Poor prospects in the sell-us-your-gold rush

The permatanned television ‘entertainer’ Dale Winton is hosting an unintentionally hilarious series of commercials on daytime television these days. Using the same format as The Antiques Roadshow, the ads for something called CashMyGold show members of the public sitting round a table with Winton and an ‘expert’ who values their gold trinkets. They beam in delight when the jeweller informs them what he thinks the bling is worth. One of them even says: ‘That’s a lot more than I thought.’

On the face of it, these ads are very convincing. After all, the gold price at the moment is indeed higher than it has been for years. At the beginning of this month, gold reached new record highs of more than £750 an ounce. But the reason that investors in CashMyGold or any of the other companies bombarding couch potatoes with their messages are doing so well is not only because bullion is trading at record levels, but because it would be hard to find a more gullible breed of consumer than the credit-crunched, daytime-television-watching jewellery owner.

According to a recent survey by the consumer rights champion Which?, ‘Cash-for-gold buyers are paying shockingly low rates for jewellery and offering customers a poor service’. Which? sent an identical set of three items of 9-carat gold jewellery — costing £115, £215 and £399 — to four gold buyers that advertise heavily on television. In addition to CashMyGold, they went to Cash4Gold, Money4Gold and Postal Gold.

As it turned out, the company promoted by Winton turned out to be the lowest bidder. CashMyGold gave quotes of £6.43 for the £115 gold bracelet, £9.64 for the £215 gold bangle and £22.50 for the £399 gold necklace. But the truth is that all four were guilty of what looks like a shameless exploitation of the general public’s ignorance of their baubles’ value.