> > The ethical way to deal with a situation like this is to return the > > exact amount of gold by weight to the customer, not the USD value. > > It depends. If someone sells their gold for a certain amount of USD, say for > a wire or check, and he later wants a refund, I think it is proper to deal > in USD. The gold was sold at the time of the order and you are now dealing > with dollars. > > If the order had been completed, that is the amount of dollars he would have > gotten. You wouldn't want customers canceling because the price of gold went > up and they wish they would have sold later. > > - John Kyle
Interesting point. Seems to me there is a technical side and a practical side to this matter and exchangers should look at both sides if they want to run their business ethically. Technically Sidd is correct and as an exchanger this seems like a good way to handle his business. Unfortunately, dealing with people means you're not just dealing with technicalities. In reality people are paying each other referencing a regular currency. If you buy any product from any of the companies listed in the e-gold directory, chances are you are paying US$ worth of gold and not a certain weight of gold. If you are exchanging you are dealing with people that mostly think in terms or US$ rather then grams of gold. If these people are your clients then from a business point of view it seems only smart to realize that and to take that into account when doing exchanges. What happens if I exchange e-gold to e-bullion? Normally an exchanger would simply exchange a weight of gold in one system for the same weight of gold in the other system less any fees, provided both systems use the same price of gold. Since both systems will almost anytime use about the same rate this isn't a problem. But what if the exchange takes 2 weeks and the price of gold drops significantly in that time? For a consumer that means he would be losing buying power. As far as I know most exchangers don't guarantee to do an exchange within a specific timeframe. An exchanger will just exchange the weight of gold and the consumer would have to eat a loss (in buying power) if the gold price dropped. Technically the exchanger is completely right to have done so. But fact is that if the exchanger would have exchanged it the same day the consumer wouldn't have to had take a loss in buying power. He could have bought another book or ordered an extra pizza. In fact, he might have been counting on that. So eventhough if an exchanger doesn't give a specific timeframe in which an exchange is carried out, it doesn't mean it makes it ethically right to return an amount lower then wat is 'reasonably' expected. The thing is that people usually make exchanges because they need the gold for something. And yes, probably because they want to make some sort of payment in US$ worth of gold. It is somewhat disappointing if they have to wait several days and then find they are getting less then they expected. Technically correct but it doesn't sound very ethical to me and in reality it sucks :) Just my two cents worth of gold. Remco --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
