Ex-Home Secretary Jacqui Smith recently raised the issue of regulation for “cash for gold” websites in the House of Commons, prompted by fears that a rise in burglaries had been caused by the increase in such sites, and the ease with which criminals can turn their booty into cold hard cash.
I recently wrote to the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department about the case of one of my constituents who was unfortunately burgled and was surprised that the burglars focused almost completely on taking jewellery and other gold.
He believes, as do I, that this may have been prompted by the burgeoning of cash-for-gold adverts on our television screens and in our newspapers, often with no identification required to obtain money in exchange for gold. My Hon Friend helpfully replied that he was carrying out a review in this area.
“May I encourage him to involve trading standards officers in that work and to consider legislation as quickly as possible, perhaps even in the Crime and Security Bill?
The matter is to be looked into by the “crime reduction minister” (no we didn’t know there was such a thing either), Alan Campbell, who expects the matter to involve trading standards and legislation, if necessary. The problems that we’ve featured on Money Watch have been with the cash for gold companies themselves (well, one in particular), rather than criminals, and interestingly, trading standards appear to have been reluctant to act in many cases. Let’s see if Jacqui Smith has better luck giving them a kick up the backsides.
photo credit: PetroleumJelliffe
My recomendation is that is that you should deal with family run firms who have long standing reputations for honesty and integrity.
I don’t know why these guys get such a bad name. I’ve used an online site twice and I can vouch that they gave me way more money than what local jewelers were offering. They gave me around 75% of market while there wasn’t a single local jeweler that would offer more than 40%. Well, one of them offered 50% as long as I bought something from them. Otherwise, they were offering 30%. A real joke. In my experience, the online sites are just as good as anyone out there. I used Gold Experts in Canada both times. I don’t think they deal with anyone outside Canada though.