+++ Too good to be true? 400€ Euro for new customers buying gold! +++
Yes, that's right... a whopping 400€ free when buying gold from 3.000€ or more! And that completely without consideration, with guaranteed rising gold price!
This and even more offers up to 600€, even from 2.500€ gold purchase are currently available at goldbank-münchen.de.
The enterprise is since 1972 a divorce institution and celebrates at present 10 years existence of their Onlineshop.
When buying 3x 20g gold bars with a total value of 3,243€ minus the 400€, you pay only 2,843€ and that with free shipping.
That is an unbeatable 47,38€ per gram. Stock exchange price currently 1.703€ per ounce, so per gram 54,76€. Who does not strike there? Your own fault!
Stop!
Of course I hope that you reading these lines NOT already burned out the line and you bought from greed!
Because today's topic is, despite all the obvious ridiculousness of the discount in the room very serious and can cost many a layman a lot of money.
Fake online stores in the precious metal trade
In the present time of inflation and uncertainties on the financial markets appear again and again (not only recently, but increasingly) fake gold stores appear. These advertise as written above with such ominous offers and thus quickly lure ignorant, greedy, savings foxes or simply uninformed people into the trap and rob you of your money.
The scam is as simple as it is banal. Interested buyers are fished out via heavily reduced prices or offers.
In most cases the price for the offered bars is around 100€ lower than from comparable offers. Here, of course, is played with the low feelings of saving, stinginess and greed for the cheapest offer.
The websites of the fake stores are often professionally designed for the layman. They advertise with keywords like security, SSL encryption, 100% insurance, free shipping, guaranteed prices and last but not least the promised discount.
The providers are often non-European or at least located in other European countries from the criminal milieu.
How does the purchase in a fake precious metal store work?
Registration is very simple. In most cases, a mail address is enough. After that, potential buyers will receive a registration link. No address is needed to start with.
Why is that so? It is probably due to the platform. Most fakeshops are based on a Wordpress templet or Wordpress service. (Yes, that's right, those are the ones with the blogs etc.). The plugin for this is called WP User Registration and requires only a mail address as first step.
After the "account" has been created, you can go shopping.
In our example we buy a 20g bar. NoticeableThere are only bars from 20g gold to buy on the website. But obviously I can buy unlimited 1kg gold bars...
In our example, we buy a 20g bar on a trial basis. We do not want to cause skepticism with the operator / crook.
The ordering process is also very simple. We put the bar into the shopping cart, click through the form for the billing and shipping address (conspicuous here: the forced entry of a phone number, why this is important - more about that later on), accept the [not present here] AGBs and confirm that we want to buy the bar.
At the end of the process, a message appears that an employee of the company will check our order and then contact me soon or I will receive an invoice with account number. So far nothing unusual and absolutely normal in our industry.
After all, you already receive a confirmation of receipt of your order at the store by mail. This is also standard in our industry.
After about an hour, you receive an email with the confirmation and an account number. In our example, the account number leads to an account in Austria at Unicredit Bank Austria.
Apparently, a Florian - Life Finance should be behind it. This is of course not a real account recipient, with the introduction of the IBAN obligation, the control and name matching for transfers was omitted. It could also be Scrooge McDuck as the recipient there, although the safecrackers are the owners of the account.
Also, the account probably belongs to a third, uninvolved person, who either carelessly disclosed their data or possibly unknowingly (and also driven by greed) in this case of money laundering
involved in this case of money laundering.
If you now complete the transfer to the specified account, the fraud has been carried out and you will receive NO goods.
Is this the end of the scam? Not quite... remember the phone number?
You will find dozens of calls on your phone in the next 3-5 days... if you are available on one of these calls, you will receive further "offers", possibly also legal instructions that you have entered into a valid purchase contract, if you e.g. have not transferred the money after a certain period of time... after a certain time you have not transferred the money... At some point you might get a call from a nice policeman, who asks for your help to arrest a mean gang of internet crooks, because they rip off poor people with precious metals... oh wonder, they can help you too! Just now there is a crook around. They want to catch the crooks with your help and cash... in 10 minutes a colleague will come around and borrow your money, you live in the street so and so... (already forgotten?: Your address is from the order...)
