Why do you not accept more than £8000 in cash payment?
Statutory law in the United Kingdom as enforced by the Financial Conduct Authority and HMRC, now makes it mandatory for any firm which accepts more than £8000 per calendar year from any one named counterparty to register with one of the aforementioned bodies for Anti Money Laundering oversight. Extensive records are required to be kept by the regulated firm pertaining to the client and their identity, and the firm in question is required to make an assessment of the client’s source of funds and report any suspicious political or financial behaviour to the regulator, if necessary without telling the client that such a report has been filed. We do not believe that the costs and levels of intrusion required by such rules are justified and we have therefore opted not to accept more than £8000 per year in cash from any one client. We note with concern the progressive constrictions on the use of cash in modern society, the result of which in due course will be to make every transaction traceable by unseen persons, whether in government or among the larger digital corporations of the private sector. While calls for more intensive monitoring of financial sector transactions are often made in the name of public security, we feel that further such monitoring is more likely to act as a pathway to a surveillance state than to protect society from any other purported evil. That such surveillance is now extending across the realms of patient healthcare records, email and telecommunications data and the activities of political NGOs, is in our view a matter of serious concern.
You don’t have a very wide range of stock do you?
Quite right and deliberately so. There are a relatively small number of lines that sell by far the most. It is these that we try to keep in stock. Holding unpopular items ties up capital, which would cost money, therefore increasing overheads and ultimately also the commission rates that we charge our customers.
Why are your delivery charges higher than others?
Some bullion suppliers promote a postal delivery service as their main delivery mechanism. We have seen this operating over many years and in some cases used such a service as a customer. Our experience tells us that for anything more than a small consignment, we should deliver by hand using one of own staff or a trusted third party courier. We have seen parcels containing substantial amounts of bullion being left in public view in the back of a delivery van in central London while the driver carries other parcels for delivery. While insurance does cover such eventualities as theft, the costs of increased premiums following a risk event and the distress that such occasions cause to all involved are not worth sustaining in our view. We therefore choose to hand deliver for larger orders. The fact that our commission rates are so low, means that as order values increase, we rapidly become one of the most competitive suppliers in the United Kingdom despite the higher than average cost of our delivery charge.
Why do you not offer discounts as the number of units ordered increases?
Because our prices are already so low! For example, one sovereign can be purchased from us at the same unit price that can only be achieved by purchasing 100 sovereigns from one of our main competitors.
Why do you only accept £1500 by card payment?
Some payment processing companies reserve the right to reverse transactions at the request of the client without reference to the supplier. In a market where price volatility features so prominently, the possibility that a client will seek to reverse a payment is further increased in times where market prices are falling. While the vast majority of people are honourable in this regard, there is a small but significant portion that seeks to profit by nefarious means, of which the hacking of shopping cart systems is a further example. We have therefore decided to limit our exposure to such risks by capping our card transaction value at £1500 per transaction. We continue to accept unlimited amounts by bank transfer and cheque, and up to £8000 per calendar year in cash.