As you can imagine, there are a wide array of companies on the Internet that claim to be able to help people purchase silver and gold. At Westminster Mint, they sell rare silver and gold coins for prices that are incredibly low. Is this situation too good to be true? What exactly do they offer to their customers?
IMPORTANT – before we get too far in this review, we’d like you to know we’ve vetted quite a few companies in this space.
We know that selecting a company to work with is a major financial decision and something not to take lightly. InvestingInGold.com has put in extensive research spanning many years in order to compile a list of the 5 highest recommended companies for this year.
==> See our #1 recommended company for precious metals investing
We urge you to view the links to see where Westminster Mint stacks up against the competition.
Re: Westminster Mint
This company first came into existence in 2001. Their ultimate goal is to provide their customers with the ability to purchase silver and gold coins, bars, and rounds. On their website, you can look at these different products and discover that their prices are incredibly low and considered by many to be the lowest in the industry. They are also known for fast shipping as well.
This company sells more than simple bouillon products. They also sell collectible coins. Other areas of expertise include foreign coins, each in coins, modern coins, coins that are shipwrecked or hoarded, certified coins, and banknotes.
Westminster Mint creates its price structure for its bouillon products based on the going rates of precious metals in the marketplace. And they use a range of differing factors to set their prices for collectible items.
Investing in collectibles is a much riskier choice as opposed to purchasing bouillon. People are typically only willing to pay a certain price for specific collectibles, so if you overpay you’ll end up losing money. This also means that there really isn’t a very high demand for collectible coins when it’s time to sell, which means you could potentially take a loss because you have to lower your price to find a buyer.
Typically, a collectible coin is marked up a lot higher than the melt value of the precious metal. Other things are taken into consideration including the condition of the coin, the date that it was minted, the midmarket, and the rarity of the coin.
The company also sells silver bars as one of their Hallmark products. These bars have a purity level of .999 and the company emits these bars as well. They stamp them with their weight and purity, and sell them wrapped in protective plastic to prevent them from becoming contaminated which could lead to degradation. Afterward, they send them to their customers in this package condition.
Pricing Structure and Fees
The company mainly focuses on selling silver, though golden collectibles are also for sale on their website. Regular price fluctuations happen throughout the day, so the value of precious metals will change accordingly.
After visiting them on their website, customers can see that they sell a wide range of products and the pricing is also made available to them. Since they share the listed price, it is easy to compare their prices to other market offerings from different companies. If you consider Westminster Mint the ideal choice, you can then add their products to your cart and begin the online checkout process without any problems.
Remember that prices are affected by the condition of the coins. If you see a coin on their website for much cheaper than the same coin on another website, it’s likely happening because the condition is poor. It’s very difficult to resell poor condition coins.
Returns & Refunds
Customers have 30 days to return products that they aren’t satisfied with. To return a product, you are required to pay shipping expenses plus insurance.
According to research, the company does honor their return policy. In many instances, if a customer was sent the wrong order, they let him keep the product and sent the correct one without any additional charges. This will only happen if you can prove that the company made a mistake.
Westminster Mint: Is It a Scam?
I can say with certainty that this company isn’t a scam. They have a Better Business Bureau A + rating. Their products range widely in quality, and customers typically get what they pay for.
People have had past issues with delivery and customer service. Additionally, finding reliable reviews about Westminster mint isn’t the easiest thing as well.
Red Flags Regarding Westminster Mint
Unfortunately, there are a number of red flags about the company. This is the case even with a Better Business Bureau A + rating. In fact, on the BBB website there are 13 complaints listed in the last three years. And I’ve found a few negative reviews on third-party websites as well.
On a coin forum, one person was saying that they ordered from their website, paid for the products, but never received them. After contacting the company, nobody answered their call.
There was a response from the company president. He claimed that they try their best to help customers and asked the person to contact him directly to fix the problem.
Several weeks later, the same person wrote on the form saying that the problem still hadn’t been resolved. Additionally, after sending emails to the company and phone calls to the president, they still weren’t able to make contact.
A week later, the person updated again saying they finally received their order of precious metals. But they claimed that there was a visible crack within every one of the coins that they received. And they were quite regretful that they fell for the cheap prices that Westminster Mint sells their products for because they would’ve been better off with higher-quality coins.
It seems like this customer got what they paid for based on the condition. And they didn’t even blame the company but decided that it would be better to buy higher-quality coins from another dealer in the future. Why? The damage these coins experienced makes them hard to resell.
Another customer shared that they placed an order on their website, but began receiving coins that they never ordered. This happened after they received their initial order. The company assured the customer that they would charge their debit card even though they never actually ordered these coins.
