The troubles with gold buying websites, such as those highlighted here with Money4Gold, seem to have gone a little quiter recently.
Hopefully this has happened as more people realise that all those companies advertising on TV to buy your gold don’t tend to give very good prices per ounce, and you’re often better off to go to a high-street jeweller instead. Or it could be that all the unwanted gold lying around Britain has already been sold off.
Well, if you do have any spare gold left, there’s now another option for selling it. Tesco have teamed up with Ramsdens, an established firm, to create the Tesco Gold Exchange which not only promises you a decent deal for your gold, but you also get Tesco Clubcard points too.
Tesco claim they’ll pay more than most high-street jewellers, and should therefore also be significantly more than most of the “TV-advertised” firms. Here is the price comparison from their website (as at 03/01/2011):
| Price per gram of 9 carat gold | |
| Tesco | £7.81 |
| H.Samuel | £7.59 |
| H&T Pawnbrokers | £6.50 |
| Postgoldforcash (Reccomended partner of WHSmith) | £3.27 |
The process is pretty much like any other similar service; You first have to get yourself a special gold bag either from one of their stores or by ordering it online, then bag up your unwanted gold and post it or hand it in at certain Tesco stores.
You should receive an offer for the gold within 5 days, and you can either accept and get the money transferred into your account (plus 1 Clubcard point for each £1 in value), or reject the offer and get your gold returned. Some of the other postal gold services have been notoriously slow at getting gold back to their customers, or will come back with further offers depending on whether the price of gold has risen in the time it has been with them. It will be interesting to see how quickly Tesco Gold Exchange returns the gold.
It’s intruiging that Tesco are getting into this market at this stage – they obviously feel there’s still money to be made and that the price of gold will continue to rise (which is the key to this working). Naturally, they’ve got a massive budget and audience for their marketing, so they will have lower costs per client acquisition compared with the other postal gold companies.
If you’ve used Tesco’s Gold Exchange, we’d be interested in hearing your experiences. Share them in the comments, below.
Via Walletpop
Whilst £7.81 / g for 9ct may seem like a fair price, a quick bit of calculation will reveal that Tesco are only paying you 72% of the true gold value (based on the current bullion rate).
A professional bullion dealer will pay you in-excess of 90% of market value.
Just another company looking to rip people off.
Birmingham Jewellery Quarter paying £10.41 per gram. Tescos offering substantially less than this.
If you have 100grams of gold you would lose over £200 selling it at Tesco.
We received a question our SimplyFinance Answers product shortly after the news. With Tesco using its brand and marketing budget, we may see more interest from consumers.
With personal loan interest rates dropping we may see more competition to assist consumers.
I am amazed that tesco have teamed up with Ramsdens or ‘scamsdens’ as they are known in the business. This company is no stranger to the courts and are as far removed from what I thought Tesco stood for as is possible. They rip people off on a daily basis. Why on earth did some tesco executive consider this a good partnership?
Whilst it is no surprise to see Tesco make a move into a lucrative market where there is money to be made, it is perhaps a surprise that it has taken them so long. After all, many thousands of individuals have already sold their gold, but Tesco must think that there are enough of us left who have resisted so far.
It’s always best to keep up to date with how much companies pay for gold as these figures often change with gold prices. http://www.postgoldforcash.com for example is one of the better companies as they are very transparent about what they pay and what their competitors do. The best lesson is to just research research research and not give up your gold until you are happy with your offer and the service you have received.
It is certainly interesting that Tesco are weighing in on this too. I don’t think we will see gold buyers disappearing from the high street like we have the Greengrocers though.