With clients now forced to wait as long as four months to have their gems graded and returned, the Gemological Institute of America announced a new suite of measures designed to decrease its labs’ much-derided turnaround time.
Clearly, the long waits are a problem: According to the GIA site, diamonds under 1 ct. submitted at its Carlsbad, Calif., and New York City labs won’t be returned until August, or three months from now. Customers at the Mumbai; Hong Kong; Bangkok; Johannesburg; and Gaborone, Botswana, labs have longer than four-month waits.Colored stone and pearl submissions have lesser holdups, as do submitters at the appointment-only Israeli lab. But in most cases, customers shouldn’t expect to get their stones back any earlier than May 30—a one-month wait.
