Selling Gold Jewellery David Smith (sellinggoldjewellery.co.uk) & Misleading Websites
Beware phony advice sites purporting to independently test UK gold buyers.
Selling Gold Jewellery David Smith (sellinggoldjewellery.co.uk) of London lists another of his own sites best without disclosing the conflict of interest.

Impartial Advice?
Highly unlikely!

Gold Price Comparisons
We did a Google search for "~Gold Price Comparisons" to see what results we would see.
At the top of the "Ads" section, where advertisers can outbid their competitors for top spot, we noticed the ridiculous claim "Gold Comparison - Get twice the Cash for your Gold." We have commented about this type of claim before, twice what? The advertiser has not bothered to state the basis of comparison.
We also wondered why anybody would go to the time and expense of creating and maintaining a website, and paying top dollar for the top advertising slot on Google, just to give impartial advice out of the goodness of their hearts. We could understand Which Magazine or the BBC researching the market and publishing advice, this is part of their respective functions, consumer advice and public interest.
We took a closer look at the website:

Selling Gold Jewellery Post Gold Free Gold Valuation
Selling Gold Jewellery
When selling gold jewellery, online gold buyers offer more cash for unwanted gold jewellery than high street jewellers; however, some specialist gold buyers pay up to three times more than others, so it’s important to compare the gold buying companies and ensure you’re selling your gold jewellery at the top gold price.
We regularly test UK gold buyers by sending each the same weight and carat packs of gold jewellery and it’s shocking to see the difference in the amount of cash you can get when you deal with the best or worst gold buyers. The table below shows which gold buyers give the most cash for your gold jewellery in June 2011.

Fair Enough? Taken at face value, this all sounds fair enough, but we had a number of reservations and suspicions. These proved to be well-founded.

What's Wrong?

• There was no nothing on the page about getting twice the cash, neither explanation or mention, so it appears this was just a catchy heading existing only on the Google advert, and not on the actual site.
• There was no "About Us" page to inform the reader whose opinions and research are being expressed.
• It claims "online gold buyers offer more cash for unwanted gold jewellery than high street jewellers". This was found to generally be untrue by Which and the OFT.
• The site claims "We regularly test UK gold buyers", there is no evidence of this present on any of the pages of the site, such as dates, references, or weight and caratage of gold sent. We have great doubts over the veracity of their claims.
• There was no explanation of the identity of the "We" which the site author refers to. As we have stated many times elsewhere on our sites, most experts and advisors put their name to their claims. Claims without names are worthless, or at best should be treated with great suspicion.
• The top rated website website our of the 6 shown in the results table was Gold Refiners (goldrefiners.co.uk)
  Although this website is registered to a company Guerilla London Ltd and not to an individual David Smith, both share the same address at 26a Thurloe Street, South Kensington, London
  Suddenly, all is clear!
• The second highest payer according to David Smith's sellinggoldjewellery.co.uk website was www.goldvaluation.co.uk. When we tried to view the site, Chrome reported "This web page is not available". We wondered who owned the site, and found it was David Smith! Could it be the very same David Smith at the same address as the other two sites? We wouldn't bet against it!
• According to Selling Gold Jewellery, they regularly test UK gold buyers, and their 5th placed buyer in June 2011 was Monay4Gold (money4gold.co.uk), but according to the OFT's 14th February 2011 press release , Money4Gold had stopped trading. How Selling Gold Jewellery managed to check thier buying prices in June 2011, we cannot begin to imagine!
  Well, we can actually, but it would not be very complimentary for us to voice our opinion here.

Phone & Web Research
We asked one of our staff members to trya dn check what prices were being paid by each of the "gold buyers" listed on Selling Gold Jewellery's website.Percentage shown are the percentage of intrinsic gold content offered at time of our check, to the nearest integer.

Domain Lookup

Domain name: sellinggoldjewellery.co.uk
Registrant: David Smith
Registrant type: UK Individual
Registrant's address: 26 Thurloe Street South Kensington
London London SW7 2LT United Kingdom
Registrar:
Fasthosts Internet Ltd [Tag = LIVEDOMAINS]
URL: http://www.fasthosts.co.uk
Relevant dates:
Registered on: 25-Jun-2009
Renewal date: 25-Jun-2013
Last updated: 02-Jul-2011
Registration status:
Registered until renewal date.
Name servers:
ns1.livedns.co.uk 213.171.192.250
ns2.livedns.co.uk 213.171.193.250
ns3.livedns.co.uk
WHOIS lookup made at 17:34:48 05-Jul-2011

Domain Lookup

Domain name: goldrefiners.co.uk
Registrant: Guerilla London
Trading as: Guerilla London Ltd
Registrant type: UK Limited Company, (Company number: 6502448)
Registrant's address: 26a Thurloe Street
South Kensington London SW72LT United Kingdom Registrar:
Fasthosts Internet Ltd [Tag = LIVEDOMAINS]
URL: http://www.fasthosts.co.uk
Relevant dates:
Registered on: 27-Jan-2006
Renewal date: 27-Jan-2012
Last updated: 10-Aug-2010
Registration status:
Registered until renewal date.
Name servers:
ns1.livedns.co.uk 213.171.192.250
ns2.livedns.co.uk 213.171.193.250
ns3.livedns.co.uk
WHOIS lookup made at 17:51:58 05-Jul-2011

Domain Lookup

Domain name: goldvaluation.co.uk
Registrant: David Smith
Registrant type: UK Individual
Registrant's address: The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their address omitted from the WHOIS service.
Registrar:
Fasthosts Internet Ltd [Tag = LIVEDOMAINS]
URL: http://www.fasthosts.co.uk
Relevant dates:
Registered on: 22-Mar-2010
Renewal date: 22-Mar-2012
Last updated: 10-Aug-2010b Registration status:
Registered until renewal date.
Name servers:
ns1.livedns.co.uk 213.171.192.250
ns2.livedns.co.uk 213.171.193.250
ns3.livedns.co.uk
WHOIS lookup made at 18:49:19 05-Jul-2011

Companies House Search

Name & Registered Office:
GUERILLA LONDON LIMITED
26 THURLOE STREET
SOUTH KENSINGTON
LONDON
ENGLAND
SW7 2LT
Company No. 06502448
Status: Active
Date of Incorporation: 13/02/2008
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Company Type: Private Limited Company
Nature of Business (SIC(03)):
7414 - Business & management consultancy

Second Try
The second placed advertiser was Compare and Recycle (compareandrecycle.co.uk).Their "Best Gold Recycler" was Post Gold For Cash (postgoldforcash.com). This buyer only came fourth in Selling Gold Jewellery's rigged table.
Selling Gold Jewellery was not mentionedoin Compare and Recycle's site