Selling gold for cash scams

Jammyc

Fighting Irish wrote: »

until they sell their first batch of gold and get about €20 for it

20 quid is still a free 20 quid to scumbag

komodosp

Four-Too wrote: »

Maybe. But why the hell is it so expensive in the jewellers? It;s not fair that the jewellers are charging 3 times the actual value of the gold or more. Why do they recycle so-called "scrap" gold at all?

because you're not buying a lump of gold, you're buying a finely crafted piece of jewellery

TheZohanS

Fighting Irish wrote: »

It's not really a scam when they give you a price and you decide to take it or not. Please stop protecting the stupid or they'll never learn

Did you even click on the links that you quoted?

OutlawPete

Fighting Irish wrote: »

IMO the only way people will learn is to let them make mistakes, the reason the world is being dumbed down isn't because of "x factor" "big brother" etc. It's because the whole world wants to protect the stupid, which in turn is actually holding them back

I see your point and agree with you re:'dumbing down' - however, society must protect people who are uneducated.

The is a reason that these shops are open in lower class areas and that is because they that the people from there need money fast and are not well informed on APR rates etc.

There should be limit to around 10% APR on someone pawning their belongings.

At the moment if someone pawns a piece of Jewellery for three months for €100.

It will cost them around €220 to get it back at the end of those three months.

That is scandalous and should be outlawed.

AnonoBoy

This is why I keep all my gold in my teeth so nobody can rob it.

Fighting Irish

TheZohan wrote: »

Did you even click on the links that you quoted?

lol no

OutlawPete wrote: »

At the moment if someone pawns a piece of Jewellery for three months for €100.

It will cost them around €220 to get it back at the end of those three months.

That is scandalous and should be outlawed.

It shouldn't be outlawed, live and learn. It might be the only possible way some people could get money and you think we should outlaw because some people don't really understand how it works.
I will never pawn jewellery but i'd like to have the option there just incase

OutlawPete

Fighting Irish wrote: »

but i'd like to have the option there just incase

Who is saying that pawnbrokers should be done away with??

Degsy

Jammyc wrote: »

Tbh all it does is encourage people to break into houses for gold

Or steal other miners dust...or jump claims.

MaybeLogic

OutlawPete wrote: »

Who is saying that pawnbrokers should be done away with??

The Anti-Pawnbrokers League.

OutlawPete

MaybeLogic wrote: »

The Anti-Pawnbrokers League.

Cheeky

I meant on this thread.

TheZohanS

Fighting Irish wrote: »

lol no

I wish I could ban for stupidity.

xw2lj9uspm1eyh

Dale Winton is doing ads for some selling gold for cash firm now.So you know there must be something dodgy about it.Known fact he was helping himself to some of the stock when he was presenting Supermarket Sweep.

Overheal

TheZohan wrote: »

I wish I could ban for stupidity.

This is AH. On with abuse of Mod Powers

Amalgam

Irish cash for gold companies were covered in a feature on the Pat Kenny show, today.

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/todaywithpatkenny/

There's a listen back feature on the above page. Towards the very end of the show.

PeakOutput

taking advantage of stupid people is not a scam thats what they are there for

AnonoBoy

Did I see Eddie Hobbs in an ad for one of these places on TV recently?

Could have sworn it was that little Cork fecker.

Amalgam

AnonoBoy wrote: »

Did I see Eddie Hobbs in an ad for one of these places on TV recently?

Could have sworn it was that little Cork fecker.

He advertises for a charity that will take your gold.

Amalgam

Yet more coverage.

Do people really have to be reminded they're being fleeced?

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/pricewatch/2010/0208/1224263951384.html

The Irish Times - Monday, February 8, 2010
Little cash for a lot of gold

Conor pope

The cash-for-gold business is thriving but sellers get a shocking deal for their jewellery

IT’S A COLD morning and I’m in an shockingly decorated hotel room on a leafy road in Dublin, trying to sell my wedding ring to a man who is not exactly busy.

