Is Augusta Precious Metals a scam? Is it just the regular precious metals company or does it have services and products that are unique in the industry? This is some of what we shall help you answer in today’s review.
Name of the company: Augusta Precious Metals
Official Website: https://www.augustapreciousmetals.com/
Owner: Isaac Nuriani (CEO)
Minimum Purchase: $50,000
Overall Rating: (4.7 / 5)
Recommended: Yes! (if you can meet the minimum)
IMPORTANT!
First of all, it is important that you understand that Augusta is NOT for everyone, their minimum investment amount is $50,000 for IRA deals, and it is also $50,000 for direct purchases (outside IRA) so if you plan to invest less than that amount, you should look at other companies.
There are many different alternatives to look at and we have listed many of them on this website, and reviewed over 120+ of those firms during the years.
One that I always recommend, with low $3,500 minimum for direct purchaces, and $20,000 minimum for IRA, is:
As a matter of fact, they got some strong points you might find very valuable anyway + They also got some nice bonuses for the “bigger investors” as well.
Ok, with that being said, let´s continue with the review on Augusta!
Table of content
Below are the key elements of the review:
- What is unique with Augusta?
- What is Augusta Precious Metals about?
- Comparison table (15 ways Augusta outperform their competitorsition)
- How to Open Your Precious Metals IRA on Augusta
- How does Augusta Precious Metals work?
- Augusta Precious Metals Storage
- The Costs you can expect to Incur (fees)
- Is Augusta a Scam?
- Reviews & complaints
- Pros and cons
- Final words and verdict
What is unique with Augusta?
Sure, they might be unique with their (up to) 10 years fees reimbursed in silver premium coins and all that.
However, what really make Augusta stand out in the industry is their 1-on-1 web conference developed by their on-staff, Harvard-trained economist. The conference shares important info on the economy and precious metals.
It can be a great opportunity for you to get all and any questions you may have answered and explained by a real pro while not only talking to but also by seeing the person live in the eyes.
This is, at least in my opinion, what really make Augusta stand out among the crowd.
**You can attend the web conference through this page
What is Augusta Precious Metals about?
Augusta Precious Metals exists as a family-owned and precious metals dealer and gold IRA services provider that has close to 50 years of experience in the business. This is a company that is truly-service oriented, and is trusted by thousands of American patriots. It is one that a significant number of people have chosen as a trusted partner in their journey towards the protection of wealth, and in ensuring that their retirement years are sorted by investing through (mainly) gold IRAs.
This company has been helping these investors to open self-directed precious metals IRAs, as well as to buy gold and silver in deals that are not related to the opening of the SDIRAs. The metals offered at Augusta is gold and silver, simple.
Comparison Table (15 Ways Augusta Outperform Most Competitors):
Learn More Details about Augusta (and the industry as a whole )
How to Open Your Precious Metals IRA account on Augusta?
Opening your IRA with this company happens to be quite easy. In fact, you can achieve it within 3 easy and straightforward steps.
If anything, you can receive the guidance of a representative who are knowledgeable with IRA opening. The representatives usually help customers who reach out to them to make IRS-approved selections that will help them achieve their investment objectives. The selections are in the form of gold and silver coins that are minted by popular mints and treasury departments. Here are three steps that you have to follow:
- Open an account/ self-directed IRA- Augusta Precious Metals usually recommends that you work with any of the following custodians:
- Equity Trust
- Goldstar Trust
- Kingdom Trust
The above-listed companies are some of the best ones that you will find in the market, owing to their high level of integrity, as well as compliance.
- Sending money to your account – You can do this by transferring some money from your bank account, or by making a gold IRA rollover from your existing IRA.
- Buying gold and silver – You will eventually be requested to buy gold and silver for the newly created IRA. The precious metals are usually stored inside a facility that is insured.
Augusta Precious Metals usually offers both gold and silver, in different forms of precious metals such as bullions and bars.
How does Augusta Precious Metals work?
During the purchasing phase, Augusta Precious Metals usually lets you enjoy the benefits of their 7-Day Price Protection Program which usually locks the current price rate at the time you are making the purchase, and after you confirm it via phone.
Bullion prices on this platform are usually locked whenever the company the money used to make the payment. Augusta usually gives discounts on the prices of the bullion whenever one make makes a voluminous purchase.
Right after opening your gold IRA you will receive a 2000 dollar silver bonus, which you might want to use with running initial qualifying investment. The people who invest in the premium gold and silver are usually given the right to cancel their orders within one week from the time they make the order with no questions asked.
