Posts Tagged: scrap gold buyers

Gold Buyer RIP OFF alert

After scouting through some of our well known competitors, we stumbled across a price comparison for scrap gold buyers dated 14th September 2009.

Competitors who claim to offer good rates for scrap gold

The swish websites, television advertising and celebrity sponsorship all make it very attractive for the public to send in their unwanted gold jewellery. When looking through some of the frequently asked questions on the websites, we see things such as this:

  • Are your prices good compared to the rest of the market?We regularly monitor the “Gold Fix” (twice daily) and adjust our price accordingly to ensure that we offer a very competitive price alongside our fantastic service. Our aim is to build a sustainable long term business, largely based on our customers referring their friends and relatives to us – so providing a highly competitive price is in our long term interests.
  • Are your payouts higher than a jewellery store or pawnshop? Yes. We do not have to pay rent at expensive High Street locations and we operate on a larger scale, therefore we can afford to pay you top prices for your items.
  • Why does xxx not give a quote on the phone or the website? The price of gold fluctuates on a daily basis. Also, until items are analyzed we have no way of independently verifying the weight and fineness of the piece. Since any price we would quote in advance of receiving your items would be different from the actual offer, we simply avoid this practice.

The statements above are all cleverly worded sales pitch and do not tell the full story. All these competitors are national advertisers and it costs a lot of money to advertise services on the television, radio or in the press. These costs need to be recovered somehow, and the only way to do this is by giving the public a low rate.

The market value for gold on the morning of the 14th September 2009 was £601.628 per ounce. This equates to £7.06 per gram for 9ct scrap gold or £141.20 for 20g as shown in the price comparison below.

  • This means that our highest paying competitor will purchase 20g of 9ct gold from the public at only £89 and then sell it on for close to £140.
  • Our lowest paying competitor will purchase 20g of 9ct gold from the public at a measly £26.81 and sell it on for close to £140.

At today’s rate, FalkosGold.co.uk are paying £7.01 per gram for 9ct gold in any condition. This equates to £140.20 for 20g of 9ct gold as shown in the sample below. This means that the FalkosGold rate is over 60% more than ANY of our large competitors.

With FalkosGold, you know that you are getting amongst the most competitive prices in the UK.

Even if you do not sell your gold to FalkosGold, we have one recommendation for you… Your local jeweller or pawnbroker WILL pay you a better rate than any of these competitors.

Sell scrap gold, make some cash

Selling scrap gold is an interesting way of making money which much of the general public is not yet not aware of.

With the price of gold being at an all time high, you may find that selling your gold as scrap gold you will get back more than you paid for it originally.

Jewellers and pawnbrokers purchase scrap gold by weight and carat purity. Typical values range from £2.50 per gram through to £5.50 per gram for 9ct gold – Well below bullion market rate.

Without trying to sound salesy, we at FalkosGold set up a site offering an online scrap gold service to the public.

Business has quickly picked up whereby over 120 customers currently use our online service every week and a further 50 customers opt to visit us instore and use our counter service.

Due to the popularity of the service which FalkosGold offer and the quantity we purchase on a daily basis, we are now in a position where we can offer over 94% of market rate (currently £6.90 per gram for 9ct gold).

We have also found that over 10% of our customers are trade customers as we are now able to offer more than many bullion dealers for scrap gold.

>I would be interested to hear from you all what you think of selling scrap gold jewellery online.
>Any experiences you have had with online gold buyers
>your experiences with offline gold buyers
>Have you used FalkosGold before and what do you think

10 tips to help choose an online Scrap Gold dealer

There are plenty of places for you to sell your scrap gold including:

  • Pawn Shops
  • High Street Jewellers
  • People who come knocking at your door
  • Online Scrap Gold Buyers

It is quite difficult and time consuming to call or visit every jeweller or pawnbroker in town to get a valuation for your scrap gold, and you just don’t know if or when a gold buyer will come knocking.

In addition to this, we find that most Pawnbrokers and door-to-door gold buyers quote 50% less than the actual gold value. High Street jewellers tend to offer a little more but not much.

A quick google search for scrap gold will bring hundreds of online gold buyers, but which ones to sell to?

Even if you decide not to use FalkosGold’s services, we recommend you make the following checks.

  1. Avoid any company who ask you to post to a PO Box address
  2. Even if you intend to post, call to see if you can sell your gold in person. If they refuse then steer well clear.
  3. Check the firm’s scrap gold prices over the course of a week, if prices are consistently high compared to other online scrap gold buyers, then you know you will get a competitive rate. We have seen several unsavoury gold buyers hike their quotes up to encourage consumers to send their gold in, only to drop prices the next day.
  4. Several sites manually add customer feedback to their testimonials pages. FalkosGold allow customers to add unedited feedback live to the site. Customer Feedback.
  5. Several firms charge to send cash / cheque or bank transfers to their customers. They may be offering an extra 2 pence per gram, but consider that they may take £5 + off the total price to send you cash for your scrap gold. FalkosGold do not charge their customers and the price you see is the price you get.
  6. All online gold buyers change their prices on a daily basis, but check what happens if the scrap gold price goes down. Do you get the price when you filled in the claim form or do you get the price on the day? FalkosGold allow our customers to choose which option they prefer.
  7. Double check the yellow pages (yell.com), if the company are not listed then steer well clear! Just because they have a pretty website, doesn’t mean that they are a well established firm. Any established firm will be listed in the yellow pages.
  8. Look for a photo of the premises on the firms webpage. FalkosGold put our shopfront image right on the front page so you can see that we are a real company.
  9. So you have found a buyer you like, well don’t go and post all 500g of your gold, send in a small amount like 20-30g and if you are happy with the service, then send the rest. Better safe than sorry!
  10. Call up the scrap gold buyer and ask questions you already know the answer to… You will soon see if they are trying to make a quick buck or are decent and honest. I will not name the company in question, but one of our customers called an online gold buyer up and asked them how much they would get for a Krugerrand. The gold buyer told them that the gold coin weighed 25g. At today’s rates, if this customer posted the coin to them, the gold buyer would have stolen nearly £150 from the customer.

This post is not meant to scare you, as selling gold online can be a painless and pleasurable experience. All we ask those who read this post is to be safe and not sorry.

Should you have any queries in relation to this blog, please do not hesitate to get in touch. enquiries@falkosgold.co.uk

0207 0961749