By Stephanie Stoughton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 22, 1998; Page H5

Browsing for jewelry online is like planning a cross-country trip without a road map: You have no idea where you're going, and you could stumble into some pretty odd places.

I even had trouble determining which of the nation's biggest jewelry retailers had set up shop online. Several search engines and so-called "shopping bots," places that are supposed to do the work for you, spit out long lists of companies selling jewelry on the Internet. I was leery, however, because most of the names weren't familiar.

Just for kicks, I clicked on the site of a company claiming to be a chain of specialty shops – though its Web page listed only a post office box in Las Vegas.

When I called the phone number listed on the Web page, a man who identified himself as one of the owners was irritated that I had taken him away from the football game blaring over his television.

When asked whether he was in the store, he said, "No, I'm in front of a computer."

"Well, where are you then? At a distribution center?"

"Uh. Yeah."

Eventually, I resorted to picking up the phone to get a Who's Who of Online Jewelry Retailing. The list ended up being very short, mainly because many specialty jewelry retailers believe customers will not buy expensive pieces online. Savvy shoppers want to check out a stone's clarity, cut and weight before they pull out their credit cards, experts said.

"It's one thing to go to Amazon.com for books or CDnow.com for compact discs, but with jewelry, people are a bit wary of going to an Internet site," said Mikhail Glezin, a spokesman for the Jewelers of America, a trade group.

Yet some big jewelry retailers have decided to take the leap to the Web. Most notable is Zale Corp. (www.zales.com), the nation's biggest specialty jewelry retailer, with more than 1,100 stores. In fact, it has a wide selection of jewelry online, including a $69 aquamarine pendant and a $13,000 diamond ring. Among online jewelry retailers, I found its site one of the easiest to navigate, allowing shoppers to search by price and category.

Off the beaten path, I found a $50 jade pendant with multicolored gems at catalog retailer Ross-Simons (www.ross-simons.com) and $35 citrine-and-silver earrings from Fortunoff (www.fortunoff.com). Although Fortunoff had several unique items, the $10 shipping fee seemed rather pricy. At the Ross-Simons cyberstore, I muttered under my breath when the company tried to make a sales pitch while I was standing in the online checkout line.

At Wal-Mart (www.wal-mart.com), I discovered a wide selection as well as a perk: free shipping with many jewelry orders. A phone call to the company's customer service line resulted in a 10-minute wait, but deep discounts on plain gold hoops, as well as low shipping costs, made me wonder why I hadn't started there.