All the subsequent purchases and bullion orders are made final when the order is confirmed.
Augusta Precious Metals Storage
This company usually strives to guarantee the safety of your gold by housing them in seven separate storage units that are distributed across the United States as well as Canada. Upon finalizing your decision to make the purchase of precious metals, Augusta Precious Metals usually receive the gold the storage facility in just seven to 10 days.
The well-known precious metal storage facilities are usually located in the following areas
- Los Angeles
- Salt Lake City
- Jackson
- Wilmington
- Newcastle
- Springfield Gardens
- Mississauga
Augusta precious metals then ship the precious metals and social change within their to your name in any place in the US. that said however even though you think that storing gold and silver in the storage facilities is not that cool it is also not too cool to store your gold and silver products at your home. This company has made it a point to offer domestic shipping that is fully insured, such that there is no history of the loss of packages during transit. If your package, however, gets lost as the first then Augusta Precious Metals refunds the purchase price you paid initially.
The costs you can expect to incur with Augusta
A number of factors usually lead to the fluctuation of precious metal prices. This is why it is important to reach out to Augusta Precious Metals to determine the investment costs that you will incur.
Note that you are required to invest not less than $50,000 (both inside and outside an IRA) when you are making your purchase. Fortunately enough, there is no maximum investment limit. The fees on this platform are mainly paid to the custodial service providers, in the form of storage fees. These are costs that the representatives at Augusta Precious Metals can freely tell you about when you give them a call.
Paid Fees?
What I can tell you though is that Augusta will actually pay your fees for up to 10 years, depending on how much gold & silver you decide to invest through them. More correct, they will reimburse your fees in silver premium coins.
If you decide to purchase gold and silver outside the setting of an IRA opening with the company, you can make your payments via:
- Check
- Wire Transfer
- Credit cards
For credit cards, the highest amount of money you can spend is $5000 per transaction.
P.S.
Please ALWAYS make sure that you know exactly what fees you are going to have to pay before you sign anything. We hear so many stories of people being scammed and ripped off all the time, mostly in the form of so-called hidden fees. What you want from a company is 100% transparency.
Is Augusta Precious Metals a Scam?
So, is Augusta Precious Metals a scam? Of course not, it is legit and genuine. It got real a real owner and a real physical address. It also got thousands of clients across the U.S. They provide you with a lot of educational material and updates from the market regularly on their official website.
However, if they are your absolute best alternative out there is another story, that leads us to their reviews and ratings to be found online from independent 3rd party consumer protection agencies, as well as their clients:.
Augusta Precious Metals Reviews & Complaints?
BBB (accredited business)
Rating: A+ (5 / 5) (out of 106 reviews) click here for details (opens in new window)
Trustpilot
Rating: N/A
Trustlink
Rating: (4.9 / 5) (out of 283 reviews) click here for details (opens in new window)
Yelp
Rating: (5 / 5) (out of 3 reviews) click here for details (opens in new window)
RipOff Report
Rating: 2 complains click here for details (opens in new window)
The conclusion from this:
As you can see above, their online reviews and ratings from 3rd party independent consumer protection sites are great, except from the last one. It is not often you find a company in this industry with only 5 star ratings, so that is without a doubt a very big plus. However, I do miss some reviews from a pretty significant consumer protection agency named Trustpilot on Augusta… That is a minus, on the other hand, they are the only company with zero complaints from the BBB website, atleast with that many reviews on the platform, and that is, of course, a big plus.
Any red flags?
I searched an extra mile for this because I could´t believe there was no complaints at all, because I mean, even mother Theresa have haters, right? Have been in this industry long enough to know that pretty much all companies have some complaints, no matter how good of a service they bring their customers, there is always someone not happy with something.
Sure enough, I managed to find a complaint, it was a bit old though (from 2014).
Below is the exact text from the complaints found on a site named RipOff Report:
Here is the text;
In 2014 I responded to an online ad from Augustus Precious Metals about a home storage IRA that they were advertising. I transferred money to them to set up the home storage IRA. I paid them a fee to have it set up and they sent me the gold to store in my safe deposit box. Everything seemed OK until I received an audit letter from the IRS in 2016 stating that the home storage IRA Augustus set up is illegal. I was forced to pay almost $2000 in penalties to the IRS and the IRA Augustus set up was invalidated. In their quest for greed I lost of money for retirement needs. They scammed me into believing that a home storage IRA was legal but it’s not.
