Why Are Chards So Cheap?

[Darr3nG]

3 minutes ago, LawrenceChard said:

I have never been inside...

...Eden

But google tells me you were outside it, one time.

[Lyrinn]

3 hours ago, LawrenceChard said:

I also realised that I could rely on at least one person out there to mention it, and you didn't fail me.

I am taking this to mean that I can get a mate's rate discount next time I buy from Chards - I therefore look forward to my free postage on my next purchase from Chards.

 

In all seriousness (or, maybe not seriousness???), you should instigate a policy where customers can build up a loyalty points scheme where postage is free on their tenth order or something. You could also add a rule in that if someone tells you their TSF name, then they are either entered into:

1) A special loyalty programme that grants free postage on their every seventh purchase.

2) An extra, super special loyalty programme that means that postage is only free after every twentieth purchase.

 

(You'd just have to decide who's name went on which list. Probably decided on how many times they've asked about free bloody postage!)

[SidS]

I'd settle for a free cup of tea if I ever was to visit. 🙂

[LawrenceChard]

36 minutes ago, SidS said:

I'd settle for a free cup of tea if I ever was to visit. 🙂

Done!

😎

[Tn21]

Has Chards seen an increase in sales since your involvement with the silver forum?

I'm estimating your influence/branding/marketing would account for a % increase year on year. 

[Happypanda88]

I have been collecting for a few years before joining TSF.  The bullion dealers I bought from were those based in London, Birmingham and outside of UK. Chards of Blackpool were not on my radar, even though they have an online presence through google search results.

My preference before TSF were 1oz coins and I have not paid much attention to sovereigns before. But when members starts talking about them and seeing how liquid they are on the forum, it did influenced me to buy some.

After a few searches, I decided to test the waters and placed an order for 15 sovereigns with Chards, a lesser known dealer to me at the time.  I suspect by having a presence on TSF and being involved with discussions must have gained exposure and sales for Chards. 😎

[daca]

15 hours ago, LawrenceChard said:

Why Are Chards So Cheap?

This is a real question which our Customer Service Team get asked.

My quick answer would be "We can charge you more if you like!". Of course, this is a bit of a smart-arse answer, but I would say it with a cheesy grin, but then go on to give a serious answer.

It is frustrating to have to answer questions like this, but it is a fact of life for dealers like @ChardsCoinandBullionDealer who have a policy of being competitive.

It's also possibly the visible tip of the proverbial iceberg. What about the 90% of potential customers who choose to buy their investment gold, or other PM, from the most expensive source perhaps because they feel safer (Safer being ripped off?).

I can understand that some people are quite rightly cautious about buying from the cheapest source.

Perhaps what we should be explaining to people that:

If you are buying investment gold, then you should be trying to avoid paying too much for it.

We are not "too cheap", it is others who are "too dear".

You can come and see us if you want, and even collect your bullion at the same time.

We have been around for longer than any other coin and bullion dealer in the UK.

We could make more profit if we charged more, but we prefer to take a longer term view, and have happy customers who will come back to us, and also recommend us.

-----

What else have I missed?

😎

smells of desperation

Edited February 18, 2023 by daca

[Leonmarsh]

Because you havent upgraded your website for 5 years 

[Silverlocks]

On 17/02/2023 at 17:52, LawrenceChard said:

It's funny you should say that!

I did consider mentioning "free postage" in my OP, but decided it would detract and distract from my post.

I also realised that I could rely on at least one person out there to mention it, and you didn't fail me.

In the reply I just did to @Spyder, one of the comparisons I did was against a dealer who offers so-called "free delivery".

Just for once, to keep it simple, I did my comparison on the basis of customer in store and taking delivery over the counter. I am not sure the first competitor offers this, but the second one does not. you would need to add postage to their price. I was unable to complete the comparison because they required me to log in and proceed to checkout before I be advised about the postage cost, and that was after I had to add to basket to see price inclusive of VAT.

If you buy between 2 and 4 pieces from the first dealer, you will not be given any discount or rebate on the postage they will have saved per addiitonal coin.

Although I used a silver coin for the purposes of my example, I could have equally used a one ounce gold Britannia, or a gold sovereign, and the results and conclusions would have been similar.

Thank you for asking the questions.

Now, a question from me:

Is Chards the best coin and bullion dealer in the UK?

😎

By far the most entertaining, at any rate.

[Leonmarsh]

21 minutes ago, Silverlocks said:

By far the most entertaining, at any rate.

Stamp of disapproval from me 

https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/blackpool-businessman-given-the-stamp-of-disapproval-292646

Lawrence next time your outside Eden's tell me mum to come home 

Edited February 18, 2023 by Leonmarsh

[SilverPlatinum]

52 minutes ago, Leonmarsh said:

Stamp of disapproval from me 

https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/blackpool-businessman-given-the-stamp-of-disapproval-292646

Lawrence next time your outside Eden's tell me mum to come home 

🤯 what!!!!!

[Stu]

Why is Chards so cheap?

[LawrenceChard]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

Why is Chards so cheap?

Probably because I am a slow learner!

😎

[Happypanda88]

On 19/02/2023 at 04:28, Stu said:

Why is Chards so cheap?

 

On 19/02/2023 at 06:42, LawrenceChard said:

Probably because I am a slow learner!

😎

Could it be that you're always the last to buy a round ?

Hence, the label Chard is so cheap !  😎

[LawrenceChard]

7 hours ago, Happypanda88 said:

 

Could it be that you're always the last to buy a round ?

Hence, the label Chard is so cheap !  😎

It's probably because I am the last person to go into a pub!

