Red flags: how to tell a postal gold buyer is not worth using

The four that should stop you posting

• No written, itemised offer. A verbal or lump-sum figure with no working cannot be checked and cannot be compared. You should see the purity found, the weight and the rate used, per item.
• No free tracked return if you decline. If saying no costs money, the valuation is not no-obligation regardless of what the homepage says.
• A right to process items on receipt. Terms permitting melting, cutting or unsetting before acceptance mean your items cannot come back as they were.
• Silence treated as acceptance. A clause that deems you to have accepted after a set number of days turns a fortnight in hospital into a completed sale.

Ten-minute checks to do before you post

1. Find the company number and check it at Companies House. A UK limited company must display its registered name and number. Search the register: does the name match, is the company active rather than dissolved or in the process of being struck off, and are accounts and confirmation statements filed on time?
2. Look at the incorporation date against the marketing. A company incorporated last year describing decades of trading history is telling you something. Check the claim against the register rather than the About page.
3. Check the address. Many legitimate businesses use a registered office that is an accountant or a formation agent. What matters is whether there is also a real trading address, and whether the business will tell you where your parcel is going before you send it.
4. Phone the number. A number that is answered by a person who can explain the testing method is worth more than any trust badge on a website.
5. Read the review pattern, not the score. Look at dates and detail. A cluster of near-identical five-star reviews posted in the same fortnight, or a review count far larger than a young company could plausibly have earned, is worth more scrutiny than a mixed but detailed history.
6. Search the company name with the words complaint, not returned and did not pay. Two minutes, and it surfaces most patterns worth knowing about.
7. Check the terms exist at all. A postal buyer with no published terms and conditions is asking you to send valuables into an arrangement with no published terms.

Red flags in the terms and conditions

Open the terms page and use your browser’s find function. These specific phrases are the ones that change the balance of the deal, and they are usually buried rather than hidden. Every one of these questions has a published answer on selling gold by post, which is the standard any buyer should be held to, ours included.

• “deemed to have accepted” or any variant tying acceptance to the passage of time.
• “may be melted, refined or processed on receipt”, which removes the possibility of an intact return.
• “return postage will be charged”, or an administration, restocking or handling fee applied to declined lots.
• “we do not accept liability for items sent to us”, which is a broad disclaimer over goods that are still yours.
• “at our sole discretion”, and whatever follows it.
• No stated timescale at all for testing, for the offer, or for the return. Vagueness about time is usually deliberate.

Red flags in how a buyer talks to you

• Countdown timers, “today only” rates, or an offer that expires in hours. Precious-metal rates move, which is a reason to re-run a figure, not a reason to hurry you.
• Claims to pay the highest price, guaranteed, before anyone has seen or tested the item. Nobody can guarantee a figure before inspection.
• Refusing to name the testing method, or describing it only as “our experts assess it”.
• Refusing to put the figure in writing.
• Asking for your bank details before an offer has been made.
• Pressure to send more once the first parcel has arrived, particularly framed as improving the rate on the lot already held.
• A different figure each time you ask, with no explanation tied to the market or to the item.

Red flags in the offer itself

• A single total with no per-item breakdown, so a mixed lot cannot be checked.
• No purity stated. Without it there is no way to know whether a 9ct chain was priced as 9ct.
• No weight stated, or a weight given only to the nearest gram.
• No rate stated, and no date on the offer.
• A total that has changed from an earlier written figure with no reason given.

What a complete written offer looks like is set out in how we value gold, and the deduction side is covered in what fees a postal gold buyer charges.

Things that look like red flags but are not

• Being asked for photo identification. Businesses buying precious metals carry out identity and ownership checks. Being asked for ID is a sign of a business taking that seriously, and it protects honest sellers.
• An offer well below an insurance valuation. An insurance valuation is a replacement-at-retail figure. It is not a resale figure and never has been. The two are answering different questions.
• An offer below the gold price you saw on a chart. Published prices are for pure refined metal. Jewellery is an alloy containing solder, stones and fittings, and it has to be refined, see spot price versus scrap price.
• No shop to walk into. Postal-only is a cost structure, not a warning sign. What matters is whether the process is documented and whether the return is free.
• Being asked to split a high-value lot across more than one parcel. That is a buyer keeping each parcel within its postal cover level, which is in your interest rather than theirs.

If you have already posted and something feels wrong

Do not wait to see whether it resolves itself. Put your position in writing straight away, keep every message, and read what to do if something goes wrong when you sell gold by post, which sets out the escalation routes and the time limits that apply. Some of those limits are short, and a claim made late is often a claim refused.