He’s been in this place for more than five hours waiting for a gold rush which has yet to materialise. Despite the fact that fliers offering to buy unwanted gold for cold hard cash have been posted through every letterbox in the neighbourhood, I’m his first customer of the day – very bad news for a man who works exclusively on commission.

I hand him the ring. He looks for the carat – 18 – weighs it – 6.6 ounces – and punches a few numbers into a cheap desk calculator before offering me €80 for the ring. I’m horrified as it’s nearly 90 per cent less than the ring cost when bought in a moment of madness from an upmarket jewellers in the city centre several years ago.

I tell him I am not here to sell but to find out more about the growing trade in recycled gold. The news that he’s not even going to make this, very modest, buy is plainly not welcome news. He is, however, willing to talk about his business although unwilling to identify himself by anything more than his first name, Martin.

He’s been in the gold buying business for six years, the last three of which he has spent in Ireland. He says that while it has been quiet since Christmas, before then he was dealing with between 20 and 30 customers with gold to sell daily.

“There are too many people in the business now and too many websites. At least in here you can see what I’m doing. I can offer €14 a gram while the best price many of the websites will give you is €4.”

Over the last year, daytime television ad breaks have been taken over by mostly web-based companies offering to buy unwanted gold off cash-strapped punters laid low by the global economic malaise.

Martin is right on the money when he says that some of these companies offer consumers shockingly bad value.

The magazine Which? recently sent three pieces of brand-new gold jewellery to four gold buyers that advertise on TV. It also sent the same items to three independent jewellers and three pawnbrokers and it found that TV gold buyers consistently gave the worst quotes.

CashMyGold offered just £38.57 (€44) for the three pieces of new jewellery which had been purchased for £729 (€834). One of the poorest deals from CashMyGold was an offer of just under £10 (€11.40) for a £215 (€246) 9ct gold bangle – an independent jeweller quoted £54 (€62) for the same piece.

Another site, Money4Gold effectively held a 9ct necklace to ransom, telling the Which? researcher that the necklace, which cost £399 (€456), was “not gold” and insisted the customer pay £10.95 (€12.50) to have it returned. The magazine’s investigation found that on average, the TV gold buyers offered only around 6 per cent of the retail price for gold, but British high street retailers paid around 25 per cent.

“The poor value for money that these TV gold buyers are providing is simply shocking. The cash for gold market is unregulated, and this investigation has raised some serious concerns about the fair treatment of consumers,” says Peter Vicary-Smith, Which? chief executive. “People should be wary of buyers’ adverts as they could almost certainly get more money for their gold elsewhere.”

One place might be Martin Gear’s jewellers on Dublin’s Dorset Street. He opened seven years ago and the “We Buy Gold” sign is nearly as big as the name over the door. He offers me €90 for my wedding ring if I am simply scrapping it but says he’ll give me €130 if I trade it in for a new piece.

He says that while the gold buying business is good, there is a misconception that the recession has seen desperate people beat a path to his door. “We have seen an upsurge in recent months and I think that is thanks to the television ads more than the recession. People have suddenly realised how much money they might be sitting on. We might get around 15 people in a week. Mostly they are just having a clear out or a spring clean – there are loads of places that take CDs or books so why not gold?”

When I express dismay at the offer of €90 for my ring, he points out that I paid a premium because the ring was unusual and highlights VAT at 21 per cent and the jeweller’s mark up.

“Some of the big stores would work on a 300 per cent mark up but they have to because they might be paying €10,000 a week in rent as well as up to a million in key money.”

Niall Marren is the MD of forgottengold.com, an Irish-based, gold recycling website. The site has staked its claim to be the first entirely Irish-owned such website and he says that since they started trading 12 months ago, they have bought gold from 7,000 people. There has, however, been a stiffening of competition in recent months and, in addition to a handful of other Irish operators, US and UK sites are looking towards Ireland to boost trade.

