Le Diamant (Bijouterie Le Diamant)

Le Diamant is the online shop of Orwa SA, a family company founded in 1945 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the watchmaking town in canton Neuchâtel rather than Zurich itself. Orwa was already selling watches when it added jewellery to the business and opened as La Bijouterie Le Diamant in 1964, and the company's own history page now describes the jewellery side as having more than 60 years of experience under that name. It is still family run today, with a real shop counter at Avenue Léopold-Robert 41 alongside the webshop. For a Zurich-based buyer this means ordering from an established, independently owned Swiss retailer rather than a marketplace reseller, even though the physical counter sits a few hours from Zurich rather than around the corner from Bahnhofstrasse.

What you get

The catalogue is large for a shop this size: more than 10,000 watches and jewellery pieces are listed, including over 800 wedding bands and engagement rings between the two categories. The engagement ring section alone runs to 294 rings spread across 13 result pages, filterable by gold colour (white, yellow, rose or two-tone gold, or platinum), stone (diamond, ruby, sapphire or emerald) and a budget slider. On the day I checked, the listing page showed prices from CHF 1'689 up to CHF 5'779, and individual pieces outside that band too: a white-gold solitaire I opened separately, set with a diamond and finished in 18-karat (750-hallmark) gold, was priced at CHF 1'499. All prices are shown in Swiss francs and the site's own footer states plainly that they include Swiss VAT, so there's no tax line waiting at the door the way there can be with a parcel shipped in from abroad. A "configure your rings" tool also lets a couple build a wedding-band pair to their own specification rather than choosing only from what's already made up.

What stands out

Two things matter most to someone new to Zurich: how a piece actually reaches you, and what happens if it doesn't fit or doesn't suit. On delivery, Le Diamant's own terms are direct: no shipping cost at all for a Swiss address, and a corporate-gifting page on the same site confirms the free zone reaches further than just Switzerland, stating that goods are sent "rapidement, gratuitement et de manière fiable dans toute la Suisse et au Liechtenstein" (quickly, freely and reliably across Switzerland and into Liechtenstein). For deliveries into the EU, prices exclude VAT and customs duty, and those charges are settled directly with the courier, FedEx, rather than billed by Le Diamant itself; the site does not publish anything about shipping further afield than that, so a move outside Europe is worth a call ahead rather than an assumption.

Lead times are not one-size-fits-all, which matters if you're planning around a proposal date. The white-gold solitaire above quoted 10 to 15 business days for delivery. A wedding-band pair I checked separately, by contrast, quoted 3 to 8 business days, since it ships from stock rather than being finished to an order. The practical takeaway for anyone commissioning an engagement ring here is to build in a couple of weeks of buffer rather than assume next-day shipping just because the homepage promises free delivery.

How it's organised

Payment is where the site earns some real credit for transparency. You can pay on invoice through Klarna, with a 30-day payment term counted from the date the goods are shipped, or spread the cost interest-free over 3, 6 or 12 monthly instalments through HeyLight. Beyond that, checkout also takes Twint, PostFinance and E-Finance, Visa and Mastercard, a straight bank transfer, and Apple Pay, Google Pay and Click to Pay. For someone who has just opened a Swiss bank account and is still deciding which local payment habits to adopt, having Twint sit next to a card and an instalment plan, rather than being the only option, is a genuinely useful bit of flexibility.

Returns and after-sales are published in enough detail to actually plan around, which is not something every online jeweller bothers with. There's an 8-day window after delivery to flag a problem by email to the after-sales team, after which the delivery counts as accepted. Beyond that, a general 14-day right of return applies, but with real exceptions worth knowing before you click buy: gold items and anything priced at CHF 1'500 or more can only be exchanged, not refunded, and engraved pieces, wedding rings, sale items and connected watches carry no return or exchange rights at all. In practice that means an engraved ring, once ordered, is a final purchase, so it's worth deciding on the engraving last rather than first. Where a return is allowed, the customer pays the return shipping and carries the risk on the parcel, and the refund itself is paid out, minus delivery and any third-party billing fees, only once the returned item has been checked back in.

On the warranty side, watches carry a 2-year international manufacturer's warranty and jewellery carries 1 year, in each case excluding ordinary wear, poor storage or outside tampering. The shop also lists ring, chain and watch-strap resizing among its in-house after-sales services, useful for someone who buys a ring now and might need it adjusted years later while still building a life in Switzerland, though the site does not publish a price for that service, so it is worth asking directly rather than assuming it is free.

Language and who it suits

The one real gap for this tenant's readership is language: the site runs in French and German only, with no English version at all. An expat who reads neither will need a translator, a browser plug-in or a bilingual friend to place an order with confidence, and that is a fair caveat to weigh against everything else on offer. Appointment booking for choosing an engagement or wedding ring in person does exist, but it happens at the La Chaux-de-Fonds boutique rather than in Zurich, so for most readers of this list this is a mail-order relationship with an in-person option only for those willing to travel. Reviews on the shop's own homepage put it at 4.7 out of 5, shown through two separate widgets on the same page, one counting 61 ratings and the other 82; whichever total is current, it's a healthy volume of past customers standing behind the same score.

This suits an international buyer in Zurich who wants an established, independently owned Swiss jeweller with a genuinely wide and filterable choice of diamond engagement rings, transparent CHF pricing that already includes VAT, free delivery to a Swiss or Liechtenstein address, and written return and warranty terms rather than vague promises. It suits them less if they need everything in English, or if they want to try a ring on before committing to a purchase, since that only really happens if you can get to Neuchâtel canton in person.

The verdict

For someone setting up an engagement in Zurich without ties to a single Bahnhofstrasse showroom, lediamant.ch is a credible, long-established option: eighty-odd years of trading history behind the company, over 60 of them specifically in jewellery, a genuinely large catalogue with real filtering, and delivery and returns terms that are written down rather than implied. The lack of an English storefront and the fact that returns close hard on engraved and wedding-ring purchases are the two things to plan around, not reasons to look elsewhere. Read the returns page before you engrave anything, and budget for the longer lead time on a made-to-order piece rather than the faster one quoted for stock items, and this is a solid, well-priced way to buy a diamond ring from a real Swiss retailer without ever needing to leave home.