Oxford Gold Group Review

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Oxford Gold Group (OGG) is an online-based precious metal retailer. The company claims to facilitate precious metal shipping to your doorstep and that it can support you in creating your IRA account or rolling over. What’s more, if you’re looking to diversify your retirement investment portfolio, the company claims that it can play a critical role by providing you with the alternatives you need.

But before you trust them with your investment, it's important to carry out some background research on them. And that's exactly what we'll do in this Oxford Gold Group review.

As it turns out, even though the company may look perfect at a glance, a closer look at its services reveals some dodgy marketing tactics as well as a potentially dubious past. Stick around to find out more.

An Overview of Oxford Gold Group

The company is relatively a new-kid-on-the-block (by Gold IRA company standards that is). Its online records suggest that it was founded in 2017. So, they’ve been around for barely 5 years. They are currently based in Beverly Hills, California and a quick search on Linkedin reveals that Patrick Granfar is their president.

Suspiciously, Oxford Gold Group fails to provide a full list of its membership or even ownership structure on its website. This is uncharacteristic of a company that expects to attract unconditional trust.

The Los Angeles-based precious metals company markets itself as the go-to vendor for high-quality gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. It also runs a "Learning Center" through which you can sharpen your knowledge of precious metal investment, for free.

Who Really Owns the Oxford Gold Group?

The ownership structure of this company isn’t exactly clear. Ironically, their “About” page does not specify who they really and a list of their team members is conspicuously missing.

The only name we could link to this company is that of Patrick Granfar who we believe is the President of the Oxford Gold Group as per his Linkedin page. Mr. Granfar was formerly a senior accounts executive at Augusta Precious Metals. He allegedly holds a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from the University of California in LA.

Everything seems normal about his Linkedin profile until you bump on the fact that he previously worked for Lear Capital, a company that is currently facing multiple lawsuits and even filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2022.

Could it be that Mr. Granfar learned from the best? Your guess is as good as mine.

How It Works

So, let’s say you are still comfortable working with the Oxford Gold Group and want to go ahead and place your order. How do you go about it? Well, here’s a breakdown.

1. Go to the Products section of their website. A drop-down menu will appear showing you the different kinds of products they have on sale, click on your preferred choice.
2. Let’s say you click on Gold Bars and Coins here you will find multiple coins and bars on sale ranging from the Canadian Polar Bear to the North American Bald Eagle.
3. Clicking on your product of choice will lead you to a page with more details about it even declaring where the product was minted, item number, etc. Look out for a contact form next to the product.
4. Fill in your details i.e. Name, Email, and Phone number. The company will get back in touch with you to discuss your order.

What Products Does the Oxford Gold Group Deal In?

The company claims to offer the following services to its customers.

1. Precious Metals IRA

Apparently, the company can help you set up a precious metal IRA account and even manage it for you. Granted, precious metal IRA accounts are not always the easiest ones to set up.

So, if you’re looking to diversify your investment portfolio but are not sure how to go about it, the services offered by OGG might come in handy.

2. Wide Range of Bars & Coins

If you are looking to purchase precious metals and either store them somewhere or have them shipped home, this company might be worth considering. They claim to have metals like gold, platinum, silver, and palladium in their inventory.

Also, their online list of products suggests that they possess coins from USA, the UK, Australia, and even Canada.

Unfortunately, they don't specify product prices and you have to fill out their contact form for them to get in touch with you. And to make the matters worse, they don’t have a way to determine which coins and bars and in stock and which ones are out of stock.

3. Shipping

If you would rather keep your precious metals in your safe or ship them yourself to your preferred depository, then you'll want to have them shipped to you. So, how does OGG handle this?

Apparently, they work with companies that provide insured shipping. This ensures that your product is delivered to you directly (you don't want to find your gold coins dumped on your doorstep!). The only thing is, you have to give them 5 business days to ship. Well, we don't know about you but that sounds exceptionally long to us – in this day and age.

4. Learning Center

The company seems to lay great emphasis on learning – that’s really good for them to do. They have got tons of videos and blog articles that you can refer to. What’s more, they have an exclusive eBook that you can apply for and they’ll email it to you.

This can be a nice place to start if you are looking to learn without investing but it is also important to be aware that the content is written by people who deep down inside want to sell you something.

Minimum Investment & Fees

Well, this precious metals dealer isn't the cheapest. After all, they position themselves as a premium seller so it's no surprise that they also place a premium tag on their products.

If you’re looking to start a Gold IRA investment under their support, you’ll have to part with a minimum investment of $7,500. But if you simply want to buy gold and have it shipped to your home, then you’re required to stake a minimum of $1,500.

Besides that, you'll need to part with an annual fee of $325 for the first year. This then drops to $180 for each year thereafter.

Some Red Flags About the Oxford Gold Group

While they are not exactly pathetic, the people behind this brand seem dodgy. If anything, they engage in suspicious marketing practices as we’ll break it down for you in the next few paragraphs.

Fake Reviews

We can say without a doubt that this company does indeed post fake reviews even on various “independent” platforms out there. The fake reviews are meant to deceive consumers that the service is perfect.

One characteristic of fake reviews is that they sound salesy or unbelievably praise-worthy of the company involved. And that is exactly what we see when we look at the Oxford Gold Group reviews.

Naturally, you expect to find a small group of disgruntled individuals posting something negative about the company. That’s because there is nothing like a perfect company out there. Even Amazon and Google have their fair share of criticism.

For a nondescript company like Oxford Gold Group to attract nothing but 5-star reviews points to a huge possibility that they are buying positive reviews and suppressing negative ones.

The Use of Stock Images

Yup, you read that right. Despite this company positioning itself as a reliable and trustworthy precious metal vendor, they go ahead and use stock images on most parts of their website.

For example, their “about us” page has an alleged image of a Mr. Sean W next to an overwhelmingly positive testimonial obviously meant to help drive up the sales. We did a reverse search of this image only to realize that it is a stock image used by tens of other websites out there.

A coincidence perhaps? We’d say, if it quacks liked a duck, walks like a duck, then it surely is a duck.

Dodgy Disclaimer

Dubious companies always tend to use shady tactics to protect themselves from liability. And that seems to be the case even with the Oxford Gold Group. Their Risk Disclosure says it all.

An excerpt of it reads “Oxford is not…a financial adviser and does not provide any investment, tax, or legal advice.”

That simple, generic statement protects them from a lot of liability claims should things fail to work.

It’s not unusual for this to happen even in the professional world. For instance, in the medical field, some shady plastic surgeons use dodgy risk disclosures to avoid legal trouble in case of botched procedures.

So, always read the fine print. And if you do so, you’ll realize that you are better off working with a registered investment adviser first before you take Oxford’s word for the gospel truth.

Only if your licensed investment adviser endorses them should you go ahead and trust them with your money.

Suspicious A+ Rating on BBB

If you have ever run a company, then you know just how difficult it is to genuinely an A+ rating on BBB. But did you also know that it’s possible to purchase this kind of accreditation?

It’s just the same way fishy companies end up getting awards and mentions. You pay an annual fee to BBB and they give you an A+ because after all, they also need to make money and survive.

This bad practice has become so rampant that even CNN Money talked about it showing that most of the companies involved in fraud tend to have A+ ratings on BBB.

What's more, such an accreditation also gives such companies the impunity to remove any complaints posted on their profile by simply marking them as fake.