You mean it’s a scam?
http://consumerist.com/5349663/the-article-cash4gold-doesnt-want-you-to-read
Slaps forehead Whoda thunk it?
I do admit that I’m mildly suprised at how little they pay out. I really don’t see how they could survive in the long run either.
Meh. I’m not seeing “scam.” They have a crappy way of dealing with criticism, sure, and the CEO does seem an oily type, and there looks to be a whole list of other issues.
But the basic deal they are offering customers does not seem like a scam to me. The “Top dollar” line is just advertising hype. If they were promisng full market price, or a given %, that would be different. As it is, the CEO is right: they pay less than pawn shops because what they offer is convenience.
My goodness! Next thing, you’ll be telling me that “Things We Buy” might not give me the best price for my old broken watch. Here I thought all I had to do was cash the check!
Agreed, I think it’s just a typical example of the sort of company spawned by bull markets in precious metals. According to its own website, Cash 4 Gold was started in early 2007, at which point gold had climbed for six years in a row.
I’m not sure why this was posted in Cafe Society… On t’other hand, I don’t quite know where else to put it, so I’ll leave it here.
We can just melt it down in The Pit and see if we can’t extract something worthwhile from it.
http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/goldkit/cheat.shtml
Cash for gold’s initial offer is usually so far below the current price for gold that I really think scam is a good word for what they do. But in the link above the second offer was decent.
Since gold reached $1000/ounce US early last year, we’ve probably spent $10-20 million US buying scrap gold. Yeah, you read that right.
We’ve had customers come in who sold their gold to tv advertisers. They weren’t happy with the offer, so they got it back and came to us. The average offer they got from the tv advertisers was about $75. We paid an average of $300++
We pay about 80% of melt to the public. We pay anywhere from 90-95% of melt to licensed dealers who resell to us. We get about 98% of melt from the refinery. But, to sell efficiently to the refinery, we have to have about $400,000+ in gold at a time. So, it’s a cash-intensive operation. And you don’t get your money the same day. You need some serious money to bankroll this.
Competitors in our neck of the woods(Northern Ohio) pay anywhere from 50%-80% of melt. This would include pawn shops and small time dealers. No doubt there are places that have sprung up in the last two years to take advantage of the high prices that may pay even less. But no one pays less than the tv advertisers.
I’m gonna send it over to MPSIMS, home of the threads we don’t know what else to do with.
twickster, Cafe Society (and MPSIMS) moderator
Slightly O.T. but what a badly written article,it waffled on and on and on with pointless verbiage before FINALLY getting to the point somewhere near the end of the item.
With so many people unemployed why on Earth is that person paid to write?
As to the actual meat of the item I agree that Cash4Gold are most definitely not a company that I’d do business with by choice.
But how many people gave up on the article long before it got to the point?
There seem to be loads of these companies advertising in the UK too. What I don’t understand is this - they say they send you a postage-paid envelope, clearly marked “WEPAYCASH4GOLDDOTCOM” or whatever, and you are meant to put your gold in this and drop it in the post?
Considering a lot of postmen can’t be trusted not to rip open birthday cards to extract a five-pound note, how many of these envelopes are actually ever going to arrive at GoldScam HQ?
I’ve kind of wondered about that also. What’s to stop a corrupt postmaster from spotting the envelope, slipping it into his pocket, and then claiming it got “lost.”
As an ex postman I deeply resent your insinuation regarding dishonest posties.
By and large there are very very few thieves within Royal Mail (Office Managers and supervisors excepted)
The dishonest ones wouldn’t soil their hands for a fiver, a tenner yes, but a fiver?
Do me a favour, they do have some pride y’know;)
I did. I got about 1/4 of the way through and started scrolling to see how much was left in an attempt to get to the meat of the story, and when I saw how much was left I blew it off.
Still, I didn’t see where Cash 4 Gold was all that reprehensible. Sure, they were offering low dollar rather than top dollar as they advertise, but they up their offers by quite a bit if the customer balks and it appears they do return items without trouble if the customer refuses their offer. Not much different from dealing with a pawn shop or a flea market, IMO.
The Consumerist article mentions that the prepaid mailer used to ship the goods to Cash4Gold is insured for $100. Considering how little they pay, that should cover most packages they receive.
This was about what I figured. Gold spiked with the economic recession, and I thought Cash4Gold just sprung up to make a quick buck- no long-term business plan at all, and never intended to have one after the price of gold starts dropping. I’m hard pressed to see why anyone’s surprised that it’s a ripoff, but scam seems harsh- there’s no dishonesty or fraud here, except maybe the phrase “Top dollar”. It’s just an extreme low-ball bid in an environment where a second offer is hard to get.