How to check a postal gold buyer before you send anything

01

Start with who you would be contracting with

A website name is not a person. Behind every trading name is a legal person who makes the offer, holds your things and owes you if something goes wrong. That person is either a company or an individual, and the checks that follow differ for each.

Look in the footer, on the about page and in the first clause of the terms. The same name should appear in all three. If a site gives you only a brand, a form and a mobile number, you do not yet know who you would be dealing with.

Trading name

The name on the website and the packaging. It can be anything the owner likes, and on its own it tells you nothing about who is behind it.

A company

A limited company exists separately from the people who run it. It has a company number and a registered office, and its details sit on the public register kept by Companies House.

A sole trader

One person trading on their own account, often under a trading name. There is no company and so no company number. GOV.UK says sole traders have unlimited liability: the owner is personally responsible for all the debts of the business.

02

If it is a company, look up the number

GOV.UK says a limited company's website must show its registered number, its registered office address, where it is registered, and the fact that it is a limited company. If a buyer calls itself a company and none of that is on the site, that is your first question.

Search the number on the Companies House service. It is free, and it shows the registered address, the date the company was formed, its current and past officers, its filed documents, any previous names and any insolvency information. Four things are worth a minute each.

• The name matches. The company on the register should be the one named in the terms, not one with a similar name.
• It is still trading. A company that has been dissolved, or has insolvency proceedings recorded against it, is not one to post to.
• When it was formed. A recent date is not a reason to refuse, because every business starts somewhere. It does mean there is less history, and the rest of this guide has to carry more of the weight.
• Who runs it. The directors are named on the register. If the person you are dealing with says they run the business, they should be among them.

What the register cannot tell you is whether a company is any good. Companies House says on its own search service that it does not check the accuracy of the information filed. A number shows that a company exists and who says they run it. It is where the check starts.

03

If it is a sole trader, check the name and the address instead

A sole trader will not appear at Companies House, and that is not a warning sign in itself. What you check instead is that a real person is named and a real address stands behind them, and the law gives you something to hold them to on both.

• A name. GOV.UK tells sole traders to include their own name, and any business name, on official paperwork such as invoices and letters. Under sections 1201 and 1202 of the Companies Act 2006, anyone trading under a business name must also give their name and an address where documents can be served. That goes in writing, straight away, to anybody they deal with who asks.
• A geographic address. Regulation 6 of the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 requires anyone providing a service online to make available their name, the geographic address at which they are established, and contact details including an email address. It applies to an individual exactly as to a company.
• A VAT number, where there is one. The same regulation requires a VAT number where a business is registered for VAT. Many small businesses are not, and have none to show.
• Any register it is on. Regulation 6 also requires a business on a trade or similar public register to name the register and give its number there, so that you can check the entry.

A PO box is not a geographic address. It is somewhere post waits, not somewhere a person is, and the same goes for a numbered mailbox rented at a mail-handling shop. A buyer that gives you nothing else has left you no way of finding them, and a parcel of jewellery should never be addressed to one.

Company or sole trader, the test comes down to one question. Could you write to this person, by name, at an address where the letter would reach them? If not, stop there, however good everything else looks.

04

Check the data protection register

A postal buyer ends up holding a good deal about you: your name and address, photographs of your belongings, often an identity document, and your bank details. The Information Commissioner's Office says organisations that use personal information, sole traders included, must pay it a data protection fee unless they are exempt. It keeps a public register of those who have paid.

Each entry shows the organisation's name and address, its registration reference, the level of fee paid, the dates it was registered and expires, and any other trading names. The ICO suggests searching by registration reference, or by postcode if you do not have one.

If a buyer that asks for identity documents is not on the register, ask why before you send anything. There may be a straightforward answer, and you are entitled to hear it. An entry shows that a fee has been paid, not that data is looked after well. The buyer's privacy notice is where it has to tell you what it keeps, why and for how long.

05

Read the written terms before you post, not after

Terms are the only part of a buyer's promises you can hold them to. A page of reassurance can be rewritten overnight; a term in a contract binds the buyer. If there are no written terms, or you can only see them once your parcel has arrived, do not post.

You do not need to read them as a lawyer would. You need an answer to six questions, and good terms answer each one in a sentence you can find without help.

1. When does a sale happen? It should be when you say yes, on purpose, and never because a date went by.
2. Can silence ever count as acceptance? The answer you want is no, in those words.
3. If you say no, what comes back and who pays? Everything, by tracked post, at the buyer's cost, with nothing deducted.
4. What can happen to your items while you decide? Nothing should be melted, cut or sold, and nothing cleaned, altered or tested in a way that marks it without your written consent.
5. Who carries the risk in the post, and who claims if a parcel is lost? The next section deals with this.
6. How are you paid? By bank transfer to an account in your own name, as the section after that explains.

None of these questions is invented. Between November 2009 and February 2011 the Office of Fair Trading investigated five postal gold buyers. Its concerns included payments people had to reject within what appeared to be restrictive time periods or see their gold melted, and unclear insurance arrangements when gold was sent and returned. The case record is published on GOV.UK.

