Royal Mint Bullion Review

The company known as Royal Mint Bullion is located in the United Kingdom in Britain and they are a provider of precious metals. They typically try to focus on selling to European customers who purchase locally within the country, instead of partnering with a US organization. How do they stack up against the competition? Is it actually worth it to buy from them?

We’ll discuss these questions and more. And will also take a look at the customer reviews, which unfortunately are very negative in many instances. This differs from companies with hardly any reviews because there are several hundred to comb through and most of them are really bad. But we will look at everything they have to offer and try to see if we can figure out if these are fair reviews or unwarranted.

Important Information regarding Royal Mint Bullion

As mentioned earlier, this company is British and focuses on selling precious metals that they minted to other dealerships throughout Europe. In fact, they like to focus on selling to dealerships controlled by the British government. Supposedly, this organization is one of the top leaders within the European precious metals industry, because of their long history and backing by the government in the UK.

If you’d like to buy some of their precious metals as an investment, you have to create an account on their website to get started. They have an online marketplace on their website and an online shopping cart that you can use to buy their precious metals.

Services Performed by Royal Mint Bullion

Royal Mint Bullion is a company that provides different types of investments for collectors and investors that are focused on the content of the precious metals and not particularly focused on whether or not they are rare or collectible. They provide investors with a choice to purchase products including those made of silver, platinum, and gold. They do not sell or minted any products made of palladium, which is unfortunate to some investors. On the other hand, collectors are typically happy because the company does sell a wide array of collectible coins to choose from.

This company also has an option called the Coin Finder Service. Many collectible coin investors might like this option because it gives them an easy way to locate rare and valuable coins that are typically hard to find. The mint may not have them on hand, but they will attempt to locate them for their customers. This mint also provides auctions and authentication services as well.

The company also provides their customers with options for secure precious metals storage, which is a great choice if you don’t feel like keeping your valuable precious metals stored at home. You also have the option to put sentimental items in your vault as well, so it operates similarly to a bank’s safety deposit box. Each storage box has an insurance policy that covers up to 50,000 pounds.

When you enter the storage facility to add to or remove items from your vault, you are required to go through an extra day and provide a valid form of ID. This helps to keep everything safe and secure. In some cases, you may even require fingerprint scans to access your vault, which is kind of cool and very sophisticated.

Buying/Buyback Services

Do you have any precious metals that you’d like to sell to Royal Mint Bullion? This company will gladly take interesting investments off your hands. They have an online tool that you can also use to connect with a buyer interested in purchasing your specific product for sale. This is a great way to get quick and easy quotes for your precious metals.

Typically speaking, Royal Mint Bullion is very interested in buying silver and gold coins that they actually minted. They are particularly interested in the ones that were minted pre-1971. They are willing to buy a wide variety of other coins as well, so keep that in mind. You must fill out a form to discover if they are willing to buy your investments, but there are no guarantees.

Is It a Scam to Do Business with Royal Mint Bullion?

Believe it or not, the British government wouldn’t back Royal Mint Bullion if they were actually a scam organization, so there is absolutely no scam coming from this company whatsoever. The British government owns the Royal Mint, which legitimizes this group every which way possible. It’s one of the biggest precious metals brokers on the entire European continent, and because of the government backing many investors like to purchase from them.

Now, just because a company is legitimate doesn’t actually mean that they are a good company. Trustpilot currently has more than 200 reviews about this company on their website. Unfortunately, nearly 65% of the reviews are 1 star out of 5 stars, because so many people have had an unfortunately terrible experience with them.

With a negative track record like that, you should definitely avoid buying precious metals from this government-backed company like the plague.

Complaints from Previous Customers

Since there are over 100 complaints to tell you about, it’s impossible to cover them all. But we’ll do the next best thing and narrow down some of the most important customer complaints for your perusal.

Terrible Quality Control

One very unhappy former customer complained that he was very reluctant to leave a poor review. Why? He actually felt loyal to the Royal Mint because it’s a big part of Great Britain’s history. But he experienced such a negative and unhappy situation that he couldn’t remain loyal to this organization because they screwed up so badly.

In 2020, this individual bought a set of uncirculated collectible coins. When these coins arrived at his home, one of them was obviously suffering from a serious defect. It was a visible defect that was easily catchable by the naked eye. Whoever shipped the box and put together the packaging should have noticed it.

After calling the company to report the problem to them, he was told that he could either get refunded or exchange the coin. After asking for compensation for their trouble, the company spokesperson even said that they would pay for the cost of shipping to fix the issue.

This customer was very unhappy with this result, believe it or not, because the quality control team should have caught this error instead of leading this unhappy customer to experience a major hassle. They were very upset to say the least because they had to repackage all the coins, mail them back, and the company just didn’t seem to care that they had to go through all of this additional work and hassle. Additionally, the customer also said that after emailing customer support, he didn’t even receive a response.

The Royal Mint responded to this complaint. They were sorry that the customer felt dissatisfied with their purchase and mentioned that the customer service team would call him soon.

Issues with a Change of Address Situation

A different reviewer was unhappy with customer service. After purchasing from the company several times, they initially didn’t have any issues. So, they decided to make an investment for themselves once again.

