Diamond jewellery promotion raises ethical questions

A Valentine’s Day themed diamond jewellery promotion has raised serious questions about transparency around lab-created diamonds.

Dave & Buster’s is a restaurant and ‘entertainment’ business with more than 180 locations in the US. Earlier this year, the company announced a promotion involving five 3-carat diamond engagement rings, said to be valued at $USD15,000 each.

Available at select stores on Valentine’s Day, the rings were placed inside a ‘Human Crane’, which involves strapping customers into a harness and lowering them into a pool of prizes, resembling an arcade game.

As noted in a special report published by Rapaport News, the company provided exhaustive details on the rings, including which store designed them; however, it did not disclose that they were lab-created diamonds.

"The purpose of the FTC regulations is to prevent consumer deception."
Liz Fraccar, Jewelers Vigilance Committee

As the report explains, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines require lab-created diamond advertising to include clarifying descriptors, including ‘laboratory-grown’, ‘lab-grown’, or ‘synthetic’. Liz Fraccaro of the Jewelers Vigilance Committee said that the legal requirements are clear.

“The purpose of the FTC regulations is to prevent consumer deception," she told Rapaport News.

“The regulations apply to any person, partnership or corporation engaged in the business of offering for sale, selling, or distributing laboratory-grown diamonds.

“The regulations make clear that they apply to the products themselves. The fact that the prize is a diamond is the reason why the gaming company must comply with the regulations.”

When contacted by reporters, a spokesperson for Dave & Buster’s stated it had no prior awareness of any rules concerning lab-created diamond disclosure and said it would make amendments.