Express Gold Refining Review

[Noxx]

Hello,

Here is my story with Express Gold Refining Ltd. located in Ontario, Canada (http://www.xau.ca). They claim to pay 98% spot and it only costs $27 for assay fee.

On June 28th, I sent 33,50 grams of pure gold flakes I refined myself (twice). Gold was at 1100$ CAD at that time. The next day, I sent them an e-mail giving the tracking number. I received the following reply:

Unfortunately we are closed this week for summer holidays. We will receive it on Monday July 6, when we come back. I’ll notify then.

Atef Salama

Well, it would have been great to know it. Not even mentioned on their website. Waiting one week is not that bad. I called my custumers, saying that I should have funds the next week to buy their lots.

On Monday July 6th, online tracking confirmed delivery to their facility. The next day, I sent an e-mail to make sure and also to ask for rapid payment. After all, the website claims immediate settlement upon reception.

I received the following e-mail:

Dear mr. Allaire,

I am not sure if you were aware, but we were closed for one week, so that is why we just received your shipment yesterday. Due to the fact that we were closed we’ve had many lots piled up since last week, so we are processing them as fast as possible. Yours will be done by tomorrow. If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Atef Salama

Great, lets wait for the next day...

I called them the following Friday (3 days later). I have to admit that the customer support is not very good. I talked to the manager. He was rude and hard to understand (he obviously does not come from North America).Anyhow, he managed to tell me that I should not send an assay certificate with my gold, as they do not want to get any problems and that it should be Xpress that determines the purity, not the customer.

I agreed to his terms and he told me that my gold would be melted next Monday.

I had to wait untill yesterday (Wednesday July 15th), to receive the payment.

Results

Payment received: $1012,05 CAD for 33,50 grams of pure gold.
Gold was at: $1053 CAD that day.

So what I got is 89,23% spot for my gold, or 91,5% spot if you exclude the assay fee.

Now, where's the 6,5% missing ? Go figure...

In conclusion,
unexplainable gold loss, rude customer support and far from being express services...

Well, you can make your own idea.

I hope this will help someone not to loose their gold.

 

[Oz]

I’m sorry to hear about your loss. Just to be sure I understand you, did you lose 6.5% from the spot price changing or did they pay based on 93.5 purity when you sent them .999?

It is good to hear details about different refineries.

Thanks!

 

[Noxx]

Oz,

The 6,5% loss is not based on market fluctuations. If you consider market fluctuations though, it's a 14,6% loss...

 

[Oz]

That hurts!

What is it GSP likes to say? “The refiner is the last liar”.

Even with honest and competent refineries to sell to that is the big problem for the small producer, you always end up selling your work at a discount. Hopefully you will build up enough suppliers of scrap to start casting your own bars and selling to the public. If you have the opportunity try selling to custom jewelers that cast.

 

[Ageo308]

Nox come to Aus set up your own refinery and i will give you more than enough scrap to be full time. That way you can charge me what you think is fair and you dont need to worry about acquiring scrap and selling the fine gold.


Sound good? :mrgreen:

 

[EDI Refining]

Told you. You should have sold to me

Can you scan and post the paperwork.

I know your twice refined gold is 99% min

 

[Palladium]

The lessons we learn.
The part i first noticed was where he had to call all his customers and tell them the payments would be late. Using the old float system. :shock: :shock: :shock:
That works good sometimes but can backfire on you when something in the plan goes wrong. Like a house of cards. Oh, but the things we have to do when we first start out a business.

Sounds like your learning some real world experience that that can't teach you from books in school.

If it makes you feel better I’m about to have to do something similar to that. I'm trying to set up and launch a new company myself. Problem is i don't have the funds that I really need. Some but not enough. But we can't let things like that stop us now can we ?

I'm feeling a lot better these days, Except for this dam heat. I'm broke and desperate so what's my answer. Get back on the horse and try again.
Some people are afraid of failure and loss when then think about starting a business. That's one of the biggest hurdles to overcome in a business. Some people become comfortable in the fact that when you have an 8-5 job you have a guaranteed check each week. Not when you the owner. You have to worry about everyone but yourself. You have responsibilities to others first. After you go through this a couple of times you begin to understand what I’m talking about. With risk comes reward. With loss comes experience, But at a price. If I only had half the money I’ve lost I could retire.

I hate that you had all the trouble you did. But I do admire you way you handled it. Keep up the good work, my money is on you.

 

[Oz]

I hate that you had all the trouble you did. But I do admire you way you handled it.

A very good point Palladium. Even when he was done wrong by another he handled it with class! Noxx will go far.

 

[SapunovDmitry]

Noxx, the first thing i would recomend to you is NEVER selling gold grom refined scrap. They will always foul you.
You must rerefine it in a BIG refinery (rerefining a pure gold is cheap) and get your gold back, and only then (when you have a stamp on it) you must sell it to local jewelers or somewhere else. (Your idea is to make a stamp on your gold and then noone will ever try to say that your gold is impure)
The second thing is that you have to make a written agreement with those refining guys and it must be said there about leaving an arbitration sample for the assay in independent lab if YOU are not satisfied with their own results and this analysis will be final for both sides. This is the only way to get your gold back from those "refiners".
As one of russian fairy tales about Winnie the pooh says "Honey is a strange sort of a thing. If you manage to see it, in the next moment it will disappear...." Gold acts the same way.

