rogerwigram
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Capital Mint Ltd
This is my story;
In March 2009 I saw a Capital Mint Ltd advertisement extolling the merits of investing in Gold Bars and claiming it was a “safe haven in a recession”. At the time, a number of financial gurus were also strongly recommending investing in Gold as a sensible precaution against the volatility of the market and that the value of gold would almost certainly increase in the following years.
On 8th April 2009 I purchased 2 x100 gram Gold Bars for £5,968 and asked Capital Mint to store them for me. If, later, I wanted to sell the Gold bars they claimed they would make the process easy for me by offering a service where they would find a buyer for a small 3% commission.
In March 2011, knowing that the price of Gold had increased by over 50% over the previous two years, I decided to sell my gold bars. Capital Mint at first tried to persuade me to convert the bars to Capital Carbon Credits (whatever they are) but when I said I wasn't interested they told me to put my request in writing and they would advertise my bars on their trading platform. I looked at their Trading Platform (www.capitalmint.co.uk) and was astonished to find that several people were selling their gold bars for around £2,800 per bar. That was £180 a bar less than I paid for them two years ago!
I tried to speak to a director of Capital Mint to find out why my gold bars had decreased in value when the press was saying that gold had increased by over 50%. I was palmed off with a secretary who gave me a ****-and-bull story about how gold in the high street had increased by over 50% but that wasn't the case with gold bars! I asked her how long I could expect to wait before a buyer could be found on their trading platform and was told that it usually took about a fortnight.
Six weeks later my gold bars had not sold and I was beginning to get concerned. Why were my bars not selling for £2,800 per bar when, on the same website, Capital Mint was selling 100g gold bars for £ 3.450? It didn't make sense.
I therefore decided to sell the gold myself and asked them to deliver the gold to me.
This they agreed to do but for a 'same day' delivery fee of £290.00 plus £124.33 storage.
Alternatively they offered a cheaper option of an overnight courier (£13.70, plus storage) but I would have to take the risk of the gold being stolen, in which case there would be no compensation available from the courier company.
I decided to travel down to London and collect the gold myself.
When I arrived at their office in Bold Street, London, the gold wasn't there; this was in spite of numerous telephone calls and confirmation emails. I was furious – I had just spent £120 on a railway ticket and asked to be refunded. This was denied on the grounds that I had not received a written confirmation from them that the gold would be available on that date; totally ignoring the phone calls and emails I had sent confirming my time and date of arrival. Eventually I left with just one gold bar which apparently belonged to a lady who was prepared to wait a few extra days. This meant having to return to London at a later date to collect the second gold bar.
A few weeks later I tried selling my bars to several dealers but they would only buy gold bars from 'listed' manufacturers – needless to say the Capital Mint gold bars were not 'listed'. In the end, the only way I could get a realistic price for these bars was to sell them back to the original manufacturer, via their agent.
I eventually sold them for £5,830 (2.5% less than I had originally paid for them two years before). And when the cost of storage, the numerous telephone calls, emails, letters and the train journey down to London are added then it represents a very poor investment indeed.
I strongly advise everyone to stay well away from Capital Mint Ltd.
BUYERS BEWARE!
P.S. My gold bars can still be seen on Capital Mint's trading platform being sold for £2,800 each!! (Reference: CM681).
Roger Wigram
