Who we are, and what we will never do

Why we price the lot, not the gram

A price per gram is a price for an average, and the box in your wardrobe is not an average. It has nine-carat and twenty-two-carat tangled in the same knot. It has a clasp with a steel spring in it, three chains that are plated and one ring that is not gold at all. Every so often it has a brooch worth more than everything else in the box put together. A figure you worked out at the kitchen table from a rate on a website would be wrong about all of that, and it would not be wrong in your favour.

So there is no calculator on this site and no rate published on it. What happens instead is that somebody looks. You send photographs first and get a plain steer back before anything is posted. Then the parcel is booked in, and every piece in it is weighed on its own, tested, and listed with what the tests showed and what they could not show. One offer for the lot comes back to you in writing, with all of that attached.

This asks more of you than a number on a screen does, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What you get for it is a figure arrived at by a person who has had your items in their hands, and the right to say no to the whole thing, at no cost, once you have seen what they found.

The six steps, from the first photograph to the money arriving, are set out on how it works. What an offer contains, and everything you can do with one, is on offers, returns and payment.

What we hold ourselves to

Seven things, in the order they matter to somebody deciding whether to put a parcel in the post.

• Ask before you postPhotograph what you have and send it to us before anything leaves the house. You get a rough idea back from a person, free, and no follow-up you did not ask for. If something is not worth posting, we would rather say so than have you pay for packaging to find out.
• Everything is itemisedWhen the parcel is opened, every piece in it is listed and described, including the bits you could not identify and the bits that turn out to be worth nothing. You see what we received, in our words, before there is an offer to consider.
• One written offer for the lotNot a figure read out over the telephone, and not a number you have to decide about while somebody waits. It arrives in writing, it says what is in it, and you can put it down and think about it.
• Nothing is sold until you say yesYou accept by doing something: pressing the accept button in your offer, or telling us in writing (terms, clause 6.1). Silence is never treated as acceptance, opening a link is not a yes, and nothing is processed while you are thinking. It is written down because treating a seller's silence as a yes is one of the practices the Office of Fair Trading took up with five postal gold buyers between 2009 and 2011, and a promise not to do it should be one you can check.
• Free tracked returnDecline the whole lot, or ask for part of it back and get a fresh offer for the rest: what comes back travels by tracked, signed-for post at our cost. Nothing is deducted for the testing, and nobody telephones afterwards to change your mind.
• We tell you when something is worth more than its metalA signed brooch, a sovereign with a date collectors look for, a watch that still runs, a piece of early hallmarked silver. Pieces like that are worth more whole than melted, and quietly processing one is the worst thing a buyer of second-hand metal can do to a family. We flag it instead, and where an auction house or a specialist dealer would clearly do better for you, we say that too.
• A person handles itOne person weighs your parcel, tests it, writes the offer and answers you when you query a figure. Your case is not passed to someone who has never seen the items, and there is no shared inbox to hide behind when you ask why a reading came out low.

Six of the seven are also written into the terms: clause 2.1 for the photo estimate, 4.4 and 5.1 for the list and the offer, 6.1 to 6.3 for acceptance and returns, and 10.3 for pieces worth more whole.

What this is, and what it is not

• An outright purchaseWe buy outright. There is no loan, no interest, nothing held as security and nothing to redeem later. Money moves once, by bank transfer, after you have accepted a written offer, and the items become ours only when it reaches your account (terms, clause 7.1).
• Not a valuation serviceWe are not insurance valuers and we are not an auction house. What we produce is an offer to buy, which is a different number from what a piece might fetch at auction or what it would cost to replace. Where one of those routes would clearly serve you better, we say so rather than buy the piece quietly.
• Not a regulated financial serviceBuying metal from the public is not a regulated financial activity, so no financial regulator oversees it and we will not imply one (clause 1.1). What does apply, in full: consumer protection and advertising rules, data protection, hallmarking law when metal is resold, and the identity and provenance checks on the responsible sourcing page. The terms set out the contract itself.

Things you will not read on this site

• A figure you can work out before we have seen itThere is no calculator here, no rate table and no price per gram. A number produced before anybody has handled your items is a guess with a pound sign in front of it.
• That we pay more than anyone elseNobody can prove that daily, for every item, so we do not say it, and we do not compare our figures with another buyer's. What your offer does show is everything in the lot: each item, its weight, the tests used and what they found (terms, clause 5.1).
• That a test settles it beyond doubtEvery test has limits, so your offer lists the tests used on each piece and anything they could not establish (clause 5.1).
• A badge we have not earnedNo approval, accreditation, membership or regulator we do not hold, and none whose exact scope we cannot show you on somebody else's register.
• A history we have not hadNo customer story, no review, no payout total and no number of years in the trade that has not happened. Everything on this site that reads like experience is either a description of the process or it is not here.
• A reason to decide todayNo countdown, no disappearing figure and no deadline invented to make you choose before you are ready. An offer does say how long it stays open, but if you need longer you only have to ask, and nobody telephones after you have declined one (clauses 10.2 and 6.5).

We are new, and this is exactly what that means

No parcel has been through this business yet: no offer, no payment and no return, so there is nothing we can show you that we have already done. What this page can give you instead is below: what you can check for yourself today, and what is simply not there yet.

Checkable now

The rules you would be selling under are in the terms. You accept or decline by doing something, never by letting a date pass. Anything you decline comes back by tracked post at our cost, and payment is by bank transfer to an account in your own name.

What happens to your data is in a table in the privacy notice: every category we would hold, why, on what lawful basis, and when it is deleted. The complaints route and the identity and provenance procedure are published too, with the source and date behind each legal point.

The checks worth making on any postal buyer, this one included, are in how to check a postal gold buyer before you send anything. Run them on us before you post.

Not there yet

16 facts a seller would reasonably want are not set yet, and none has been filled with a substitute. No stock portrait stands in for a handler, no invented turnaround for a real one, no borrowed testimonial for a review, and no cover figure is printed that we could not stand behind. Wherever you would expect one of them, a short line says it is not there yet and links here.

Who you are dealing with

There is no company number above because there is no company. Assaypost is a trading name used by one person, named above, who is personally responsible for every offer this site makes and every parcel it receives. If the business is ever incorporated, the company number, registered office and place of registration will appear here, in the footer and in clause 1 of the terms on the same day.

Not yet: No trade membership and no accreditation is claimed, because none has been joined. Anything we do join is listed here with its exact scope and a link that lets you check it against the body's own register rather than take our word for it. What else is blank, and why

If we get something wrong

Tell us through the contact page and it gets fixed in public. A correction goes on the page where the mistake appeared, and where it changes something a seller relies on, the version and date at the foot of the document change with it. Quietly editing and saying nothing is how a site stops being worth reading.

If the thing that went wrong was your case rather than a page, the complaints process has three stages, each with a stated owner. In a one-person business a review cannot always be done by somebody different; when that happens, the reply says so and points you to the independent route instead.