Why do the fake stores often only offer bars from 20g, or special collector coins?
Cost-benefit ratio. It often doesn't take long until a fraud with such stores is noticed. As already let shine through at the beginning, such offers are mostly based on Wordpress templates and FreeToHost servers to keep the upfront costs as low as possible. So to be lucrative, we need a minimum amount to be earned in one fell swoop... In the past, there were also offers where 1g or 5g bars of gold were offered, but these were subject to a minimum order amount... these offers however meet with rejection or reservations from many customers. To offer the offer a priori with 100€ cheaper is therefore simply a cost-benefit consideration for the rip-off artists...
How can I recognize fakeshops?
There are, of course, a few ways to track down the crime.
The beginning of a fake check should be the imprint of every store. In Germany (or basically EU area) such a mandatory. The data found here is often misused by the villains and stolen from real stores and website operators. A check on e.g. google.de provides clarity whether addresses, trade registers, tax numbers or telephone numbers belong to the correct provider identified here.
In many fakeshops, at least two different providers are copied together. In our example, the real providers MP-Edelmetalle and Gold Silber Kontor GmbH are affected.
With the HRB (commercial register) the register number is sufficient (here: HRB 120782 B) is sufficient and the google search spits out the real company, Gold Silber Kontor GmbH, e.g. via Northdata. [Source 1]
With many fakeshops you try in vain to get someone on the phone. The reason is quite simple: Most of the time there are several fraud attempts going on at the same time. Dubious, if here suddenly instead of goldbank-münchen.de gold-handel-n.de would suddenly call 😉.
But there is often a callback function via a simple contact form. I promise you: The ladies and gentlemen call 100%!
Everyone knows them today: seals of approval. Especially when buying online, you can find a wide variety of badges like TrustedShops, eKomi, TÜV or "geprüfter Webshop" on the various websites.
All of them have one thing in common: they are supposed to guarantee or safeguard security and safe shopping in online stores. How exactly these seals work and how useful they are, I can gladly explain at another point. For us, only one thing is important in this topic: These seals must be clickable when used. clickable and must lead to the correct the right offer from the seal provider. You can drive safely if you check the name of the store directly on the seal provider's website. This way, clicking on the offer there will take you directly to the right webshop.
A seemingly blurred, washed-out and fuzzy logo of a seal provider, which is also not clickable, is a strong indication of misuse of the same.
Spelling and general design of websites are nowadays partly so professionally presented that this can no longer be used as the sole characteristic for checking for fakeshops. On the other hand, there are also many dyslexics among the serious store operators.
Payment options: In online precious metal trading, there are actually only two common payment methods: Cash (for offers with self-collection in a local store of the provider) and prepayment bank transfer. There is no reputable precious metal dealer in Germany that I know of that handles payments with PayPal or credit card! On the one hand, the costs for such procedures are too high (because the margin is often only in the single-digit percentage range), on the other hand, the susceptibility to fraud is too risky for the store operator.
Discounts or new customer promotions: Gold, or precious metals trading in general, is a very narrow-margin business, i.e., one with little room to maneuver in terms of price. Anyone advertising offers beyond market value or coupons or discount codes is completely wrong in this business and is probably acting fraudulently. There is no discount on gold or precious metals. Not when buying one Krugerrand coin and also not when buying 10, 20 or 30 coins! Bars of course just as not! Dealers who offer such graduated prices from the outset are highly problematic! Who wants to buy more gold, is referred to higher standardizations (with bars zb. instead of 10x 10g, even 1x 100g gold) - see last contribution of me to the topic "buy more - save more".
