Monex Precious Metals Review
Monex Precious Metals has been in the industry for over 50 years and is family-owned, with three generations of the founding Carabini family on-site in the original building they began in Newport Beach, California.
Monex Precious Metals has an informative and attractive website that is full of positive customer reviews. But, those are hand-picked by the company, so of course, they are all positive. No company would put out the bad reviews for the world to see.
Is Monex Precious Metals really as great as their site reviews claim they are? Before you decide to use Monex Precious Metals for your investments, read this review to find out our opinion on the services that Monex Precious Metals offers.
Who is Monex Precious Metals?
Monex Precious Metals is a legitimate precious metals dealer that offers gold, silver, platinum, and palladium in coins and bullion that began in the 1960s when founder Louis E. Carabini foresaw precious metals investing is becoming more popular due to economic issues striking the country.
Being around for half a century should mean that you’ve perfected your craft, however, this does not look to be the case. Sure, there are reviews on their website that sound positive, but it’s important to remember that the company chooses which reviews are seen, so you’ll definitely be seeing the best reviews they’ve gotten. Don’t stop looking at reviews, though, and instead look at neutral, third-party review sites like The Better Business Bureau (BBB) and TrustPilot.
You can also look at the fact that Monex Precious Metals was kicked out of the NFA and CFTC because of extensive lawsuits regarding Monex and how they used deceptive practices and illegal marketing tactics that had cost some investors their entire life savings.
Customer Complaints About Monex Precious Metals
Online reviews of any business are both a blessing and a curse. You can never really be sure that the review is legitimate or if it’s someone who is just disgruntled or a complete troll. Fortunately, there are review sites that you can trust, such as Consumer Reports.
Consumer Reports takes its job very seriously. They use intelligent software to ensure that a real person is leaving the review (and not a bot), all reviews are given a “once over” by a Consumer Reports employee before they are posted, and every reviewer is required to leave their contact information. So, you can see that Consumer Reports is likely going to have reviews that you can trust as being legitimate.
The complaints against Monex Precious Metals recently have been regarding customer service. This includes customers who were told one thing, only to learn another, such as being told they could sell their precious metals back to Monex for free without being charged a commission, only to find out that it wasn’t true.
Another complaint mentioned rude behavior by customer service when the customer questioned the price of silver going up. Yet another review stated that the customer service agent told them that they (Monex) are in the business of selling, not buying when she requested boxes to send her return back to Monex.
Of course, these are just little things. Other reviews mention Monex refusing to buy back the coins they sold someone after that person passed away, coins that were purchased as platinum were actually mostly silver-plated copper, and even one customer who lost over $100,000 after their account manager talked them into a risky investment without explaining the risks and possible losses.
If these reviews aren’t enough proof, you can certainly check out the reviews for yourself, there are many more to read.
The Verdict on Monex Precious Metals
I like my investing companies to be legitimate and I’m not being sarcastic, here. I would only want to entrust my hard-earned money to a company that is going to do everything that they say they will. That means offering up education, competitive pricing, friendly customer service, and a buyback program at the bare minimum!
Not only does Monex Precious Metals not provide any of these basics, but they have also caused customers to lose large quantities of money and have even sold merchandise that is not what they’ve promised. These are deceptive practices and that just doesn’t work for me.
I would not recommend Monex Precious Metals to any investors out there and I would say to stay as far away from them as you can.