The 5th C for Purchasing a Diamond! -- Buy with "Confidence"

I was recommended to Whiteflash by a friend couple who had purchased their beautiful engagement / wedding ring set from here. I was very impressed by the quality of educational material I found on their website, as well as the quality of information given directly from their website concerning the details of each diamond they market (high quality pics, Sarin report, etc.). I gained the impression at once that Whiteflash was a very professional outfit, taking what they do very seriously. Everything I've encountered exhibits an attention to detail and a professional polish that I have not seen paralleled anywhere else. Given my friend's very high recommendation and the beauty of their diamond, the very informative and professionally produced educational material, and the attention to detail in the information provided concerning each diamond they market, I felt very confident to make my engagement diamond purchase with them. After settling on a Whiteflash ACA diamond, I decided to take my girlfriend to a local jeweler to get her sized (I didn't want to take any chance of getting this wrong) and to feel out her taste in ring settings. As it turns out, she fell in love with a particular setting from a designer that only works with a small number of specific jewelers in each region of the country. Whiteflash offered to work with me to create a custom setting of similar design, but I felt most comfortable getting the setting I knew my girlfriend would like. So Whiteflash shipped my loose diamond to me, advising that I insure both diamond and ring before having the diamond set, just in case anything goes wrong during the setting process. This I did before dropping off the diamond at my local jeweler a couple days ago. I have not received the complete ring yet, but the diamond I received from Whiteflash is definitely amazing. My local jeweler was really hoping to sell me a diamond of their own along with the ring purchase, which gave me an opportunity to see a wide selection of diamonds of various quality. This is an up-scale local jeweler (not a cheap chain store) with also a very nice and broad selection of high quality diamonds. Some of their diamonds were very beautiful, but I must say I didn't see anything that bested my ACA diamond from Whiteflash. When I brought my diamond to them a week after ordering my ring, the owner of the store (who had heard about and was impressed by my level of confidence in my Whiteflash purchase) inspected my diamond himself. He was at once clearly moved by the diamond and gave it high praise, remarking several times how beautiful and flawless the diamond appeared. The owner of the store talked with me for several minutes regarding diamond quality and what they typically see coming into their store. He said the clarity rating of a diamond doesn't tell you everything -- it's also important where the imperfections are located. If towards the edge of the stone, it will have little impact on the light performance, and sometimes you can even cover an imperfection with a prong or place it very close to a prong where its effect is diminished. Imperfections towards the center of the stone are much worse. He informed me that most stones they see having been purchased online are the lower quality diamonds within their ranking, having imperfections in the worst places, and that the online retailers may prefer to save their better stones for selling in-store. He assured me that my VS2 diamond from Whiteflash was a very high caliber diamond and not something they would typically expect from an online retailer. His opinion was that the imperfections in my diamond are quite negligible and the diamond has the appearance of being flawless. As a side note, he also mentioned that GIA is a more highly regarding / trusted diamond certification agency on an international level, but said AGS is also always very good and guaranteed to be dependable. In all, I am so pleased with my diamond purchase and recommend Whiteflash to anyone. As a final point regarding their attention to detail and professional polish, Whiteflash shipped the diamond in a beautiful case that appears to suspend the diamond in thin air, along with a very nice toolkit including a diamond pick-up tool, a cloth, and a diamond viewfinder. I had so much fun taking my own pictures of the beautiful arrow patterns in my diamond using this viewfinder. It really adds a nice touch and shows that Whiteflash cares about treating their customers the very best!