Gold mart

Discussion of the Gold portion of the Permanent Portfolio

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jwart
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Gold mart

Post by jwart » Tue Jul 03, 2012 6:26 am

I made my biggest gold coin purchases yet from Goldmart on 06/27/12. This is my 4 th time making a purchase from them and its all been a very smooth process. However,this time around after i wired my money to them the next day, i have not received any communication from the company and it has already exceeded their turn around time of 3-5 business days.. I have already left them 2 voicemails and an email. Its almost as if the lights are out at the company presently.

I am wondering how to proceed at this point. Worried but not freaked out yet but that point is fast approaching.

Thank you.
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Greg
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Re: Gold mart

Post by Greg » Tue Jul 03, 2012 8:03 am

jwart wrote: I made my biggest gold coin purchases yet from Goldmart on 06/27/12. This is my 4 th time making a purchase from them and its all been a very smooth process. However,this time around after i wired my money to them the next day, i have not received any communication from the company and it has already exceeded their turn around time of 3-5 business days.. I have already left them 2 voicemails and an email. Its almost as if the lights are out at the company presently.

I am wondering how to proceed at this point. Worried but not freaked out yet but that point is fast approaching.

Thank you.
When you log on to the site does it say your order is still in "processing" stage? I felt weird the first time I bought from them but I sent in a check and didn't receive my gold until two weeks later. I'm surprised you'd get voicemails twice. Both times I've called they had someone right there. Were you calling during not work hours?

As with most things, we realize we worry over nothing. I wouldn't start getting worried for a much longer time.
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jwart
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Re: Gold mart

Post by jwart » Tue Jul 03, 2012 9:19 am

It does say "processing". Outside of this experience, my previous interactions with them mirrors yours. Its just disconcerting especially with it being my biggest order and no communication whatsoever. I hope i hear from them relatively quickly.
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Greg
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Re: Gold mart

Post by Greg » Tue Jul 03, 2012 9:32 am

jwart wrote: It does say "processing". Outside of this experience, my previous interactions with them mirrors yours. Its just disconcerting especially with it being my biggest order and no communication whatsoever. I hope i hear from them relatively quickly.
Not sure how they are about voicemails. I know whenever I would leave them emails about questions that I would never get anything back and their IM service always just tells me they are busy and to email them. When I got a person on the phone they were very helpful.

They wouldn't send an email to you though until the order is out for delivery and they send a confirmation number. Other than that I never heard from them either.
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jwart
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Re: Gold mart

Post by jwart » Tue Jul 03, 2012 9:36 am

Thanks for sharing. Realize in my earlier post i had my order date as June 27. It actually is June 21. I have however noted your two week turn around time and hopefully mine gets resolved in a similar fashion.
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MediumTex
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Re: Gold mart

Post by MediumTex » Tue Jul 03, 2012 11:14 am

jwart wrote: Thanks for sharing. Realize in my earlier post i had my order date as June 27. It actually is June 21. I have however noted your two week turn around time and hopefully mine gets resolved in a similar fashion.
FWIW, this time of year lots of people are on vacation and there may just be fewer people on the phones.
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Greg
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Re: Gold mart

Post by Greg » Tue Jul 03, 2012 12:35 pm

MediumTex wrote:
jwart wrote: Thanks for sharing. Realize in my earlier post i had my order date as June 27. It actually is June 21. I have however noted your two week turn around time and hopefully mine gets resolved in a similar fashion.
FWIW, this time of year lots of people are on vacation and there may just be fewer people on the phones.
I'd agree with that as well. Although I will say that I mailed a check from Pennsylvania to their California office and then they hold checks for 7 business days before they start sending it out. I'm not positive how much turnaround time is for wire transfers but they are $25 for me to send and I can't justify to myself paying more than I have to for gold ownership.
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Re: Gold mart

Post by Reub » Tue Jul 03, 2012 2:22 pm

I wouldn't sweat it. It has taken me up to a month to receive my coins from them and I don't think that they are going out of business.
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Re: Gold mart

Post by Reub » Thu Jul 05, 2012 9:02 am

I just got an email from Goldmart and they are in the process of moving to Carson City, Nevada. They said that they will ship out their orders soon.
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Re: Gold mart

Post by Greg » Thu Jul 05, 2012 10:34 am

Reub wrote: I just got an email from Goldmart and they are in the process of moving to Carson City, Nevada. They said that they will ship out their orders soon.
Interesting. I wonder if that is due to a more favorable tax treatment there of their business. On the plus side, they're moving slightly closer to me so now maybe my checks get there a day sooner ;)
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Re: Gold mart

Post by Jay-UMN » Tue Jul 10, 2012 9:51 am

I recently bought a large order from Gold Mart in June and received the order at my door 3 days later. At the time, they were often online for Q&A through the IM window and after the order I made a couple phone calls to check status only because I wasn't going to be around after the weekend so I wanted to make sure the order was going to get to me Saturday at the latest. I had pretty excellent customer service to be honest.

