The largest independent pawnbrokers in the country, which buys gold from customers of its 55 stores in North East England and Scotland and its website GotGoldGetCash.co.uk, was one of several gold buyers to be ‘mystery shopped’ by researchers from the TV channel’s daily consumer programme The One Show.
And the results, featured in last Friday’s (29 January 2010) show, confirmed that Ramsdens GotGoldGetCash.co.uk website offers a transparent service in that its clearly advertised online gold price is the one paid to the customer. Viewers saw that, on receipt of the gold pack from the programme’s mystery shopper, Ramsdens offered the same offer price as advertised on its website and provided a prompt service.
The company’s CEO, Peter Kenyon, was delighted with the programme’s investigation.
“Ramsdens offers good value to people wanting to sell their jewellery but, unfortunately, most of our competitors do not - as The One Show found out” said Peter.
“We regularly undertake our own extensive mystery shop of our competitors and are appalled at the low rates that most of them pay and at some of the claims that they make in relation to associated offers, gold price and guarantees. Even those that advertise their prices – and not all do so – don’t always honour that price”
The feature on the BBC 1 early evening programme focused on the current interest in gold buying and selling in the light of the high price that gold currently commands. Adverts from gold buyers are now commonplace in the media and as the public, and The One Show, have discovered, not all live up to their hype.
Some companies have set up purely to take advantage of the current prices while others are based abroad, thus falling out of the remit of UK trading standards regulations. Ramsdens, points out Peter Kenyon, has been in operation for a long time and has a reputation for fair trading with a huge and ever-growing customer base which would not have been possible unless it had earned their trust.
“The price we offer is rarely challenged because it is clearly stated on the website. That means that, if the customer knows the weight and carat of their gold jewellery, they can calculate in advance the amount they will receive for it: this is not the case with some of our competitors,”
“Being honest and, in accordance with our values to be fair and transparent, we will also pay more than our website price if, in the meantime, the price of gold has increased or the jewellery received was heavy or re-saleable for more as a piece of jewellery rather than as melted down gold.”
Ramsdens, whose head office is in Middlesbrough, opened 19 new shops last year and has plans for many more in 2010. Its gold buying website www.GotGoldGetCash.co.uk which launched in 2007, has also taken its services to people who don’t live close to any of its town centre outlets and enabled them to compete with other internet-based gold buyers.
Following the highlighting of discrepancies within the industry, Peter, who is a council member for the National Pawnbroking Association, is calling for a code of practice to force all postal gold buyers to advertise their price on line so that customers are able to make a fully informed decision about who they should send their valuables to.
ENDS