The promised new customer discount from above is therefore a clear warning sign!
Prices in the market. No serious dealer allows himself massive deviations in gold sales. Surely, especially in the ounce range a lot of shenanigans and there are dealers who deviate partly 50 €. Here, however, must be checked in each individual case, such as the quality or the delivery time of the goods is specified. Just with favorable offers a delivery time of up to 8 weeks is given... how I react as a dealer to such competitors or what I think of it, also that another, new topic... and nevertheless: 100€ more favorably or even 200€ more favorably than the market, nobody will be able to offer that. Why? Because the offer is arbitrage transactions would be quickly exploited and thus would be equalized.
By the way: Shops that advertise with SSL connection are also somehow strange. Especially in today's age, a certified, secure connection and a corresponding valid protocol (e.g. https://) should be established for every store. SSL has nothing to do with the precious metal business itself! [Source 2]
So, besides the facts mentioned here, there are a number of ways to check the offers of unknown online stores.
How do I recognize reputable stores or can I check them and compare prices?
In the precious metal trade and the associated online business has for years already gold.de [Source
3] and silber.de [Source
4] have proven their worth.
These two portals act as intermediaries, comparison portals and information points.
Here you can compare prices and find reputable dealers.
In order to be listed here as a retailer, I as a store operator have to go through an inspection process and am also regularly subjected to certain inspection points after being accepted. Furthermore, dealers must pay for the referral of customers. This is NOT via commission, i.e. revenue share, but via a listing fee, among other things. Decisive: Gold.de does not prefer any stores, but lists purely according to the filter or price settings of the potential customers. This is done e.g. via clicks and click content. I am not allowed to mention more details for legal reasons.
If you click on the store links in the price lists, you will get safely and easily to the corresponding, at least fraud-free stores of the precious metal dealers.
On gold.de you can also find a regularly updated Fakeshop-Blacklist. Under the link [source 5] you can use the Fakeshop Checker to track down or even report such stores.
I will recommend you for reasons no precious metal dealer, since I work myself with one, this for Werttbewerbsgründen and my protection however (as already known and also further valid) will not mention.
What to do if I was a victim of fraud in this context and have already transferred money?
The first step is to go to your bank. To do this, you should submit a so-called sepa cancellation order with the note "fraud". This order must be submitted before the end of the business day. Your bank will then probably still be able to "get back" the money. How and whether this works in detail, is also strongly dependent on the method of operation and the transfer type. Instant transfers (flash transfers) are only callable within a few hours (the process of stopping a transfer is called recall). After that, the report is made to the police or online police station [Source 6]. For this purpose, the order confirmation, generally all mail traffic and the website (as a screenshot) are to be saved urgently.
Conclusion:
Be attentive and "eyes open" when buying gold and precious metals on the Internet. In today's age, it is no problem to acquire large quantities and volumes of shiny and high-quality investment metals safely and discreetly. However, "I" should exercise great caution especially with "me" unknown providers. With the preceding tips I hope to have already helped you further.
And otherwise so?
Don't miss out on the 31.12.2022 at 12 o'clock running raffle on my profile. Under the contribution to the 800 follower special you can win a book and an Amazon voucher. And guaranteed without rip-off and empty promises of wealth and prosperity.
You can find the post here:
https://app.getquin.com/activity/lgyDRnRSKN?lang=de&utm_source=sharing
Wishing you a brilliant and, above all, safe New Year!
References:
[Source 2] https://www.itwissen.info/SSL-Protokoll-secure-socket-layer-TCP-IP-SSL.html
[Source 3]www.gold.de
[Source 4] www.silber.de
[Source 5] https://www.gold.de/fakeshop-blacklist/
[Source 6] https://www.bka.de/DE/KontaktAufnehmen/Onlinewachen/onlinewachen_node.html
Dedicated to our getquin Sherlock Holmes: @Europoor ♥️
#savingstips
#edelmetalle
#gold
#learn
