It's always a good idea to look a little closer at the companies with which you invest your money. Blanchard Gold, also known as Blanchard and Company, is certainly one of the many popular precious metals dealers out there, but that doesn't necessarily make them the best of the best. It's up to you to determine if the company is as reputable as its advertisements claim.
Blanchard has been around longer than many in the gold business. With 45 years in the market, they're certainly a legitimate business for an actual gold firm. With that said, the company also has many complaints against it, something that every buyer needs to keep in mind when making their choices about with whom they will work.
Blanchard's reputation is also hurt because the company's prices aren't always in line with those of other companies and that they don't always answer the most critical questions to consumers. Legitimacy is one thing, but not relying on the company with which you work to provide you with fair prices is entirely different.
Blanchard's pricing woes don't just extend to the world of investments. The company also tends to mark up collectible coins above their actual values. If these allegations are true, it becomes much hard to trust the company.
These allegations come from real customers, but there's always a chance that those allegations are from disgruntled individuals. As such, it's essential to rely on actual research to get a better idea of how the company works. While we've done our homework, your conclusion on the company is what matters. We're simply here to help you filter through some of the information faster.
Important note before we begin:
You're looking at a significant financial decision when you choose to invest in any company. We pride ourselves on doing excellent research and providing the best possible information.
We review thousands of dealers each year, and only 5 pass the tests.
----> Click here to see our top 5 recommended gold companies this year
See if Blanchard Gold made the top 5 by checking out the full review above.
Quick Navigation
About Blanchard and Company
Blanchard is probably best known for its specialization in a few areas. The company is a significant name in collectible coins, for example. The company also offers consumers the chance to invest in palladium and platinum in bullion form. As an important player in the gold world, the company also provides both coins and bullion forms of gold to investors.
Like many other gold investment companies, Blanchard also works to help individuals roll over their existing retirement accounts into precious metals IRAs. These investment accounts allow individuals to hold precious metals rather than stocks and bonds, which can be a solid strategy to diversify your portfolio. However, this service isn't something that Blanchard specializes in.
Precious metals IRAs are very popular because they help individuals to protect themselves from wild swings in the market. When the market is volatile, you risk losing the money you've worked so hard to invest. It makes sense, then, that many experts now recommend that investors put up to twenty percent of their retirement funds into precious metals so that they can have something of a cushion against those swings.
One of the unique elements we can see about Blanchard comes from the company's longevity. The Better Business Bureau has had Blanchard as an accredited entity since 1982, giving consumers about forty years of data to parse to learn more about the company's reputation.
It should be noted that one of the real selling points about Blanchard is that the company has been around longer than most. Blanchard's been around since about the beginning of this market, giving it a level of perceived expertise that many other companies don't have.
Customer Feedback
Unfortunately, there are a fair number of negative reviews concerning this company. The company doesn't tend to see a lot of positive press online, but that may well come from the fact that they aren't that active. Perhaps as an older company, they just haven't transitioned to the internet in the realm of customer service as well as they should have.
Most of the positive feedback that we've seen about Blanchard comes from long-time customers. These are largely the people who have been around since the old days, and many have only positive things to say. It's no wonder, then, that these people recommend using Blanchard.
With that said, Blanchard may not be the company that it once was. Blanchard was certainly in on the ground floor of the metals market, but it seems to have been overtaken by many of its newer competitors. In fact, it looks like modern customers largely have expectations set not by Blanchard but by the companies that followed in its footsteps.
It's pretty hard to say that any of the positive reviews of Blanchard are as honest as they could have been. Given that they come from long-time customers, these individuals may not know what else is out there. There is also the possibility that these reviews are internal and largely meant to push down real customers' availability of negative reviews.
Complaints
It's distressingly hard to see all the complaints about Blanchard because most of them have been deleted from the company's BBB page. With this said, the old complaints can still be found with some digging, and they touch on many topics. Some customers complain about billing, hidden fees, or having money charged when they never consented to those charges. Others complain that delivery was too slow or that their packages came damaged to their homes.
Some customers had complained that the company doesn't live up to its customer guarantees, with little follow-through when there were problems with an order. Others note that they didn't receive the coins or bullion they paid for, leaving them with products they don't want in hand.
If you look at the site today, you can still see several complaints. Most of these complaints have to do with the company's selection of rare coins and the relatively high mark-ups that they use. Some even allege that the company is charging twice what it should.
For its part, Blanchard has responded. It denies that it has marked up coins as high as possible, but they don't seem to have done much else to fix their customer complaints. They rarely provide evidence that things have changed, and they seem more focused on denying that there are problems than taking steps to resolve real issues.