by the way, new member, just registered today. Read all of crawling road, read through Harry Browne's Fail Safe Investing, and listened to his radio show archives earlier this year. Just getting started. I have already read several articles on here but hadn't registered mostly because I hadn't had a need or desire to respond to anything just yet.
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Re: Gold mart

Post by Greg » Tue Jul 10, 2012 10:22 am

Jay-UMN wrote: I recently bought a large order from Gold Mart in June and received the order at my door 3 days later. At the time, they were often online for Q&A through the IM window and after the order I made a couple phone calls to check status only because I wasn't going to be around after the weekend so I wanted to make sure the order was going to get to me Saturday at the latest. I had pretty excellent customer service to be honest.

by the way, new member, just registered today. Read all of crawling road, read through Harry Browne's Fail Safe Investing, and listened to his radio show archives earlier this year. Just getting started. I have already read several articles on here but hadn't registered mostly because I hadn't had a need or desire to respond to anything just yet.
Welcome to the forum then Jay-UMN! I joined a few months ago and have learned so much information from all of these bright people. I'm sure you'll enjoy your time here if the Permanent Portfolio seems like a reasonable good idea to you.
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Re: Gold mart

Post by Jay-UMN » Tue Jul 17, 2012 11:01 pm

Thanks. For those that haven't bought from GoldMart before or don't get their emails, they sent me the following regarding their recent service or lack thereof:

Both on JULY 12
Dear Valued Goldmart.com Customer,

We want inform you that we have completed our 500 mile move from Newport Beach, CA to Carson City, NV.  During the move we encountered many logistcal and technical setbacks.  We apologize for any anxiety or frustrations that you might have experienced.  Our apology is genuine and comes from experience because we became frustrated from all the setbacks we incurred.  The move was twice as much work as anticipated and we had half the help as our employee who oversees customer service emails and phone messages decided not to make the move two days before our scheduled departure after confirming he was coming a week prior.  Another set back we incurred was when we sent out a bulk email through our bulk email service to notify our customers that we were moving and for whatever reason the bulk email service flagged the notification email and was only sent  to a small fraction of our customers rather than our entire list.  (We are using a different bulk email service to send this email.)  Once we arrived in Carson City we incurred more logistical problems with AT&T activating our internet.  We had hoped our internet would be activated on the morning of July 5th but activation wasn't available until late afternoon on July 9th.  Our first priority was to start shipping orders but ran into another technical set back.  After networking our computers we downloaded the newest version of software we use to process and ship orders but in so doing we lost all current data that we needed to close out orders.  (We ended up spending all day Tuesday working on recovering the data and finally completed the data retrieval Wednesday around noon.)  Later on Tuesday we ended up losing our live price feed due to the company supplying going out of business.  (We are now currently using the Kitco Ask price to place trades over the phone, we hope to have a new live price feed by the end of the week, new orders now need to be temporarily placed over the phone until you see the live prices updating on our home page when refreshed.)  Besides all these complications, we have some great news for you.  We started shipping Wenesday afternoon and anticipate all backdated orders to be shipped and completed at the latest by this coming Monday July 16th.  We look forward to getting back to our status quo of providing our customers with the best pricing on the internet, exceptional customer service, and extremely fast processing time for shipping and fulfilling orders.  We learned alot from this move but won't be able to use it as we are firmly settled in the state of Nevada for good.  We appreciate your understanding, patience, and support.  We take pride in serving all of our customers and the community of stackers who participate on all the different precious metals forums, with you all we would not be in business.  We hope you appreciate us and the services we provide as much as we appreciate you.  Yes, sometimes we occasionally make mistakes but we try to be as transparent as possible, we understand we are in no means perfect yet we still strive for perfection. Thank you again for your business and if you have any feedback or suggestions we are open ears so please reply to this email.  (All emails will be read but might not be responded to due to our current under staffing and current work load we have to have completed by July 16th.)

Sincerely,

Goldmart.com
and this:
Dear Valued Goldmart.com Customer,

Currently we are experiencing technical difficulties as our live price feed is off.  The company providing our live price feed went out of business on Tuesday and we are scrambling to find a replacement by the end of the week.  If you want to place an order, all orders will have to manually be made over the phone until we can provide an accurate live price feed.  In the mean time we will be using the Kitco.com Ask price.  Sorry about the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

Goldmart.com
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Greg
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Re: Gold mart

Post by Greg » Wed Aug 15, 2012 9:37 pm

Sadly it looks like the minimum has been raised for free shipping and insurance for goldmart, up from $5000 to now $7500. I guess I can't fully complain though, I'm getting American Gold Eagles from my local dealer at $30 over spot ;)
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