 

[Noxx]

A very good point Palladium. Even when he was done wrong by another he handled it with class! Noxx will go far.

Thanks, I truly hope so. But unfortunately, I've been asked to cease all my refining activities until I find somewhere to do so (legally). BTW, is this legal to refine in a small van ? Or is it too much similar to methlabs ?

Noxx, the first thing i would recomend to you is NEVER selling gold grom refined scrap. They will always foul you.
You must rerefine it in a BIG refinery (rerefining a pure gold is cheap) and get your gold back, and only then (when you have a stamp on it) you must sell it to local jewelers or somewhere else. (Your idea is to make a stamp on your gold and then noone will ever try to say that your gold is impure)
The second thing is that you have to make a written agreement with those refining guys and it must be said there about leaving an arbitration sample for the assay in independent lab if YOU are not satisfied with their own results and this analysis will be final for both sides. This is the only way to get your gold back from those "refiners".

Sapunov, what you propose is a good idea. I'll see if it's viable.

 

[Lou]

Told you. You should have sold to me

Can you scan and post the paperwork.

I know your twice refined gold is 99% min

His gold is at least 4N pure if it is done with dibutyl carbitol. The method he disclosed to me is sound.

That refinery obviously cheated you. I think in the end perhaps they will regret it more than you.

 

[grainsofgold]

I have had my fair share of refiner stories-

Seems like the most money that a refiner can make is with their pencil and eraser.

Here is where most refiners put their thumbs on the scales for their side as per my observations:

1) When dealing with karat scrap, they remove the stones in aqua regia and determine a weight for the metal without stones less than what it should be.

2) If a person brings in karat gold without taking out the springs, stones etc,. They weigh the batch and then do a melt which results in metal loss. Now there was iron or other crapola in the stuff it will carry out gold with it.

3) If the refiner uses Aqua regia, they forget to use a watch glass and catch the airborne metals in a filter which they later refine for themselves.

5) If a refiner pays based on their assay prior to any refining, which most do. They manipulate their testing methods. Here in the US the assay of choice for most is XRF, which as has been discussed here the results can be slanted if you know what to do. Either through calibration of the XRF of the handling and or prep of the metal being tested.

6) A major bugaboo is what price Spot is a refiner paying you on? Many seem to use a combination of boards to determine their "spot" price. I find it best to call ahead of time and "lock in" the rate, at least that gives you an exact spot price to go off of. If it goes up or down then so be it.

7) Refiners make their money in the Silver and trace PGMs when dealing with gold. Most karat golds will have usually 10-14 % AG. If they refine 400 oz per day that adds up to a lot of money.

8) By selling Au only you are basically squeezing the "juice" from the refiner. If all their customers presented them with AU only you would see the advertised 2% fee climb due to overhead expenses.

Just my observations-

 

[4metals]

I guess I have to jump up on the horse and defend the refiner again. First off the gold sent in by NOxx is definitely the exception, not the rule. Most refiners deal with karat scrap in the range of 8 to 22 karat. Performing an assay for $27 is feasible on karat assays using standard gravimetric techniques. High purity gold is only assayed properly on a spec using a technique called by difference, whereby everything but gold is measured and subtracted from the total. That costs a bit more than $27 to run.

As far as 2% charge is concerned, that only amounts to about $20 US for a 1 ounce lot. So if he held up to his end of the deal (which he didn't) NOxx would have been charged just under $50 US for the refiner to melt the gold, assay it and add it to a refining lot to process it. That just isn't going to happen. I have no doubt that if I sent them a lot of our fine gold I would get the stated deal. Bear in mind I would send enough metal to cover any minimum charges which they should have stipulated up front, I would go to witness because for one I don't want to be abused, and two, I love to visit working refineries. A size able lot size would allow any refiner to profit at 2%. The harsh reality is no-one will buy small lots of fine refined gold because it's not worth the work to do it.

I know that a refiner in Ohio is charging $.20 per ounce in for scrap, returning 99.7% of the gold and 95% of the silver. The catch is his customers ship in a minimum of 2500 ounces of karat material per week. Now if you do the numbers on say 12 karat average material, the refining charge at these insanely low rates exceeds $3500 US per lot. In an production environment there is profit even at those rates.

I agree with all of what grainsofgold mentions but do not think for a minute that any refining operation can recover and pay on 100% of the metal they process. It all seems to turn up in the process residues, but never as quick as the fine gold comes out. The losses can be kept very low but never eliminated by any of the production refining processes being used by major and minor refiners today.

Of course I have no rebuttal for rude behavior and bad customer relations, but I'm a chemist not a personnel manager.