The law now speaks to this directly. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 prohibits unfair commercial practices, and its definition of a commercial practice covers a consumer's product being supplied to a trader, which is what selling your gold is. Since 6 April 2025, section 228 has treated a practice as aggressive if it uses harassment, coercion or undue influence. The matters it lists include whether the practice exploits a consumer's vulnerability, and whether it makes a consumer take onerous or disproportionate action to exercise a right. This describes the law; it is not advice on a particular case.

06

Find out who carries the risk in the post

Posting is the moment you are most exposed, so the terms should say plainly who bears a loss in transit. Where the buyer sends a prepaid label, the buyer chose the carrier and paid for the postage, so the contract with the carrier is the buyer's, not yours. A term that still leaves the loss with you, or points you at a carrier you have no contract with, gives you very little.

Look for four things. The buyer carries the risk from the moment you hand the parcel over, and on the way back until it reaches you. The buyer makes any claim. What you are owed does not depend on what the carrier pays. And a lost parcel is measured by what the contents were worth, not by what the buyer would have offered, because those can be very different sums.

Then check the cover named with your label against what you are sending, before the parcel is sealed. A carrier's compensation is the most the carrier will pay out, not a statement of what your things are worth. The guide to a parcel that is lost or damaged in the post works through the whole question, including what changes when you pay for the postage yourself.

07

Ask how you will be paid, and be wary of cash

A bank transfer to an account in your own name leaves a record of who paid you, how much and when. If the sale is ever questioned, by you, a relative or anyone else, that record answers it. Cash leaves nothing behind. It can be miscounted, and if there is a disagreement later, there is nothing to settle it with.

For a postal buyer, cash also makes little sense: it would have to reach you by post, which is the very risk you were trying to manage. A business that makes or accepts cash payments of 10,000 euros or more for goods, in one payment or several linked ones, must register with HMRC as a high value dealer before it does so. HMRC publishes a register of the businesses it supervises, and says that being on it is not an endorsement.

Check the account is yours, too. A buyer that offers to pay a relative, a friend or anyone else without the owner's written authority has found a shortcut that protects nobody, least of all the owner.

08

Running the same checks on Assaypost

A guide like this is worth little if it quietly exempts the business that published it. So here is what you will find if you run every check above on Assaypost, including what is not there.

The checks in this guide, applied to Assaypost

Scroll sideways for more →

Three answers deserve weighing rather than skimming. A sole trader has no limited liability, so you would be dealing with one person who answers for the business in their own name. The address a parcel goes to is not published, which keeps it from anyone who has not asked for a label but means you cannot look it up in advance. The address that is published is for letters: one will reach the business there, a person will not be found there.

The third is the data protection register. No registration reference is shown yet, so the check this guide has just told you to run on any buyer is one you cannot complete on this one. Put all three in the balance. You should not have to find them out for yourself.

09

Red flags before you post

• A price before anyone has seen anything. A firm figure for jewellery nobody has weighed or tested is not an assessment. It is a way of getting the parcel into the post, and it tells you nothing about the figure that follows.
• Pressure. Calls and messages chasing an answer, or a buyer who keeps telling you how quickly you ought to decide. A fair offer survives a few days of thought.
• A deadline. An offer that gets worse or disappears because you took a day to think, or a payment you must reject within a short window or be treated as having accepted.
• A free valuation that turns into a sale. You send things to be looked at, and the terms treat the parcel arriving, or your failure to reply, as agreement to sell. Read what happens after the valuation before you post for one.
• A gap in the checks above. Only a PO box, nobody identifiable behind the brand, no terms until after you post, or payment in cash or to someone else.
• A charge for changing your mind. Fees for testing, handling or return postage if you decline turn saying no into a cost, which is a reason to say yes that has nothing to do with the offer.
• A web address that is nearly right. A name one letter away from one you know, or an advert that lands somewhere unfamiliar. Type the address yourself.

10

Risks the checks do not remove

• Registers prove that something exists, not that it is good. An entry is the start of a check, not the end of one.
• A new business has a thin record. A short history is not dishonesty, but it means the written terms have to carry more of the weight. That is as true of Assaypost as of anybody: no parcel has yet been through it, and its about page says so.
• A name can be borrowed. A website can use the name of a real company without being that company. If the registered office and the address on the site bear no relation to each other, ask why.
• Terms change. Keep a copy of the version you read, with its date, until the sale is paid or your items are home.
• The checks tell you who you are dealing with, not what your things are worth or whether any of them should be sold for metal at all. Ask about anything that might be worth more whole before it goes in a parcel.

11

When not to use this route

Posting is also the wrong first step for some things, whoever the buyer is. That means a signed piece, a coin that may be worth more than its metal, a watch that runs, or anything from an estate that has not been settled. The guide to what to have looked at before you sell explains how to pick those out, and identity and provenance checks covers what a careful buyer will ask you in return. For a view on what you have before deciding anything, a photo estimate commits you to nothing.