therolfefiles.com

At the beginning of the year Kel and I went to a wedding expo at Kensington. It was a little bit disappointing but we did get some unique ideas. There were some jewellers there that did workshops at which you make your partners wedding ring. Both Kel and I thought it would be a great and special thing to do. So last weekend we headed into Hatton Garden to make our wedding rings.

After an initial miss-communication and miss-quoting for some diamonds we came to a deal and started making our rings. You are assigned your own jeweller who helps you and shows you how to do each step and makes sure you don’t screw up.

So we started off by melting down the gold and pouring it into a skillet,. After that we put it through the rolling machine that flattens it out and shapes the band. Then we rounded it into a ring shape and did some filling to get it the right width and then polished them up.

It was a very special experience to make each other’s wedding rings. They have now been sent away to be hallmarked and the diamonds set. We get them back in a couple of weeks. Can’t wait to see them completely finished. During the creation of the rings you get given snacks, a bottle of champagne and then get taken out for lunch by the jewellers. If you get the chance i would highly recommend the experience. I will put up some photos of the rings when we get them back.

Recently I have had the pleasure of selling stuff through eBay before we head home. As a buyer it is great. You hold all the cards. As a seller it is crap. Here are 2 examples of how people tried to screw us over:

1) We listed a mudguard of my stolen bike. A guy won it, and paid. We went to get it out and realised it was missing a vital part of the clamping mechanism. We cancelled the auction and refunded his money £0.99. He then started going on and on about how his son had to ride to school and get his school uniform dirty etc and then telling us that he “didn’t know what feedback to give”. In the end for the situation to be resolved i offered to buy him one on eBay and have it shipped to his address if he made the payment again. He would not do that. He expected us to send it and if he was happy with it he would pay the money back. In the end we told him that we would have no security that he would pay etc and he decided to leave neutral feedback.

2) We listed a PDA (6 years old). A guy in Italy won it. We sent it in good working order. He got it and claimed there were 22 dead pixels. He raised a PayPal dispute and his resolution was for us to refund £15 out of the £17 he paid for it. We decided that wasn’t fair and asked him to send it back for a full refund which he refused to do. So his claim was closed. He then decided that it would be fair to leave me negative feedback. When i contacted him to ask him why they bad feedback as we tried to resolve the issue he said if i paid him £15 he would remove the feedback. This is now in the hands of PayPal.

I think that they need to allow the seller to give negative feedback and not be held to ransom by the buyers! In both cases we went above and beyond to try and resolve the issues and got nowhere. Anyone else experienced this?

Well i thought it was about time to bring back the blog as thing are about to get interesting again.  So whats changing?  Well in January i asked Kelly to marry me and she said yes   We have now decided that it is time to move back to Australia, more specifically Melbourne.  So we have packed up our appartment, and shipped 14 boxes of stuff home!

We are now living in a studio in Shepherds Bush/Acton until we leave.  Last Tuesday I resigned and will be finishing up on June 30th and leaving on the 2nd July for a months travel.  Then it is back to London overnight and off to Australia.  We fly into Brisbane and see family etc before heading to Melbourne to start the job hunt.  To say i am excited is an understatement!!!

So keep an eye on the blog because i plan to do regular updates.