Due Diligence – Reputation:
Before you do business with any dealer, make sure you do at least some of the following Google searches:
-(Company Name) review
-(Company Name) scam
-(Company Name) experience
When doing these searches, you are looking for genuine reviews of the companies. Unfortunately, some companies will pay marketers to go out and post overly positive reviews for their company or to post negative reviews about their competitors. So you really need to use your discerning eye and pick out the reviews that seem to be genuine, written from the “person on the street” perspective. Take all reviews with a grain of salt, of course.
BBB Ratings:
To research a dealership, look up its BBB (Better Business Bureau) rating. When you look at the BBB ratings, don’t just focus on the company’s overall rating. Although that’s a good place to start, you also need to look at the Complaint Closing Statistics and any comments left by past or current clients. The BBB will elevate a company’s rating when they have resolved their customer complaints, but if there are alot of complaints this should serve as a warning sign.
Client References:
Ask a dealer to provide a minimum of three client references, better yet five or six. Keep in mind that due to the private nature of gold and silver ownership many of our clients feel strongly about remaining anonymous. That is actually a benefit to you as a prospective client because many of our “best” clients won’t come forth and you will actually end up talking to some of our less familiar clients. Take time to talk with the references, the longer you speak with them the more information you will uncover. Ask specifics about the buying and/or selling process, customer service, trustworthiness of the dealer etc.
Uncover the Dealer’s “Positioning”:
Every dealer has a core set of beliefs about how to wisely invest in physical gold and silver. The difficulty lies in the fact that the moral core beliefs in wise investing don’t often result in the most profitable position for the dealer. The bottom line is that there is more margin and money to be made for a dealer in rare, numismatic and European coins than there is in standard bullion coins and bars. While there is a place for numismatics (primarily for collectors and speculators), a trustworthy dealer will NEVER use scare tactics or sales tricks to “upsell” you from bullion to numismatics. Review their website before calling them – you will be able to clearly identify if they are “pushing” high margin items with no concern for your investing goals and strategies.