Ultimately, you need to figure out if you want to believe the consumers or if you want to believe Blanchard. The fact that it's so hard to find the truth makes it hard to trust the company, especially given that most of its peers seem willing to bend backward to assure consumers that they're being taken care of properly.
Trustlink and Rip Off Report
Two of the most trusted sites for reviews are Trustlink and Ripoff Report. These sites are excellent watchdogs, each with a role to play in helping customers. Trustlink gathers up reviews from consumers who have worked with different companies, while Ripoff Reports allows consumers to report businesses when things go wrong.
One of the biggest puzzles regarding Blanchard is that it has almost no presence on Trustlink. They only have a single one star review from 2014. Considering most reputable companies have hundreds, if not thousands of reviews, this is a bit concerning.
Ripoff Report, on the other hand, does list two complaints against Blanchard. The first complaint is about the company's pricing of rare coins, noting that the company prices the coins far above their value. This isn't a unique report, though, and you can find it virtually anywhere that people talk about Blanchard Gold.
Unfortunately, it's tough to tell precisely to what degree Blanchard marks up its product. Rare coins require an appraisal, and they're very vulnerable to market forces, so the price of a coin can vary not just by the day but even theoretically by the hour. It is entirely possible that a consumer could end up paying what was a fair price for a coin one day and then find that their investment wasn't worth nearly as much by the time the coin arrived at their home. This is why it's important to remember that investing in collector coins is not necessarily a very safe process.
Ripoff Report's other listed complaint has to do with pricing. In this case, the consumer notes that the company changed prices on various items without telling consumers and didn't allow consumers to lock in the lower price before the change. This means that the person who filed the complaint ended up being charged more than they were quoted.
This is a fair complaint, as most people wouldn't like to be charged more for purchase than they were told they would be charged. If you are given a price, you should know that the price won't change. If the price changes, the company should be transparent about that part of the process as well.
Company Policies
One good thing about Blanchard is that all of its policies are very straightforward.
One of the company's most popular policies is a ten-day satisfaction guarantee. This guarantee states that once consumers get their coins, they can return them and get their money back. This is a firm policy, mainly because the guarantee kicks in after receipt rather than shipping - in many cases, customers won't even get their gold before the policy would be up.
The company also has a buy-back policy for those customers who need to convert metals into cash. This policy states that the company will buy back gold at whatever the current market price might be. This makes it possible for the value of a customer's metals to be higher or lower when they liquidate them than when the metals were purchased.
The good news for most is that precious metals tend to go up in value rather than down. As inflation continues to rise, precious metals also continue to become more valuable. Blanchard's policy isn't all that unusual, and many of its competitors offer more or less the same policy.
Blanchard's shipping process goes through a number of the biggest national and international shippers. All orders are confirmed when shipped out, and consumers do receive a tracking number for their packages.
Someone at the destination must sign for deliveries, or buyers will notice that the carrier attempted to deliver the product. If the carrier can't get the package to you within two more attempts, they will return the package to the original shipper.
Blanchard offers options for those who don't want to wait around for a package to be delivered. You can have your package shipped to a secure facility, which will then allow you to pick up the package at a time of your choosing.
Regardless of where you choose to receive your metals, the package will be wrapped and have no external markings indicating that it contains anything valuable. The package will also be fully insured so that you won't have to worry about losing your money and your metals if something happens to them in transit.
Insurance isn't always free, though. If your order is under three hundred dollars, you'll be charged twenty-three dollars for insurance and shipping. The good news for those who buy more is that any order over three hundred dollars will be shipped and insured at no extra cost.
Final Thoughts - Is Blanchard Gold Legit?
There's no denying that Blanchard Gold is a trailblazer, and they have been a huge part of trying to bring the metals market into the mainstream. The fact that the company has been around since 1975 is quite impressive.
With that said, it's hard to see where Blanchard is now. Simply put, the company hasn't kept up with the changes in the market, and there are not enough positive reviews out there to give any would-be consumer a good picture of the company today.
With accusations of misleading purchase prices and sky-high rates on coins, it's hard to see this company as one with which most would want to invest. The company isn't IRA specialists either, which leaves a picture of a company that's fallen behind the times.
Because of all this, we wouldn't recommend working with them. You should always work with a company you can trust completely, and Blanchard Gold isn't one of those companies for us because of all the questionable tactics revealed by customers. It's not that Blanchard is necessarily bad, it's just that there are better companies with which you can work who have more and better reviews.
----> Find out which gold dealer is #1 this year by clicking here <----
Or continue to Blanchard Gold's website and learn more about them. Out of all the Blanchard Gold reviews online, we hope you found this one most helpful.