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Last week we noted that Ed McMahon and MC Hammer were featured in a Super Bowl ad for Cash4Gold, a Florida company. As Ed and MC demonstrated in the 30-second, $3 million spot (view this advertisement), all you have to do is send the company some gold jewelry, and a couple of weeks later (after deciding its “value”) they will send you a check in the amount of their offer. You can accept the offer by cashing the check. Or you can reject it, and the jewelry will be returned to you.
This arrangement would seem to reverse the old warning, caveat emptor (Let the buyer beware!). As we noted last week, the Cash4Gold offer looks like something the seller should view with a cold eye. Two odd events have now come to light that heighten our skepticism. They are reported by Bob Sullivan in the current edition of his Red Tape Chronicles at redtape.msnbc.com. First, it turns out that a few months ago a man named Brent Kutz actually did the experiment of getting his gold jewelry appraised by a pawnshop (it offered $180), then sending it instead to Cash4Gold (which offered $60). When Kutz called Cash4Gold and said he could get $180 elsewhere, they upped the offer to match that amount. (The company does not dispute this account.) Of course, at current prices above $900 an ounce, the “melt value” of the jewelry may well have been worth twice that much: not $180 but $360. The point here is simply that Cash4Gold’s offer was only one-third that of the pawnshop. In any case, Kutz then turned around and reported his experience to Rob Cockerham, a blogger who posts his thoughts on the Internet for all to see. (His blog may be found at www.cockeyed.com.) That brings us to the second half of the “scandal.” Once Cash4Gold decided to pay $100,000 a second for the 30-second Super Bowl spot, it apparently seemed like a good idea to ask Cockerham to remove his disparaging comments about the company. After all, why should they spend that kind of money, only to end up accidentally promoting local pawnshops? A couple of months before the Super Bowl, someone representing Cash4Gold contacted Cockerham and offered him a few thousand dollars to remove his critical comments. Cockerham refused the bribe. Instead, he added this new chapter to his blog, further “outing” Cash4Gold. His audience soared. His fame now straddles the globe (if only for 15 minutes). Does any of this mean Cash4Gold violated the law? Probably not. But it does suggest that you might want to get your own independent appraisal before sending any jewelry off to Florida.
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