He offers €82.67 for the ring. “We determine how much we can sell it for on the gold markets and we work out how long it will take to get it on to those markets. We pay between 65 and 80 per cent of the market value. We are in the business to make a profit but the profit margins are not high, they are in the single digits,” says Marren.

He describes the typical seller as “an astute person” who recognises the value of things. “My impression is that people see this as an opportunity because of gold prices,” he says.

Since August this year, the value of gold has risen steadily on international markets, reaching an all-time high of $1,226 (€879) an ounce on December 3rd, up from $255 (€183) an ounce in December 1999.

He says that 90 per cent of the business is from women selling jewellery they received from old boyfriends or because it has simply gone out of fashion.

“The one thing that people don’t sell is the stuff that has sentimental value, not unless they are really on their uppers. Very often we get rubbish bits of old pieces that people just have lying about the place, stuff that would be of no use to anyone unless it is melted down and recycled.”

He accepts that the Which? study did come to some very grim conclusions about the websites trading in gold but is understandably anxious to distance himself from their findings. “I don’t believe that it would come to the same conclusions about the Irish market.”

I also tried to flog the ring on a US-based website where I was offered just €53, but the worst price offered came not from one of the new gold traders but from a considerably more old-school operation.

In one of Dublin’s dwindling number of pawnshops, a man behind the thick glass panel could hardly have been less interested as he casually threw the ring onto a scales and barked “50 quid” at me. I made my excuses and left, ring on hand.

Joey the lips

Jack and jill do it. No scam. I think the real scam is in the advertising. You cannot buy something in the highstreet for 100 euro and expect 50 I reckon you will get about 15-20 for it.

So imo add up in your head all your items and allow 15-20% return.

This is just an opinion. If someone can verify actualy returns it would be great.

Joey the lips

Amalgam wrote: »

He advertises for a charity that will take your gold.

Jack and jill. He is there patron.

Amalgam

Joey the lips, you're right on the money, on Pat Kenny they said it was basically, often a 200% mark up at the jewellers and that led to people thinking they were due close to that, re-selling it.

RoadKillTs

Good article from the Times. It's amazing how many of theses business have popped up recently.

What exactly do they do with it after the buy the gold? do they just clean them up and resell them?

dylano_k

Amalgam wrote: »

TheZohan, you're behind the times...

100% Catisfaction

AnonoBoy

Joey the lips wrote: »

Jack and jill. He is there patron.

Or the Jekyll and Hyde Foundation as Senator Cassidy calls them.

dylano_k

Amalgam wrote: »

He advertises for a charity that will take your gold.

Is that a charity for all the soveriegnless fingers of scumbags??

Joey the lips

AnonoBoy wrote: »

Or the Jekyll and Hyde Foundation as Senator Cassidy calls them.

[EMAIL="Gobsh@te"]Gobsh@te[/EMAIL]. Goes to show what he really knows about them

Jesus Wept

Fighting Irish wrote: »

It's not really a scam when they give you a price and you decide to take it or not. Please stop protecting the stupid or they'll never learn

Reminds me of this:

'It's not a swindle. What you do is, see, you give them all your credit card numbers, and if one of them is lucky, they send you a prize.'

Prionsios

Well if Dale Winton is lending his name to these cash for gold schemes, surely it cant be a scam!! hmmm

pfishfood

In my option they are all scams, i wouldn't trust them. You'll be ripped off plain and simple because they can offer you whatever they want. Its preying on people that are down on their luck.

bnt

If I take that €14 per gram figure for 18 Carat gold (from the recent article) and do a few sums, it's not such a grim picture when you look at the gold alone, without any jeweller's markup.

• 18 Carat gold is 3/4 pure, so the value of the pure gold is €14 x 4/3 = €18.67 per gram.
• There are 28.35 grams per ounce, so that works out to €529.20 per ounce.
• At the current exchange rate (€1 = about $1.37), that's $725 per ounce of pure gold.
• Current price of gold: $1065, almost 50% above $725 .

