UPDATE: Nevermind, this is apparently something to do with the real World of Warcraft!
I thought this ad for a bottom-feeding gold buyer had an interesting Heavy Metal theme to it. I guess they want people to think of their “service” as medieval-style alchemy, only in reverse:
Or maybe the WOW is supposed to stand for “World of Warcraft.” Are they expecting unemployed lardasses to pawn their mom’s jewelry so they can keep playing?
But let’s be serious — NEVER sell your gold to a random site on the Internet — they won’t pay good prices!!! Here is a good debunking of the scam:
A little online sleuthing finds that I’m not the only one who figures that if Cash4Gold has this much money to spend on TV ads, someone’s getting the short end of the stick, and it’s probably the people sending in their family heirlooms to be melted into ingots. The folks at Cockeyed.com put Cash4Gold to the test, rounding up a bunch of old rings, necklaces, and earrings, and taking them to a regular pawn shop to be appraised. The offer: $198 for the lot. They then sent the items to Cash4Gold and waited for a check in the mail. It arrived within a few days as promised… in the amount of 60 bucks. (You don’t have to accept the check; the deal isn’t done until you cash it.)
That price alone is practically criminal, but that’s where the truly slimy part of the operation begins. First, if you call Cash4Gold and ask for your stuff back, you abruptly get a better offer: In the case of the above experiment, the offer was a whopping $178. That’s a better deal, but still not market rate, though the caller was told that Cash4Gold could “manipulate the numbers on their end” to make it appear that more product was sent than was in reality. Bizarre, but it’s really the only way Cash4Gold can cover its behind to convince you the original offer wasn’t a wholesale ripoff.
Did you read the follow-up on that article? It got such great google search prominence that the PR firm of the company tried to bribe/threaten him to take it down, or rewrite it with favorable information.
Wow, what a wild story. Only Don Draper from Mad Men could come up with something more devious:
http://cockeyed.com/citizen/goldkit/reputation.shtml
Glad he didn’t give in, and I love the last line: “Still, I’m left wondering, was this their best offer or was it just one third of what I could actually get?”
It’s just obscene that a business like that is so successful it can afford airtime during the Super Bowl.
You would think that people could get rich foiling scams like this, say by getting a 10% cut of the money people saved by not being duped. Or maybe running a scam-busting scam that does the same thing.
I’m still giggling over the “200% cheap” part of the ad.
WOW may mean exactly what it means when you write it with a finger on the grimy window of a truck.
Then again, it probably does not.
that ad is obviously for world of warcraft you fucktard. jesus, how can people be so stupid. who the fuck would advertise a real gold service asking for “1000G”? lol nice try buddy but do some thinking first before you post shit that makes you look like a retard.
ouch, point taken