Complaints procedure

What counts as a complaint

A complaint is any part of dealing with GoldPaid that you are not happy with: the figure in your written offer, how your parcel was handled, how long anything took, the condition of items returned to you, a payment that has not arrived, the way you were spoken to, or how your personal information was used. You do not have to call it a complaint for us to treat it as one. If you tell us something is wrong, this procedure applies.

A question is not a complaint, and most things are settled by asking. But if you ask a question and do not get a proper answer, that is a complaint, and you should say so.

How to raise a complaint

WhatsApp or phone 07944 014111, 8am to 9pm, seven days a week, or email goldpaiduk@gmail.com. If you want a written record from the start, WhatsApp or email is the better route, and anything discussed on the phone is confirmed to you in writing.

Please include: your name and how to reach you; the reference on your label request or written offer, if you have one; the Royal Mail tracking number and the date you posted; what went wrong, in your own words; and the outcome you are looking for. You do not need all of these. The more you include, the faster we can act.

What happens, and by when

1. Acknowledgement within one working day. You get a complaint reference, the name of the person handling it, and a note of what we understood the complaint to be. If we have misunderstood it, tell us and we correct the record before going further.
2. Investigation. We pull the full record of your parcel: your written offer with each item’s weight and XRF reading, the rate applied and when it was taken, the tracking history, and every message between us. If we need something from you, we ask once, clearly.
3. Full written response within five working days of acknowledgement. It sets out what we found, what we are doing about it, and why. Where we were wrong, the response says so in those words. Where we were not, it shows you the evidence rather than asking you to take our word for it.
4. If it needs longer. Some complaints depend on Royal Mail or another third party. If we cannot give a full response in five working days, we tell you why, give you a date, and update you at least every five working days until it is resolved. Whatever the state of it, you have our final written position within eight weeks of your complaint.
5. Escalation. If the response does not resolve it, say so. The complaint goes to Rocco Clayfield, the founder, who reads the whole file himself and replies to you personally within five working days.
6. If you are still not satisfied. The external routes are set out further down this page, honestly, including the ones that do not exist.

What we hold, and what you can ask for

Every parcel leaves a record, and it is yours to see. On request, at any stage, whether or not you are complaining, we send you:

• Your written offer, listing each item we received, with its weight and the XRF reading of its purity.
• The per-gram rate applied to each item, and the date and time that rate was taken.
• The Royal Mail tracking history, inbound and, where there is one, outbound.
• A copy of every message between us about your parcel.

We send you the record, not a summary of it. If an item was assayed, there is a reading. If we say something happened, you can check it.

The situations that come up, and what we do

Your parcel has not arrived

Tell us the tracking number and the date you posted. We check Royal Mail’s tracking with you and confirm whether the parcel has reached us. If there is no delivery scan, the Royal Mail enquiry and compensation claim are made by the sender, which is you: the parcel is your property until we sign for it, and GoldPaid’s normal process is sender-led, with our help and records, even when we paid for the label. The claim needs your proof of postage receipt, which is why we ask you to post at a staffed counter and keep the receipt. Royal Mail cover may be available up to £2,500 depending on the postal method and cover level used. GoldPaid can confirm the appropriate postal option before you post. We give you our records and the label and consignment details, walk you through the claim, and answer anything Royal Mail asks us as the addressee.

The offer is lower than you expected

Four things can lower the figure: the payable weight is lower than the weight you measured, because clasps, springs, pins, stones and non-precious parts are excluded; the carat is lower than the piece was sold to you as, or than its mark suggests; the piece is plated or filled rather than solid; or the market moved between the day you looked up a price and the day of assay. Your written offer shows each of these item by item. If you think we have one wrong, tell us which, and we re-weigh and re-assay that item and send you the readings. There is no charge for this and no time pressure: your items stay exactly as they arrived until you decide.

You think the purity result is wrong

First, we re-assay the item and send you the reading. If you still disagree, you can have it tested independently. The UK Assay Offices are statutory bodies with no commercial connection to GoldPaid. On their published price lists on 1 September 2026, the London Assay Office offers a non-destructive XRF analysis with a written report at £25 plus VAT per item, usually within five to ten working days; the Birmingham Assay Office offers XRF testing from £49 plus VAT; and the Sheffield Assay Office runs a private assay service priced on enquiry. Confirm acceptance, price and turnaround with the office before sending, because we cannot commit them to any item. We return the item to you free of charge for testing.

An item is missing or damaged on return

Compare what came back with your written offer, which lists every item we received. Items are never pooled with another seller’s and stay identifiable from arrival to dispatch, so a discrepancy is traceable. Tell us as soon as you notice, ideally within five working days of receiving the return while the record is fresh. That is a request, not a deadline: your legal right to raise it is not affected by how long you take. If the return parcel was lost or damaged on its way back to you, GoldPaid was the sender of that parcel, so we make the Royal Mail claim for it.

Payment has not arrived

Accept between 8am and 9pm and we aim to send payment by Faster Payments within one working hour of acceptance. A late-night acceptance still initiates the same evening; whether it lands overnight depends on your bank. Payment holds if we have asked for a document and it has not yet cleared, and we say so at the point we ask. Very occasionally a receiving bank holds a first-time inbound payment for its own review. If it is later than any of that, tell us. We send you the payment reference and the bank’s confirmation, and if the fault is ours we aim to send the payment within one working hour of the error being confirmed.

You accepted, and now wish you had not

Once you accept and are paid, ownership passes to GoldPaid and the sale is complete. We say that plainly because it would be worse to imply otherwise. What does not end at that point is your right to have the record checked. If you believe a mistake was made in the assessment, tell us and we review the file. Where a mistake is found, we pay you the difference. The weights and readings on the written offer survive whatever happens to the metal, so a mistake can be found and corrected after the event.

How you were treated, or how your data was handled

If it is about how we spoke to you, the founder reads it. If it is about your personal information, the same procedure applies, and you can also go to the Information Commissioner’s Office at any time, before or after complaining to us. ICO registration ZC214216 (data controller: Rocco Clayfield, trading as GoldPaid).

If you are dealing with a bereavement

If you are selling a parent’s or a grandparent’s jewellery and something has gone wrong, say so, and this procedure changes in three ways. There is no deadline on you. You deal with one named person throughout. And we do not send reminders or chase a decision. Take the time you need; the items stay as they are and the file stays open.

What we will not do

• We do not offer a payment in return for withdrawing a complaint or changing a review.
• We do not ask you to take down or edit a review, and we do not report reviews to Trustpilot to have them removed.
• We do not argue a complaint in public. If you post about it, we reply once, briefly, to say we are dealing with it directly with you.
• We do not close a complaint because a deadline has passed. If you go quiet, we wait.
• We do not treat a complaint as a reason to change how your items are handled or how quickly you are paid.

Where else you can go

GoldPaid is not a member of an alternative dispute resolution scheme, and there is no ombudsman for selling precious metals. We are not a member of the National Association of Jewellers, so its dispute service is not available against us. We say this rather than leave you to find it out.

What is available: the Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 0808 223 1133, Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm, which advises you independently and passes reports to Trading Standards; the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk for anything about your personal information; and, for a money dispute we have not resolved, the county court through the online money claim service, which handles claims of this size without a solicitor. None of these needs our permission, and none is closed to you because you complained to us first.

How complaints change what we do

Every complaint is logged with what caused it and what changed as a result. Once a year we publish, on this page, how many complaints we received, how many we upheld in full or in part, and what we changed because of them. The first of those covers the year to 31 August 2027.

Common questions