After putting the necessary funds in their account, the customer had moved so he asked them to change his address. The company said it takes 24 hours to complete the change of address. But after a week, the change of address still wasn’t completed. The customer called them multiple times to let them know about the issue but no one ever actually responded.

As you can imagine, this was incredibly upsetting to the customer because after a week of waiting for the address to be changed, the company ended up refunding the purchase. Even more off-putting and kind of a slap in the face, the Royal Mint tried to convince the investor to spend even more money next time after they refunded his purchase like it didn’t even matter. This is a real slap in the face to small investors far and wide.

The Royal mint left her reply stating they wanted more details about this particular situation. The customer edited his review and said he gave the company more details, but he was still upset because he had to create a negative review just to get their attention. If the Royal Mint wasn’t trying to improve its reputation, the issue likely never would have been resolved.

Account Balance in the Negative

The next reviewer complained that they would never recommend the Royal mint to anyone ever again. This is after investing with the company for a number of years. After the website was changed, this customer had serious problems with their online account.

Certain glitches were happening with the website change. It looked like previous orders were currently pending, so the company zero out the customer’s account balance and said that it was negative because they were trying to charge this person for previous orders that they already received years ago.

The person who wrote the review made four phone calls to customer service and finally found somebody who would help them. The negative balance was removed by the customer service representative.

Then out of nowhere, the customer received an email warning them that they would deactivate their account because it’s been inactive for four weeks. But they actually purchase something’s something two weeks prior to the message. The customer was very upset to say the least since they were being pressured to add funds to their account before being ready.

The Royal Mint asked the customer to provide more details but they declined instead of providing them.

Tax Transparency Absence

A business owner purchased precious metals from this company and was very unhappy with their lack of transaction transparency as far as taxes are concerned. Believe it or not, the mint offers Digi products that are only supposed to be sold to consumers instead of businesses. Consumers are required to pay taxes while businesses aren’t.

This business owner purchased a number of different Digi products to further invest in his company. They charged him the 20% consumer tax even though they didn’t realize it. He didn’t realize that they had marked up the price, and he wanted to get his money back by selling them back to the company.

The company claimed that they were sorry for not providing enough transparency. The customer service rep claimed to pass his complaints along to the investment team. They said they would update their website to make information clearer for business owners.

Products Suffering with Damage

Another customer received a defective coin, and as we know they aren’t the only one complaining about damaged investments. The coin was supposedly shipped even though it had major issues. They bought 10-ounce Lion and Una bars as well as 100-ounce Britannia bars.

The packaging was torn and each of the 10-ounce bars had dents on them. The buyer was incredibly disappointed with the packaging provided. And the 100-ounce bars all had visible scratches on them, which shows that there is very little quality control going on within this organization and it’s severely lacking.

Like so many other unflattering reviews, the customer reached out to their customer support staff first before writing the negative review. They sent numerous emails without getting a reply for more than a week. They filed their complaint on Trustpilot because they had no way of knowing how to otherwise solve this problem.

Royal Mint responded claiming they were trying to get the details from the customer to solve the problem. The rep claims that they passed on the information to the customer service team and would contact the customer for a full refund.

A Disorganized Mess

I read another review from a previous customer that talked about a previous error that they discussed on Trustpilot in the past. The initial complaint was eventually resolved so the customer decided to place another order. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the Royal Mint has done anything at all to fix their issues with customer service.

This customer created two separate transactions to purchase a 5-ounce coin. They got an order confirmation from the company, but never heard from them again. In the second order they purchased a few sets of 2-coins per set. After not hearing anything from them for 10 days, the customer got an email saying they didn’t have any of the coin sets left, so they would send out the initial order for the 5-ounce coin.

Companies undoubtedly run out of inventory from time to time. But when they sent out the email, they actually addressed the heading to the wrong customer. The customer didn’t actually know the person that they were trying to reach.

To solve the problem, the Royal Mint offered the customer a 10% discount and a free commemorative coin. The customer was actually unhappy with the solution. He was so angry about this problem and he was even more angry that he discovered other problems when trying to solve the first one.

Like many other reviews, the company didn’t reply to this one.

Royal Mint Bullion Pros

• Royal Mint Bullion is a precious metals company with the complete backing of the British government
• This company has a long and storied history within this industry
• It’s one of the most popular choices for precious metals buyers in Europe looking to purchase from a prestigious organization

Royal Mint Bullion Cons

• Customer reviews are incredibly poor on Trustpilot
• This company has a wide array of serious problems including customer service issues, management problems, pricing issues, delivery issues, and organizational problems as well
• Although they’ve been around for a long time and are considered a prestigious institution, they are failing in today’s modern day and age

Bottom Line

Royal Mint Bullion should be one of the best companies in the precious metal space because the British government owns them. And they have a long history of selling precious metals across the globe. Yet several of their formally loyal customers have been incredibly disappointed with their performance in recent years.

Because of all of these problems, we cannot recommend using this company in good conscience. If you’d like to buy precious metals in Europe from a different dealer, you should investigate other countries and their sovereign mints. Plus, there are a number of different European dealers that sell privately without tremendously marking up their prices, which is really great.

About Tim Schmidt

 
Tim Schmidt is an Entrepreneur who has covered retirement investing since 2012. He's also a published author, and his views on investing have been featured in USA Today, Tech Times, The Huffington Post, Nasdaq, and many more.