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I've always been a big fan of APMEX and I made my first credit card purchase from them back in 2011 when their credit card user fee was 3%. I made a purchase from them a few months ago and saw that they raised their credit card user fee to 3 1/2%.

Today I went to make a purchase and at the last minute I noticed they have raised their credit card/paypal user fee to 4% Of course they sugar coat this increase by saying they now offer a 4% cash discount when paying by bank wire/check. Funny how a price "increase" is somehow seen as a "discount".

So send a check...

Retailers pay 4% of customer purchase price to credit card companies for processing this is normal cost of doing business getting passed through. Hence the fee at payment time. Why penalize every customer.

3% is a standard base rate. A company with the volume APMEX does is paying about 2% in fees (maybe less). But APMEX is likely factoring in chargebacks and other fraud they have to deal with from credit cards and PayPal orders and throwing that cost back just at the credit card and PayPal orders instead of building it into their pricing across the board.

68Camaro wrote:So send a check...

I did this time. I used to enjoy the next day shipping when you used a credit card but with the increase to 4% I'll just be patient, send a check and wait the extra shipping time.

I was suprised APMEX took credit cards at all because I know what they can cost to
process and how narrow the margins are on PMs...at least the margins with anyone
you _want_ to deal with.

Kitco never took credit cards, just bank wire or check, of course I always used a
check because it's cheaper. They guy I bought junk silver from in North Dakota
was always paid in cash because it was an in person transaction so I can't
reasonably expect anything other than cash to be acceptable due to it's zero
default risk.

Though it's been about 6 year now since I bought any PMs other than the 2 Silver
Eagles I bought from a friend. I haven't sold any either, just holding even.

The 4% "discount" is worth sending a check, I have them set up on my bill pay as well as a couple others that occasionally offer some hard to pass up deals.

I'm too cheap to pay even 0.5% more so I always send a check when ordering online.

Rustynail wrote:The 4% "discount" is worth sending a check, I have them set up on my bill pay as well as a couple others that occasionally offer some hard to pass up deals.

Is there an echo in here?

In my experience with Apmex, they tend to ship much quicker when you pay with a bank cashiers check.

If you are a regular customer and pay with a personal check, they usually ship the product in about 7 days.

FWIW.

Cu Penny Hoarder wrote:

Rustynail wrote:The 4% "discount" is worth sending a check, I have them set up on my bill pay as well as a couple others that occasionally offer some hard to pass up deals.

Is there an echo in here?

I fixed it.

wheeler_dealer wrote:Retailers pay 4% of customer purchase price to credit card companies for processing this is normal cost of doing business getting passed through. Hence the fee at payment time. Why penalize every customer.

Retailers are working with much, much larger profit margins than what you will find in bullion deals.

It could be worse. Imagine being in England and having to pay the 20% VAT tax for precious metals, which was 17% until fairly recently. VAT stands for Value Added Tax, which is quite the misnomer because I can't understand what value a tax adds to a PM purchase. Oh well...