on films where people have said, “Ooh, this is going to be amazing,” and it turned out not to be. And then I remember other things where I thought, “This is c**p, it’s never going to work,” and it’s turned out to be good. You can never predict it.’

He cites his 1995 noir thriller The Usual Suspects as proof, describing filming it as a ‘joyful experience’ but one that none of its stars envisaged would lead to the cult status it went on to enjoy.

‘We laughed for 28 days and blew up a boat on the last day, then we went off and celebrated,’ he laughs. ‘Nobody thought it would become what it did. But it hasn’t dated, kids in college dorms still watch that film and say, “Oh my God, that was a good movie.”’

And it looks like he’s backed another winner here.

War Of The Worlds, from Friday, Disney+.