Complaints & Other Similar Feedback We Have Received

The Very Highest Quality Of Complaints...

The Things People Tell Us!

Complaints
Elsewhere we publish a selection of compliments and testimonials we have received about our products, service or website. However nobody is perfect, in fact perfectionists everywhere will agree that perfection can never be attained, but it doesn't have to stop you trying!, so to keep things in balance, and also to let you know that we don't mind criticism, and have nothing to hide, we present a page of complaints :-

Name: William McLaughlin
Email:mclcwa@workingfamilies.com
United States
Date: Sunday, August 18, 2002 at 19:12:44
Comments:

DO NOT BUY! I sent CHARD two cashier's checks at the beginning of this year for Euro Reservation Sets. I sent them a total of $74.99. After they changed the price for the San Marino set from $24.99 to over $200.00 and since I had not heard from them about my order, I decided to cancel my order and request a refund. I had to badger them for 3 months via email and never received a reply. One day I found a check from them in my mail for $40.00, a partial refund. GUESS WHAT?!?? THAT CHECK BOUNCED!!! It cost me an additional $25.00 in bank charges. I faxed and emailed CHARD about this and demanded a full refund. That was 30 days ago and I have still not heard from them. If you have a similar story about CHARD, please email me. I have contacted the U.S. Attorney General and and the British Consulate in Phila. and am pursuing my refund. I'll tell you how to join me!! Shame, shame, shame!!!!!

Dear William,
It's best to get the facts correct before you complain, and certainly before publishing defamatory material, whether it is on our guestbook or elsewhere. On our website pages we try to give accurate information about future availability. When dealing with government bodies and agencies such as mints, it is not always easy or indeed possible for us to get accurate and reliable information. when dealing with the mints of 15 different countries and also various distributors, it becomes even worse. If you had taken the time to read our pages, and the updated material on them, you would have understood about the delays. Please bear in mind also that we are a small business struggling at times to keep up with frantic demand. We do not have the resources to contact every customer individually on a regular basis, so we post updates on the relevant pages of our sites about deliveries. We regret that we do not always get to answer all our e-mails, even from intending buyers. At least we don't go in for any hard sell techniques, and we believe demand for our services and products speaks volumes for our approach. Please note the vast majority of the feedback we get is positive.
We were even more surprised than you by your claim that our check bounced. We spoke to our bank about this. We maintain accounts in three currencies, sterling (British pounds), US dollars, and Euros. We operate these accounts within their limits. At no material time have our two foreign currency accounts been overdrawn, in fact the dollar account was, for a brief period before your cheque could have been presented, but this was only because a US customer bounced a check on us. Our bank inform us that your check was never presented to them for payment, and that if it had been, it would have been paid. They also comment that some US banks do not know how to deal correctly with foreign checks. Our check should have been presented by your bank to Royal Bank of Scotland's London ( or possibly other UK) office. They surmise that your bank presented it to Royal Bank of Scotland's New York (or other US) office. This is the incorrect method of processing a check drawn on US banks. It is clear that this in an error by your bank, and you should complain to them about this matter, obtaining a refund or their charges, and an apology from them.
The complaint which you posted on our guestbook is inaccurate and defamatory. We do not intend to pursue any action against you for this, we believe in goodwill towards all our customers, but we must inform you that we do take our good name and reputation seriously, and if you repeat the comments we would find ourselves reluctantly forced to take legal action against you to protect our reputation. This would involve you in legal costs, and we would seek damages and our legal costs from you. If you have published similar inaccurate material elsewhere, we suggest you ensure it is removed before we become aware of it, and indeed seek your assurance that no similar material is still published and unwithdrawn. We have removed your entries from our guestbook.

Note:-
We clearly stated that all our Euro coin set prices were advance order prices, this clearly implies that there may be a price increase for orders received after we received our stocks. In all cases where we have received allocations at or close to the original prices, we have supplied sets at our original stated advance order prices. So far there the only countries where we have not received any allocation are the three minor states, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican. In the case of Monaco, we have not yet been able to source any sets, even from the secondary market, in the case of San Marino, we were able to buy some sets although at a considerably higher price, and are currently offering these at $265, in the case of Vatican, we also managed to buy a small quantity of these in the secondary market, which we offered at $350. We have now sold out of these, and notice that they are selling on e-bay for over $1,000!