They tried to contact the company on more than one occasion but never got through to speak with customer service. They had unanswered emails as well. At the end of the experience, the customer had to cancel their debit card to prevent them from losing any more money and their bank had to issue them a new card.
Please remember that verifying the authenticity of posts on a form isn’t easy, so keep this in mind.
Complaints from Customers
This company currently has a Better Business Bureau rating of A +, but they’ve also received 13 different complaints within the last three years. Within the last 12 months, the company was able to close two complaints.
Nine of their current complaints are related to the product itself. They had one major advertising complaint, and delivery issues were complained about on three occasions. The wide array of these complaints indicates that customers could potentially be misled about the coins that they are purchasing. Even if you get what you pay for, you may end up waiting a long time before the delivery finally reaches you.
In one complaint, a customer purchased a top-five 2020 silver coin package that was called the roaring 20s package. They paid using their debit card, received a confirmation number, but never received their coins after many months.
After waiting two months without receiving their coins, they canceled because it took much too long. Additionally, they tried to reach out to the company but struggled to connect. The company claimed that they would give them a refund, but as of this writing the customer hasn’t received it yet.
Westminster Mint claims the debit card provided by the customer was declined, which is why the order was delayed. They said they tried to reach the customer to get in touch, but they never got a reply. Since they never actually withdrew their funds, there was no refund to actually process. The customer was then placed on a Do Not Call List to prevent further problems.
Another customer had a different complaint about the National Treasure package, because when they attempted to buy the package, they were continuously up-selling the more expensive silver eagle package. The customer constantly refused and even with their refusal, the company still sent them the silver eagle package and charged them extra for.
The customer called the company and spoke to a representative and the rep said they needed to talk to a coin selling salesman. The customer left the salesman a message but a reply was never received.
The company let the customer keep the coin for free and provided a refund for the exchange. The customer was happy with this overall solution.
Westminster Mint has also received complaints due to delivery problems. In particular, one customer purchased the coin that they were supposed to receive within a few weeks. For more than two months, they waited without an update or tracking number.
The company claimed that they could ship the coin because of outside circumstances. The customer received a full refund for the price of the coin and the company sent them free coins to keep for their troubles. The customer was satisfied with the solution.
An additional complaint came because of issues with advertising. The customer watched one of their ads on Fox News. They purchased a silver coin via phone and were told that the coin would ship to them in a couple of weeks. After waiting several weeks, the company then informed the customer that they never placed the order.
As you can imagine, this was very upsetting to the customer because they provided the company all the necessary info to complete the order. They didn’t understand why the order wasn’t placed and they didn’t understand why the company didn’t call them to explain.
Apparently, they then talk to a customer service representative claiming that they received an abundance of orders because of the television advertisement. I guess they ran out of coins, but it isn’t 100% clear. The customer service rep apologized and said that if the customer wanted to purchase gold, the price has inflated so they’d have to pay more at this point.
The customer spoke with many representatives of the company to get the original purchase price but they didn’t succeed. They filed the complaint because the customer believes the initial order should have been honored.
The company replied claiming that the industry has rampant fraud so they apply strict standards. They claimed the order didn’t meet quality gold company standards. But the price of gold has dropped since then, so they would honor the original pricing for the customer if they still want the coin.
Westminster Mint Pros
- They sell a wide range of silver, gold, and collectible items
- They share the prices for their items on their website, unlike other companies
- They have lower prices than a wide majority of their competitors
Westminster Mint Cons
- They sell low-quality coins that are cheap and difficult to resell
- They have received numerous complaints from customers and failed to respond on many occasions
Bottom Line
There’s no denying the fact that Westminster Mint is a legitimate company selling competitively priced coins and collectible products. But their cheap coins are a little too cheap and customers complain that the products are flawed and have cracks and are very low quality.
In many instances, these unhappy customers wished they chose a higher-end broker instead of purchasing these low-quality coins for cheap. Additionally speaking, other previous customers have suffered from delivery issues after placing orders with this group. And everyone seems to have a tough time getting into contact with their customer service staff because they are unreliable.
Previous customers were forced into up cells of different coins that they didn’t intend to purchase. And pushy salespeople put through orders that should’ve never been placed in the first place.
It’s hard to find a wide range of in-depth reviews about this company online, which is a major red flag as well.
It’s for these reasons that I cannot recommend Westminster Mint. There are other coin dealer’s online with reliable service and better reputations. Typically, Westminster Mint only acts on complaints when they are made in public.
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.