So, assuming the gold will be melted and purified (which costs money), and allowing for a profit, the €14 per gram figure doesn't look so bad.

But €4 per gram? Send your gold off through the mail, and blindly accept the price they give you for it? :eek:

Borneo Fnctn

I requested an envelope yesterday to sell my gold. The thing is, all they'll get for their troubles is a used condom. I'm not just saying this. I'm really going to do it. Why? Cos' fuck 'em that's why.

Our man in Havana

All this is a fence for thieves.

Run_to_da_hills

These shops seem to be the latest scourge on the country after the demise of the head shop.

One just opened up in Ennis in the last week and only days after the former head shop shut its doors for good.

How can any Town Council allow planning permission for any of these shops to operate. Their tabloid frontage is enough for anyone to throw up.

http://i48.tinypic.com/1fee5s.jpg

These scammers operate straight from the gutter, they prey on the gullible, misunfortunate, those that have lost their jobs, single mothers, the elderly, they offer the minimum commission on merchandise, encourage house break ins, hand bag snatching and every conceivable form of theft.

Out with them !!!!

caseyann

Borneo Fnctn wrote: »

I requested an envelope yesterday to sell my gold. The thing is, all they'll get for their troubles is a used condom. I'm not just saying this. I'm really going to do it. Why? Cos' fuck 'em that's why.

I did it and they ring you and tell you how much it is,as it wasnt anything special or important to me.I went ahead with the sale.Took 4 weeks to get to me the cheque and no end of trouble cashing it.

Mike 1972

Borneo Fnctn wrote: »

all they'll get for their troubles is a used condom..

Maybe theyll diversify and open a sperm bank

Abrasax

TheZohan wrote: »

I don't have any gold so it doesn't really affect me, but is/was anyone tempted?

Ah, sure you midas well, OP.



What a wasted pun, lying around just waiting for an opportunity to shine.
Why didn't I see this thread months ago?

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

These shops seem to be the latest scourge on the country after the demise of the head shop.

One just opened up in Ennis in the last week and only days after the former head shop shut its doors for good.

How can any Town Council allow planning permission for any of these shops to operate. Their tabloid frontage is enough for anyone to throw up.

http://i48.tinypic.com/1fee5s.jpg

These scammers operate straight from the gutter, they prey on the gullible, misunfortunate, those that have lost their jobs, single mothers, the elderly, they offer the minimum commission on merchandise, encourage house break ins, hand bag snatching and every conceivable form of theft.

Out with them !!!!

Well to be honest, they don't force anybody to sell their gold.

While they may not give the best prices, it is still down to the customer to decide if they want to sell their gold. At least these shop fronts give some sort of guarantee in the sense that you can go in, some of the other companies require you to send them your gold, which is quite dodgy.

These shop fronts are similar to the pound (euro) shops :P

Our man in Havana

They provide a handy place to fence stolen goods.

Run_to_da_hills

Austin Crooked Safari wrote: »

Well to be honest, they don't force anybody to sell their gold.

I would be more concerned about the demand for easy cash to be made from gold and the increase in burglaries.

Gold is extremely mailable and ductile, it can be melted, stretched or made into almost any shape or form which makes it very easy for professional thieves to cover up their tracks.

Elliemental

I pawned an item once, many years ago. I was penniless and the item was was of no sentimental value (infact, I thought it was ugly), but worth over £100 in cash. So I didn't see the harm. Then a few weeks after I'd lodged the item, the store was robbed and I lost my necklace permanently. They paid me another £120 pounds in compensation and wrote off the debt. Overall, despite the rotten luck, I guess it wasn't a bad experience.

Fighting Irish

Borneo Fnctn wrote: »

I requested an envelope yesterday to sell my gold. The thing is, all they'll get for their troubles is a used condom. I'm not just saying this. I'm really going to do it. Why? Cos' fuck 'em that's why.

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

I would be more concerned about the demand for easy cash to be made from gold and the increase in burglaries.

Gold is extremely mailable and ductile, it can be melted, stretched or made into almost any shape or form which makes it very easy for professional thieves to cover up their tracks.

