I read a lot of great reviews on Trustpilot which is why I chose Goldco. My experience could be unique, though I can corroborate what the bad reviews are saying. A word of caution if you're shopping for a precious metals IRA--take some time to understand the role of the Broker (Goldco), Custodian, and Depository. If you understand this, it's not as complicated as they make it seem. I'm ended up cutting out the middleman because I'm comfortable with doing my own research, asking questions, selected a fantastic custodian, and love to shop for my own metals. Now, let's get into why I ditched Goldco:

1) They advertised a 10% back in Silver but they don't tell you much. You have to really probe to understand the deal. They won't put the details in writing but my guy finally told me that it would get the 10% back in "premium" silver, aka, way over spot silver. More on "premium" silver below.

2) Goldco made setting up the IRA easy enough but it takes multiples calls to make it happen. The custodian could have done my IRA rollover on the spot, in one call. However, by going through Goldco, you also have to sign a contract with them (no big deal, but why bother with a contract when you should be able to buy from any broker or dealer that you choose). The bigger problem is that we had to name them as an authorized party to the IRA account. That gives the access to the account. No worries, it was easy enough to have the Custodian remove Goldco from the account.

3) OMG, call after call after call just to try to understand what they were trying to sell me, which was a bunch of overpriced "premium" silver. They want me to trust that their silver can be re-sold at much higher prices in the future, meanwhile I see some of it online dealers at half price. Basically, they are selling you product that is front-loaded with large premiums saying that "basic" Silver Eagles/Maples suck. Keep in mind that the only thing you can be assured when selling back your silver is that you'll get something close to spot, plus or minus. Consider the premiums sunk transactional fees. So minimize your fees to the extent the metals you're buying are IRA eligible. They'll also tell you that you could make huge mistakes by buy ineligible metals that will ruin you with taxes. You could, but it's not as complicated and scary as they want you to believe. Anyway, when doing the math, I would get half the number of ounces buying their stuff over Silver Eagles (which I know are more expensive than usual because of the shortage). But imaging buying 500 of their coins front-loaded with premiums with no guarantee you'll get the premiums back vs getting 1,000 ounces of Silver Eagles. Remember don't bet on anything much higher than spot selling back, so why pay the front-load on "premium" coins?

Oh, and btw, I didn't even want to buy silver. They kept pushing and pushing. I wanted gold. Goldco has to check on the prices for you while other brokers advertise their prices online or gladly give you a pricelist if asked--I checked, and they do! Goldco's prices were not as competitive on the gold pieces that I wanted and they seem reluctant to want to sell them to me anyway. Remember I mentioned the many calls at the beginning. I'm still pretty miffed because the process was like going to the car dealership except it took two weeks. In that time, I missed the opportunity to buy on the dips. Can you imagine every time there were dips and you had to get your broker on the line and wait for them to check on prices for things they don't want you to buy? That was basically what did it for me.

4) For those who have experience buying metals, you know how to get deals. For those who haven't bought metals, I encourage you to try making a small purchase with cash on hand from one of the online dealers. I use 7 different dealers and they are all great! Research and ask questions. There's a great YouTube community too. I bought my gold for way less!