Well, I'm back with another scam that will probably replace all the hits I'm missing from corey.
A few months ago, when the price of gold reached an all-time high--in nominal terms, but certainly not in material terms--I sent away for an offer from Cash4gold.com. I received back an envelope in which I could send unwanted gold jewelry to be appraised. Before I parted with my 14k wedding ring, though, I wondered how much it would really be worth. I went to all the trouble to weigh it and it came out to about 5 grams, or one and a third troy ounces; at $1000 an ounce, that came to $133. Since my ring was 58% gold, I figured $70 would be a reasonable melt value. But gold4cash had its expenses, too, so I figured they'd probably only offer me about half that; maybe only a third.
But I wanted to be sure. So I decided to call them and ask what they were paying per ounce of gold, before I went and sent in my ring. It turns out that they won't answer such questions, "unless we can see it." Ha! The truth is, I would have been lucky to have gotten more than a dollar for my ring, but they didn't want me to know that until they had it in their possession. Because, as in the case of all such scams, their 'free return policy' has enough fine print to make it virtually worthless. Here is a first-hand account of how the scam is perpetrated.
Well, the good news is, cash4gold won't be able to put endless charges on your credit card. But once they have your gold, it's gone. So send for the free envelope if you must. Send it back if you must. But please, don't put anything in it that you think is worth more than the postage you're saving by using their envelope.
Hi, I agree 100%. The same is true for almost all of the similar places on the internet and on tv. I did a lot of research on this since I had a good amount of gold and silver I wanted to sell. The local pawn shops and jewelers would only offer me pennies on the dollar, plus the pawn shops had a sleazy feel to them and the jewelers seemed to have an attitude that I was a lowlife, or at least lower than them.
ReplyDeleteFinally I found a lace on the internet that displays a live chart right on their site that shows the various types of gold and silver and exactly what they are paying per gram. I called them and they had a Fedex agent at my door the next day who printed a lable, gave me a receipt, and insured the package for it's full value. They called me when they received the package and gave me a price that was a little better than I had calculated. I was very pleased with my dealings with them so I thought they deserved a mention here. The company is the Silver and Gold Exchange and they are at http://SilverAndGoldExchange.com
Well, I checked it out, and I'm impressed. According to my calculations, they'd cut me a check for $52, unless I shipped the ring myself, in which case I'd get $57.30. That's only a 20% discount off melt value, which means their overhead costs really are low--no wonder I hadn't heard of them.
ReplyDeleteI take it you're one of their Registered Agents; I hope you do well.