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

These shops seem to be the latest scourge on the country after the demise of the head shop.

One just opened up in Ennis in the last week and only days after the former head shop shut its doors for good.

How can any Town Council allow planning permission for any of these shops to operate. Their tabloid frontage is enough for anyone to throw up.

http://i48.tinypic.com/1fee5s.jpg

These scammers operate straight from the gutter, they prey on the gullible, misunfortunate, those that have lost their jobs, single mothers, the elderly, they offer the minimum commission on merchandise, encourage house break ins, hand bag snatching and every conceivable form of theft.

Out with them !!!!

:rolleyes:

These shops offer a service, they don't force anyone into anything.
Sure lets shut them down, because they don't pay people enough for their gold :rolleyes:

Our man in Havana

These shops encourage crime. Enough reason to close them.

weiland79

Four-Too wrote: »

It's a little like the currency exchange, those outlets change your money but charge some comission. I would say these gold buying businesses should not pay people less than 90% the value of the gold. Otherwise it's pure robbery. I went into a Dublin jeweller to see how much I would get for my gold chain which cost me 100E, he was offering 30E. Something wrong here?!

Don't know if anyone has tried to explain this but I'll give it a go anyway.
BTW I'm in the Jewellery business myself.

First up it has nothing to do with the original price of your chain as the original price has VAT on top of the price. Also things like peoples wages, electricity and rent are built into the price.
Now if you take 24 carat gold to be 1000, 18 carat to be 750 and 9ct to be 375 ( these are the numbers prited somewhere on your chain ) or in other words the Hallmark.
So if you come into me with a 9ct gold chain which is the most common carat in ireland, i will give you the scrap value for the item.The main reason for this is that there is little to no second hand Jewellery business in Ireland,people prefer to have new items.
One of the reasons people are surprised at the price is because 9ct gold has the least amount of gold in it. So if i buy this off you and i cannot resell it as is, what am i going to do with it.
I'm going to melt it down, and when i melt it down ( remember I'm talking about 9ct) you are actually left with a very small amount of gold as the rest of the chain is made up of things like silver and copper.
I hope that's clear..
Oh and by the way if a jeweller offered you 30 euros for a chain that you paid 100 euros for, he is either an idiot or you are lying.:)

Sorry the numbers above 1000 750 and 375 are parts out of 1000

weiland79

Haddockman wrote: »

These shops encourage crime. Enough reason to close them.

And thats bullsh*t too. you could just as easily say that the cars on the road encourage people to steal them.

Mr Smithers

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

I would be more concerned about the demand for easy cash to be made from gold and the increase in burglaries.

Gold is extremely mailable and ductile, it can be melted, stretched or made into almost any shape or form which makes it very easy for professional thieves to cover up their tracks.

I agree with you. These shops are run by scumbags for the convenience of scumbags.

Mr Smithers

weiland79 wrote: »

And thats bullsh*t too. you could just as easily say that the cars on the road encourage people to steal them.

A car cannot be easily stolen, concealed and fenced. Gold can. It is a scumbags wet dream.

weiland79

Mr Smithers wrote: »

I agree with you. These shops are run by scumbags for the convenience of scumbags.

WTF are you talking about. I don't deny that there are less than savoury business out there but the vast majority of us are hard working honest people. I have proceedures in place to try and minimize any sort of dishonesty. For example all people selling gold must present either their passport or Drivers license and 1 up to date utility bill.
So do me a favour and keep your bullsh*t generalisations to yourself.

weiland79

Mr Smithers wrote: »

A car cannot be easily stolen, concealed and fenced. Gold can. It is a scumbags wet dream.

Funny that my fathers car was nicked last week and there is no sign of it.

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

Haddockman wrote: »

These shops encourage crime. Enough reason to close them.

Same can be said for pawn shops.

Our man in Havana

Pawn shops are regulated by the financial regulator and must be licensed. These cash for gold places are not.