3/22 Update:
Below are the latest updates on the industry and our company:
Demand for precious metals products remains incredibly strong. This is being further exacerbated by disruptions to the supply chain, including the Royal Canadian Mint closing for 2 weeks as of the 20th, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Perth Mint has also suspended silver bullion sales. We are doing all we can to source metal from our extensive network of minting and wholesale partners.
Our website is currently sold out of almost all bullion products across all metals, but we have secured several million ounces of silver and tens of thousands of ounces of gold to arrive in the coming weeks. We are being conservative about preselling these future deliveries, given the current uncertainty in the supply chain. As products arrive to our vault, we will relist them on our website. The best way to find in stock items is by browsing our new In Stock Gold and In Stock Silver search results pages.
We are still quoting 15+ business days for fulfillment on new orders. We are being very conservative on this, given the enormous surge in orders we have experienced the past few weeks. Starting Monday, we have a new influx of trained employees hitting the floor in our fulfillment center, in the hopes that we’re able to reduce our backlog and shorten our estimated shipping times going forward. We will continue to update our website with conservative shipping estimates to keep our customers well informed.
Thank you very much for your continued patience during these unprecedented times. We appreciate it greatly.
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Original Update:
We wanted to provide our customers with important updates about our company, including a new temporary $299 minimum order, as well as the overall state of the industry.
Over the last few weeks, we have seen record order volume, with yesterday being our largest sales day of all time. We are on pace for another record day today. As a business, we are doing everything we can to keep up, but with a 3-7x increase in order volume, we are unable to answer our phones and ship orders as quickly as usual. You can expect temporary shipping delays of 15+ business days while we scale up our operations to satisfy this unprecedented level of demand.
Please note this does not impact your orders in any other way. All orders are locked in upon placement, and as always, customers can place orders online 24/7 as well as see their latest status updates in the My Account area of our website. For order status updates, we ask that you first check the website to keep our phone queues as reasonable as possible.
The increase in demand is also beginning to strain supply chains, with the US Mint announcing yesterday that American Silver Eagles have temporarily sold out. We expect to see ripple effects at other suppliers and mints in the coming weeks. As always, everything listed as “in stock” on our website is inventory under our control and ready to ship. For items listed as “presale,” we have firm orders placed and shipments incoming.
What are we doing about it?
This week, we’re adding new hires to significantly expand our customer service and sales teams, as well as adding a 2nd shift at our distribution center. All company divisions have authorized overtime for the past two weeks and will continue to do so moving forward, including weekends as needed.
That being said, we simply cannot ship the orders as fast as we’d like, and have decided to make a temporary change to our order policies. Effective today, we are implementing a $299 minimum order threshold. All orders above the $299 threshold will continue to ship free.
Please understand we did not take this decision lightly, but felt this was a better alternative to more aggressive approaches such as stopping accepting orders altogether.
We understand the importance of customers being able to lock in pricing during highly volatile times, and will do everything we can to continue providing the highest level of customer satisfaction. We want to stress this is a temporary measure and will only last until our shipping times normalize.
Lastly, we’re closely monitoring the impact of the Coronavirus and taking steps to prepare our business and protect our employees, should the spread worsen. All critical business systems are cloud-based, allowing employees to work from home and avoid widespread service disruptions in a worst-case scenario.
As always, we thank you for your business, and greatly appreciate your patience during this time.
