Bad Bad Bad buying coins online experience

Well I bought a 1909 O quarter from letchworth coins at www.letcoin.com. I paid $39 plus $5.99 for shipping/insurance etc. When I get the package its a 1909 D quarter so I emailed them several times with no response, then I sent the coin back and waited and waited. Then I paid to call them 2000 miles away on a number that was not a 1-800 but a call I paid for. They said they were sending a refund, it was all their fault and all that. So I get the refund check and its for $39. Their website does say that refunds are less shipping but this was their mistake not a situation of buyers remorse. I even told them instead of the refund I would take the 1909 O but they didnt have it, so clearly I wasnt just looking to backout. To make it worse, my coin was sent to me through regular US mail with 2 forever stamps on it. I got it in my mailbox, no insurance, not certified mail. Nothing. So I paid them $5.99 shipping on an item that cost them 82 cents to mail and they still hold the shipping ??? It was their mistake. So their mistake ended up costing me about $25 because I paid for a money order, the $5.99 shipping they charged, the phone call, and my cost to send it back. Their mistake cost me $25 and they made a profit off of their mistake. Never would I buy from them again.

 

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That is terrible!! Thanks for notifying me and other users of your bad buying experience. I will not consider this seller in the future.

 

Wow. Thats why I only buy in person. But I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Thats really unfair.

 

Ouch, sorry to hear that.

 

Sounds like everybody who reads this should ask them why they are keeping your shipping. Email thru website. Many have free long distance on our cell phones too, whats the number?

 

I assume you won't be dealing with them anymore.
Sorry you had such a rotten experience.

 

Yikes - thats bad. i looked at the web site and they only show the obv and not the other side and the pics are small.

if they had better pics & the rev - you would of seen the mint mark error

 

That stinks. I am sorry to hear that you had such a crappy experience. Thank you for sharing it with us thou.

 

Report them to the ANA.
If they are an ANA member, that should at least get their attention.
If they are not an ANA member, they'll at least know that Big Brother is watching.

 

In an effort to make you feel better I will tell you a true story about someone who had a much worse coin experience than you this week.

I was working our table at the Silver Dollar show in StL on Friday when a guy came up and asked for an informal evalution of his coins. I wasn't busy so I agreed. He pulled out a list and a handful of coins. Basically he had a number of better date Morgans, some common Saints and some common 20 Libs. Most of his coins were very harshly cleaned. I quoted him a FMV for the Morgans and then when I started quoting him prices on the saints at a little back of melt he started to get weird. I assumed he thought the coins were worth more than I'd quoted so i started explaining that they were cleaned/polished so harshly that we couldn't sell them as jewelry even and we would be forced to just have them melted.

He interrupted me and told me that he was upset that the previous dealer he had spoken to had quoted him a price of $175 each for his Saints, his 20 libs, his 1 oz AGE's and his 1 oz gold ingots. I was dismayed and started asking questions and he told me who the dealer was and showed me his business card (I don't know the guy since he is just a local guy who set up at the show) then he told me he'd sold the guy more than 10k in coins (which at $175/ oz works out to about 60 ozs of gold)!

I was stunned (as was Zane who was sitting next to me). We ended up recommending he try to get his coins back and if he couldn't we recommended that he contact the ANA.

I figure the guy basically stole about $40k from the poor guy, just because he didn't know anything about coins. It was despicable. It is thieves like that guy that give honest coin dealers a bad name!

 

Damn! I have a pit in my stomach after hearing that story! I feel for the poor guy because he just wanted some old coins, and got ripped off!

That is terrible.

 

I've got a similar story, but not first hand.
It came from my top dealer.

He was sitting at his table at a show doing his thing.

The dealer next to him evaluated a set of Mercurys and paid the customer.
It was a fair price for this sort of transaction of normal coins.
Then this dealer gets another customer asking if the dealer has a 1942/1.
That dealer responded "Yes", he had just gotten one.

My dealer had to get up and walk out to keep from doing nasty things to his neighbor.

 

Bad Coin?

Sir,
Confront the thieves, file a complaint with the post office on the grounds of false advertising. Make certain you can document the transaction. Better yet, if you have the funds, get an attorney in your County to get the *******s into court. You have little chance of losing.
Bet if more persons did this, it would discourage the phony "dealers" to put an end to the pratice.
Yep, the people have also gotten me also.
If you do nothing, it will continue.
fulton11

 

dang Cave troll ... thats a horrible story. I do hope the guy who got ripped off wont let it drop as a lesson learned.

that sucks for you too goldcollector! Ill make a note to never visit that site.

 

CAVE TROLL, what table were you at at the St. Louis show??? You and I probably met Friday and didn't even know it. I was the big guy in the Cardinal baseball cap. I saw an older guy, who I think was kind of getting screwed out of a couple jars of silver coins he had, but I didn't really get nosey enough to know for sure. Thats certainly a terrible story you told, and being from that area, I'd like to know who that dirty dealer was.

 

Cave Troll,

That hurt just to read your story. Once a thief always a thief. Wonder how many other times that so called dealer has pulled that.

 

Sorry to hear about the problem there.

Here is an article on how to find a good dealer. It really makes you think.

http://www.ispcowboy.com/mycoins/article001.asp

UncleKin

 

Thanks everyone for the responses. Their phone number is edited - please don't list phone numbers on public forums and I have emailed them but I dont expect a response as they havent responded to any of my previous emails. I may call them about this. Part of me wants to while in a way I just want to let it go and never buy from them again. It gets a little worse though as I notice their website still has that coin listed as a 1909 O and its been nearly 2 weeks and its still not corrected. Seems like they are waiting for someone else to buy it and be in the same predicament.

 

I emailed them and told them about this and asked them if they wanted to come in here and give their position. I would love to see them try to defend holding shipping that they didnt even spend to ship the package.

 

Just send a written complaint to both your state AG and their state AG. Specifically use the word mail fraud. Keep the written complaint short, but indicate that this appears to be something they are repeatedly doing to rip off the PUBLIC.

The state's AG offices won't do anything more than forward on the written complaint seeking a response, but they do keep track of them and sometimes, a non-response just motivates the right AG worker to pursue it.