You go online. You find a flashy website for a dealer who promises to pay top dollar. You put your gold into a FedEx envelope and send it off. You wait patiently for your appraisal report and check. You never hear a thing – your gold and your money is missing. This scenario plays itself out all too often.
What can you do to protect yourself? No matter what you do, there will ultimately be a leap of faith when you deal with an online gold dealer. You are If you aren’t willing to take that leap, then go to a local gold dealer. They usually don’t pay as much, but you can walk out with cash in hand. But if you take some simple precautions, you can be almost just as secure selling your gold to an online dealer as to one in a store, and get a better price as well!
The first, and perhaps most important, step is to check the shipping terms. Any reputable dealer will pay for the shipping. Further, the shipping will include insurance in case the package is lost or mishandled. Lastly, they will always provide you with a tracking number to track your shipment. Stay away from any dealer who doesn’t do any of this!
The second step is to analyze their prices. Many fly by night dealers offer unjustifiably high prices for your gold. It plays on the consumer’s greed. Because the fly by night dealers don’t intend on paying at all, they can “offer” prices as high as they want to get you to send them their gold. If the dealer’s price is well above what the other dealers are offering, you have to ask why. A gold dealer has to make a profit by salvaging and reselling your scrap gold after all. In addition, check the dealer’s price against the wholesale price of gold. If gold is trading at a market price of $1,000 per ounce and the dealer is paying $1,100 per ounce, chances are it’s a scam. There’s no way to make a profit by buying high and selling low!
The third step is to check the company itself. A quick search of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) website will list any complaints filed against the business. If something shows up, run! Take it with a grain of salt if you don’t find any complaints though. It could just mean that no one has complained yet.
Following these three steps doesn’t make selling and mailing your gold to a dealer you found online risk free. Following these steps, however, will screen out 99 of the dishonest impostors who would try to trick you into sending them your gold without ever paying you in return. Of course, if you are still not comfortable mailing in your gold through USPS or FedEx, there are other options of selling gold. Gold parties have become the latest craze, where hosts invite friends to their home to sell their gold jewelry at a gold party. As with everything, be careful with whom you do business and check out the company before you sell your gold at the party.
Author Resource:
Sam Rivers has been in the gold and jewelry industry for over 30 years! A frequent writer on consumer advocacy within the gold for cash industry, Mr. Rivers assists gold sellers with advice and tips on how to get top dollar and sell gold. He consults with http://www.premieregoldparties.com
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