Monday, March 9, 2009

Cash For Gold Type Offers Usually Bad Deal For Customers

If the bad economy has got you in a financial hole then you may have been tempted by one of the many ads that are all over the TV about how you can make quick money fast by sending in your old unwanted gold. Its a good idea but for one little thing. Be prepared to get far less out of the deal than your gold is worth. Usually it is a standard in the industry to pay out somewhere around 30%, that is provided that the company you are dealing with is reputable in the first place. What 30% means is that your going to get about 30 cents for every dollar of gold you send in. For example if you were to send in $100 dollars worth of gold it would be a normal business practice for the company you are dealing with to send you back about $30. For $500 dollars of gold you would get back about $150 and so forth. The company would then melt down the gold and sell it for the full $500 and pocket the difference as profit.
Some of the companies in the industry are a little more reputable than others however and even this small return on your gold might be wishful thinking for customers. There have been incidents where in which some of the companies in the industry have been sent $1000 dollars worth of gold and they have returned less than $200 to their customers. The problem with the whole system is that the customer has to trust the company they are doing business with to be honest and provide them with a fair assessment of the value of their gold and that sometimes may be the biggest wishful thinking of all.