I dropped off an order to ARA at their shop when I was home for Christmas. Their check came on the 27th and was a little short. When I dropped off the gold, they asked if I wanted to lock in at $1,614 (which was the prevailing price at that very second), and I took it. They wrote that number on the drop off ticket and my settlement invoice reflected a $1,575 number.
A quick call to them had it figured out, as they staple another form on top of the drop off ticket, and he said that sometimes they fail to look to see if that particular ticket had a locked in price. Not to worry... a second check was in the mail that day to correct the issue.
Now... my order prior to this was totally screwed. And as luck had it, my wife dropped it off to their office on that particular day. I got back less than HALF what I was expecting, so that means that over half my gold was fake, OR, a lot of my misc lot disappeared prior to being processed. And considering that I acid test everything myself, I'm opting for the latter.
Could it be that since it was a WOMAN dropping off the gold, they figured that nobody would notice? I don't know. But when I saw the buttons they were making from other big volume dealers, WHY would they try to rip me off of half my gold weight when we're only talking about 2 oz of gross weight? Lesson learned.
So my last order had a detailed write up of what I was bringing in... and I SMASHED, CUT, AND DESTROYED every piece that was in the lot. While that may stop potential sticky fingers from taking a sweet piece, it won't stop sticky fingers from taking a small scrap piece for themselves. Do this a few hundred times and you've got a nice pile of small pieces.
The same day I dropped off my gold at ARA, I mailed in my Platinum to Midwest in an overnight parcel with a detailed drop off list and instructions on how to pay. I also smashed and destroyed everything in that lot as well. As luck had it, I got a check from Midwest 2 days later. I ran through their detailed invoice and couldn't make heads or tails on how they came up with their numbers. And I could easily see that they locked me in at the lowest price for platinum for the previous week @ $1,390. The day they received the package, the lowest was around $1,420. Not a big difference, but I still couldn't make the math come in right. It's like they deducted their 10% cut from the top of the gross weight, then skimmed another 10% from the final $ amount. Even then it didn't add up quite right. I should have called them, but I didn't. My rationale was that ARA takes 20% on Pt anyway, and Midwest is supposed to take only 10%. That's why I seperated my two lots. Lesson learned there too.