😎

[Oddjob]

Not if you are an overseas buyer....Int'l postage of GBP15.00 is GBP5.00+ more than what Royal Mail charges to send multiple sovs via post from the UK to Aust, pls other UK dealers don't charge me a "international admin fee" of GBP12.00...higher now I believe....

Thus if you are UK buyer, Chards is good value but for us stackers / buyers of sovs outside of the UK, then Chards is not cheap......also harder for non UK buyer to transact with as credit card purchases are not allow (and I understand Chards rational for not accepting credit cards), thus it's a bank transfers and that take more time and adds to the cost....Other UK dealers allow credit card / Paypal purchases and that streamlines the whole purchase process.

I get it that the UK is Chards main market not the rest of the world thus they gear their pricing and cost structure to the UK market where the volume is....and outside the UK, well, shame it costs so much, Chards do have a decent product range and stock....

Now to go buy some sov's from XXX and YYY.

[SilverPlatinum]

I agree with "Oddjob" statement above regarding credit card/PayPal.

I would also add that we need a single person to contact to do customization to the commercial invoice and the Royal Mail customs declaration form.

For example, in Canada we do not pay taxes on Gold, Silver, and Platinum of .999 purity. But this has to be clearly and explicitly mentioned on the commercial invoice and the Royal Mail customs declaration form.

I emailed Chard couple of months back when I placed and order, but could not get any confirmation from anyone that they will do that, so the order got canceled.

 

 

[Cornishfarmer]

You have an old web site think it was something like taxfreegold that was a go to for just about all coins information but about 4 years ago it stopped working on the phone which was disappointing as learnt so much from it.      Chards is my go to but if I was new atkinsons web site is a lot easier to navigate on a phone

Edited February 21, 2023 by Cornishfarmer

[LawrenceChard]

On 17/02/2023 at 19:16, ArgentSmith said:

Why Are Chards So Cheap?

Textbook rhetorical question 😎

Yes, if taken just as a headline, but the fact is that we do get asked that very question, along with other variations on it. Our staff have to spend time assuring people we are not like Harvey Ross, and that our prices are not "too good to be true"!

😎

[ChardsCoinandBullionDealer]

5 hours ago, Cornishfarmer said:

You have an old web site think it was something like taxfreegold that was a go to for just about all coins information but about 4 years ago it stopped working on the phone which was disappointing as learnt so much from it.      Chards is my go to but if I was new atkinsons web site is a lot easier to navigate on a phone

This is something we are working on. We are in the process of developing a mobile friendly website /application which will be the BEST on the market when we're finished!!!

[LawrenceChard]

On 18/02/2023 at 18:42, Leonmarsh said:

Because you havent upgraded your website for 5 years 

Wrong!

I presume you mean our main Chards.co.uk one. It gets incremental improvements almost every day, most of which are probably not easily noticeable. 

Upgrades are slightly different. Being semantic, it depends what you class as an upgrade. 

I do think we could upgrade it by including more of the information we used to, and still do have, on our heritage sites. Some it is has been ported over, but not always perfectly, and without many of the links our old sites had.

The new site is so advanced compared with the old ones, that I am not able to add new pages, or edit existing ones, despite the fact that I used to hand-code many pages on our old sites. I am not sure that counts as an upgrade.

As a side note, we are just in the closing stages of settling a legal case we started against a web developer company, whose managing director managed to convince us that they could and would supply a high quality e-commerce website with a search facility which "would rock". Perhaps we were naive, but he was a very convincing liar salesman. I will not name them, as their latest offer includes a proposal for an NDA (Non disclosure agreement), against which I have a strong ethical dislike.

In the background we are working on the development of our completely re-written "back-end". It is entirely possible that, when it is rolled out, nobody will notice the difference!

😎

[LawrenceChard]

22 minutes ago, ChardsCoinandBullionDealer said:

This is something we are working on. We are in the process of developing a mobile friendly website /application which will be the BEST on the market when we're finished!!!

You beat me to it by about 20 minutes!

😎

[James32]

1 minute ago, LawrenceChard said:

You beat me to it by about 20 minutes!

😎

No (i) in team Lawrence 😆 

[LawrenceChard]

6 hours ago, Cornishfarmer said:

You have an old web site think it was something like taxfreegold that was a go to for just about all coins information but about 4 years ago it stopped working on the phone which was disappointing as learnt so much from it.      Chards is my go to but if I was new atkinsons web site is a lot easier to navigate on a phone

One of our 3 old "heritage sites" is indeed https://taxfreegold.co.uk/

I still use it to check some facts.

It was created in December 1999, and was never designed for use on mobile phones. To upgrade it would almost certainly require a complete re-write. 

Our new site was designed to work on mobile devices, and it uses one shopping basket, whereas our old sites needed one for each, which was inconvenient for customers. They also had no search facility (or at least not worth using), but used old fashioned hard-coded links and navigation, which still work well for anyone capable of thinking logically, but usually require more clicks.

I do occasionally view websites on my mobile phone, but I dislike the experience.

You have just given me an idea though: We should add some "free postage" pages to our old websites!

Easier? Sure. Buying via Amazon is often easier, but when you realise that merchants are typically paying Amazon about 15% commission on their sales, then I would always check elsewhere unless is was a very small purchase.

Atkinsons? I guess that you can hardly notice the poor quality of their photos when using a mobile phone. Even on a large desktop monitor, it can be difficult to tell which of the coins are genuine, and which are fake.

Newbies have a lot to learn!

😎

[LawrenceChard]

24 minutes ago, James32 said:

No (i) in team Lawrence 😆 

There is in Microsoft Teams.

There is also an "i" in blind, which is somewhat counter-intuitive.

We also have blinds in our windows, which almost brings us back neatly to where I came in!

😎