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Diamonds are a luxury to have — until they get you into a months-long retail dispute with one of the biggest designer brands in the business.
That’s what happened to one man by the name of Rogelio Villarreal, a Tamaulipas, Mexico native, who wound up owning two pairs of Cartier diamond earrings for the unheard price of $14 for each set which, in any typical circumstance, would’ve cost him upwards of nearly $30,000.
It began in December 2023, when Villarreal scrolled upon an Instagram ad for the high-end jeweler. He started browsing Cartier’s selection of expensive accessories and was in awe.
“I was amazed to see how much the necklaces cost and so on and I said: ‘Someday,’ until I saw the earrings,” he wrote in a post shared to X (formerly Twitter) on April 20.
The earrings, in this case, were a pair of 18K rose gold stud hoops embedded with 142 brilliant-cut diamonds that were retailing on the site for 237 Mexican pesos ($13.85). This was before Cartier changed the price to 237,000 pesos (roughly $14,000). They currently retail on the U.S. website for $11,600.
Suffice to say, Villarreal had snagged the deal and bought two pairs, one of which he planned to gift to his mother. “I swear I broke out in a cold sweat,” he wrote on X.
“I doubt that you would have missed the opportunity,” he stated in another X post shared on April 19.
Cartier
Villarreal relished in the satisfaction of scoring the designer pieces for only a short amount of time before Cartier attempted to cancel his order. But he didn’t budge, even when Cartier representatives called and offered him Cartier Cuvée champagne and a leather good to make up for the “inconvenience.”
Villarreal submitted a contact form on Cartier’s website citing a federal consumer protection law in Mexico that states a goods supplier can be taken to court “by not respecting the terms and conditions” of a product or service that was purchased, as the New York Times notes.
Jorge López Zozaya, a corporate lawyer in Mexico City, told the New York Times that a company can face fines and other penalties if it is at fault. However, it will not be forced to change its prices and if the price difference is evidently a mistake, there is no protection provided.
Either party can request a judge to resolve the issue if an agreement is not reached.
Villarreal filed a dispute with the Matamoros branch of Mexico’s Office of the Federal Prosecutor for the Consumer (also known as PROFECO), which works to protect customers against various retail-related issues. The terms and conditions on Cartier’s Mexico website state that a dispute could be brought to PROFECO for “conciliation.” Villarreal said that the agency summoned Cartier for arbitration.
He also would’ve had to attend a consumer agency meditation hearing next week had Cartier not fulfilled his order — for the jaw-dropping price he originally paid.
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On April 26, Villarreal shared a photo to X of his neatly wrapped earring boxes and filmed a close-up of the sparklers for a TikTok unboxing video. “What everyone was waiting for,” he captioned the post, which has over 2 million views.
Cartier did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.