Here is the second (more serious one):
Augusta precious metals sent them $ 145,000.00 from my simple IRA to buy gold, ended up with $72,000.00 in gold in my account in 2016 and gold has gone up in price It appears, but I’m not positive that Augusta Precious Metals charged me about twice what the going spot price was for the gold coins that are in my account at Kingdom trust, who is holding the coins for me. beware I don’t want to see this happen to anyone else. I’m 71 and I don’t have away to make this up. I thought i was protecting my small IRA.
As mentioned above, you decide what you think. Keep in mind also that there is a possibility that one or even both of this complaints can have been written by a competitor. Might be a high chance of that actually as the ratings from the independent 3rd party consumer protection sites are flawless. However, my job is to present what I find, so I had to include this of course. Am still very impressed by Augusta´s ratings as (like mentioned) there are no company in this industry without a single complaint, it simply don´t exist.
(see more details on the RipOff Report site, opens in new window)
Pros and cons of Augusta
It is always wise (and recommended) to compare the positives against the negatives to get a better overall view of something, right? As always in our reviews we present you with some clear points on both sides of the spectrum:
Pros
- Excellent customer service (non-salesy)
- 1-on-1 web conference
- Up to 10 years fees reimbursed
- Easy-to-open gold IRA (Get their free kit on this page)
- Flawless ratings from most of the 3rd party consumer protection agencies
- Safe storage facilities
- FREE shipping & insurance
Cons
- Minimum investment is $50,000 for both IRA deals and direct purchases
- Got 2 (old) complaints & no reviews from Trustpilot
Do You Own or Represent Augusta Precious Metals?
If you are a representative, or associate of Augusta Precious Metals and have found something not to be correct in this review please, feel free to tell and I will make sure to update the info on this post. The easiest way to do it is in the comment section below or simply by sending us an e-mail to contact@goldretired.com.
Final words and verdict
Verdict: LEGIT! (Not for “smaller investors” though)
Overall rating: (4.7 / 5)
As mentioned further up, Augusta is NOT for everyone, because if you plan to invest less than $50,000 you are simply not qualified to use their services, no matter if you want to hold gold inside an IRA or do a direct cash purchase of gold or silver as their minimum investment amount for both kind of deals starts at $50,000.
Overall I think that sums up this review of Augusta pretty good. It is without a doubt a legit business, and not only that, it also seem as a very impressive one, especially the ratings from the consumer protection agencies. Maybe the most important one is their zero complains on the BBB website. However, I did not find any reviews on them from the Trustpilot website, and that is a minus, there where some complaints to be found when researching online, but then again, that is the case with almost all of their competitors as well.
As always the decision is up to you to make, we always recommend that you compare different companies against each other before you make any decisions. Most of the top rated ones offer you free IRA guides so make sure to take advantage of that and go through it to learn more and see what company that suits your needs the best! It might be a good idea to start by going through the Augusta free kit below:
==> Get Augustas FREE educational kit on this page <==
and/or
==> See our Top-5 Recommended Gold & Silver Firms on this page <==
I hope you found this review on Augusta Precious Metals to be helpful and that you now have a better understanding on what it is and also that it is not a scam but a legit gold company. The numbers don´t lie and their numbers are great. If you have used their service yourself then please share your experience in the comment secton below as it can help others make better decisions. Also, if you got any questions about this I would be more than happy to answer them below!
I wish you success!
Michael,
founder of Gold Retired.
The question that should be asked is who is the custodian for your metal IRA. The company I purchased my metals from didn’t tell me about the absurd fees the custodian would rip me off with. I was told there would be a $200 a year storage fee but that was it. I was charged $280 for the last four months of Dec. I have been told my yearly fee is do again for 2023. Some of the fees they charge. $130 net sweep activity fee (what ever the hell that is), and $512 for my MRD the IRS requires and they didn’t do what I asked. Also these fees don’t even show up on their fees list. Is it possible to switch to a different custodian? Are these fees typical, if so there needs to be something to require disclosure. If I had known I was going to be nickel and dimed to death (100 & 200 $$ to death) I would have left the money with Fidelity. It is VERY unlikely I will ever see any gains with the FU fees. ASK QUESTIONS!!!
First of all, thank you for your comment!
It is very good that you share your experience as it can help others, so that is great as well!
You have a very good point you are making here, it is important to know what custodian (or custodians) you have to choose between.
If you have been lied to (or if they have kept out some of the fees from you) then you should report this.
I have listed all 3 most important places to do so on this page (near the bottom): https://goldretired.com/gold-ira-scams
Please feel free to come back here and tell us if something new comes up regarding your situation.
Thank you again!
/Best