Value of my Coin
(Addressed to our autoresponder)
Thanks for nothing!!!
Maybe you are just too enveloped looking for some huge profit to really give anyone a hand, thats so typical of all the yuppie crap that fakes real value in this day.You can bet I'll mention your faux service to anyone I get the opportunity to.
Jerry Buhl (no location stated)

Dear Jerry,
We couldn't find your original enquiry, but...
We don't know what you do for a living, but how about you coming over here and giving us a hand with our decorating or maintenance work for nothing. You haven't offered to, what's stopping you?, yet you obviously expect us to value your coins for you for free. In actual fact we do give lots of helpful advice, but most people can't be bothered to find the right page. Stop whingeing and get a life, or get a book and look up the information you want.

Q: could you confirm, or the other, if the JFK 1964 half dollar was the last US coinage to contain silver? Also how many were issued? thanks
Lis B., england

This was sent from our "I've Found an Old Coin - What's It Worth" page in which we ask people not to e-mail us for free valuations or identifications on coins. Despite this we still get people asking, they obviously don't bother to read the advice on our page or else choose to ignore it anyway. Because we don't want to leave e-mail enquiries unanswered, we have an "auto-responder" to send the following acknowledgement:-

Thanks for your enquiry.
Unfortunately, we are now receiving over 100 requests daily for free valuations. As a small business, we just do not have the time or the manpower to answer them all. In addition, most of the enquiries are already covered within the pages of our website. We have taken many hours to try to provide quality information. Many enquirers have obviously not read the "Value Of My Coin" page.
To navigate easily around our site, it's best to enter via our front page:-
http://www.24carat.co.uk
then click
Information
etc.
Perhaps we should repeat the commonest advice we find ourselves giving:-
Your best sources of information are your local library, your local museum, and your local dealer. Most coins can be identified instantly on sight, but it takes ages by description. Assessing the condition is also instant on sight, and nearly impossible by mail. That's why your local dealer should be your first port of call.
We hope this helps, please enjoy using the information on our site, we enjoyed providing it. If you find it useful, you could tell your friends about us, put a link on your own site, or leave a message in our guestbook.
Regards,
Lawrence Chard

Perhaps we could improve this message, but it all takes valuable time. Lis sent this complaint:-

less than 5 mins ago i sent a request asking for information! you sent an auto response that has no bearing on my QUESTION I did not ask for a FREE VALUATION perhaps some would say I was stupid to send yet another email as you obviously dont bother to read any and have you email set to reply within seconds with an insulting reply, but one never can tell if there is a human being at the other end these days, perhaps I will just get the same reply as last time, then I will be sure that there is not a humand being at CHARD
lis b

Every so often we get thoroughly fed up with being treated as though we were an (unpaid) public service, so we sent this reply:-

Dear Lis,
Thanks for your enquiry.
We feel offended by your tone. Our "Value of my Coin" autoresponder is not insulting. In it we try to explain nicely that we do not have the time or resources to reply individually to thoughtless and selfish people expecting us to run a free information and valuation service. We already make this clear on the page you were at, but you like most others chose to ignore it.
If you run a business or are employed, please let us know whether you provide your services free, as we may wish to take advantage of them.
Regards,
Lawrence Chard
521 Lytham Road
Blackpool
FY4 1RJ
England
Telephone 0044 (0)1253 343081 & 316238
lc@24carat.co.uk
www.24carat.co.uk

So far Lis has not had the courtesy to reply!
Actually for us to answer her question, we would have had to search though one of our many books, some of which have over 1,000 pages, and over 200,000 entries. Finding the answer and replying would have taken up to an hour of our time. Would Lis have been prepared to pay for our service? We doubt it, she probably would not realise how long it takes. We estimate there have been over a million different coin types issued, and nobody could possibly know everything about all of them, which is why we have several hundred books, some of which cost over £100 each.

...Without Even Asking

521 Lytham Road, Blackpool, Lancashire, FY4 1RJ, England.
Telephone (44) - (0) 1253 - 343081 & 316238; Fax 408058; E-mail: enquiries@24carat.co.uk
The URL for our main page is: http://www.24carat.co.uk/index.html

Web Design by Snoop