Orion Metal Exchange is a shady precious metals dealer that doesn’t care about its clients. I don’t advise doing business with that enterprise. This Orion Metal Exchange review will point out the red flags and help you understand why you should avoid them.
Here’s a quick summary:
Orion Metal Exchange has seemingly suspicious positive ratings, and has terrible customer service. Due to these reasons, I don’t suggest working with them.
My Friend’s Experience with Orion Metal Exchange
One of my close friends had decided to invest in precious metals and so, they started looking for a dealer. They were looking for an expert too because they didn’t know much about IRA investments.
My friend’s parents had bought precious metal coins (not mentioning the metal because of privacy reasons) from Orion and after their death, my friend decided to sell them to OME.
However, the people at Orion Metal Exchange, flat out refused to purchase the same coins they had sold to their parents. They tried to convince the people at OME multiple times but they didn’t budge.
What kind of a precious metals dealer doesn’t buy back its own products? It made it clear to them that the people at Orion Metal Exchange don’t care about their clients at all. They are only focused on selling their coins as fast as they can.
Orion Metal Exchange refuses to buy back its own coins. It doesn’t care about its clients and my friend’s experience made it clear to me.
Things didn’t end there. Because they had contacted OME, they must have entered their cold-calling list.
The people from OME have been contacting them to buy coins ever since.
On a side note, my friend has started learning more about IRA and personal finance after what happened to them with Orion Metal Exchange.
Their experience was eye-opening. Before that, I had only heard great things about this dealer. After hearing about all this, I did some research on those guys and wrote this review.
Why Orion Metal Exchange Reviews Are Suspicious
You would think a service provider with 5-star reviews everywhere would provide great services. However, that’s not always the case.
My friend’s poor experience with OME shocked me and made me realise that not every business with a near-perfect rating is legit. I did some research on these people and here are some reasons why their positive reviews are so suspicious:
No Online Presence
Even though they have a ton of reviews on their online profiles, their online presence is quite limited.
It is quite surprising because businesses tend to have a strong online presence. Businesses focus on social media and other online platforms to raise awareness about their services.
When you’d visit Orion Metal Exchange’s website, you’d notice that they don’t mention any social media profiles. They only market and showcase links of platforms where they can manipulate and play around with fake positive reviews.
Again, if they didn’t have 100s of customer reviews on various platforms, it would have seemed like a useless question.
But companies with so many positive reviews get there through strong social media presence and reputation. It doesn’t happen magically.
On top of that, OME doesn’t have a good website too. They don’t provide much information about their operations, the people behind the company or anything else. I have discussed the website in more detail in the next section.
The absence of social media profiles raises suspicion against Orion Metal Exchange online reviews. It is highly unlikely for a business to have a 100s positive reviews without any online presence. Due to this, the credibility of its nearly-perfect ratings get in question.
Dodgy Website
Orion Metal Exchange doesn’t give much information to its potential customers on its website. This is a huge red flag because trustworthy companies don’t need to hide anything from their potential clients.
In fact, modern businesses focus heavily on being transparent with their potential clients. According to a study, 94% of customers are loyal to a brand with proper transparency. So you can understand how important transparency is.
But Orion Metal Exchange doesn’t care about that. It provides little to no information about its operations and the people behind it.
For example, check the ‘Meet The Orion Metal Exchange Team’ section of OME’s ‘About’ page:
As you can see, they haven’t provided any names or any information on the people who run this team. It is misleading.
This section is full of fluff (text that doesn’t tell you anything). It is nonsensical and gives zero information on their team. Apart from offering valuable information, they praise themselves.
Another thing I noted is the final line of this section. Notice it says ‘Learn more about our team’. It doesn’t mean anything. What are they implying when they say ‘Learn more about our team’?
Either the people at Orion Metal Exchange don’t know how to convey information or don’t care about their website’s content.
The latter seems more probable. It’s obvious that ORE doesn’t care about the people who visit its website. They haven’t put much effort into convincing website’s visitors into buying from them. At least the effort hasn’t been ethical.
Their lack of online transparency is a huge red flag and shows how little effort they have put into their online presence. If they aren’t transparent enough to invoke trust, how can they have 100s of positive customer reviews? Seems highly improbable.
Shady Presence on Trustpilot
Orion Metal Exchange boasts of having a nearly perfect rating on Trustpilot. They pat themselves on their backs for having this feat. But a near-perfect rating on Trustpilot isn’t necessarily a result of good business practices.
Here are the two main reasons why ORE’s presence on Trustpilot seems suspicious:
Paid Profile:
The first indicator of why Orion Metal Exchange has a fake rating on Trustpilot is that it uses a paid profile:
Trustpilot has a “freemium” business model where it offers its services for free to everyone. However, it also has paid services and those who opt for them get additional benefits.
While a freemium business model seems great on paper, Trustpilot is notorious for using it to fuel reviews and misleading content on its site. This Is Money, a prominent UK publication, investigated Trustpilot’s paid profiles and their relation with their paid services.
They discovered that businesses that avail paid services from Trustpilot have fewer negative reviews for various reasons. Trustpilot is notorious for making it easier for paid customers to manipulate their review pages.
Seemingly Fake Reviews:
Another prominent reason why Orion Metal Exchange’s near-perfect positive rating on Trustpilot seems shady is the nature of its positive reviews.
Fake reviews are a major issue currently. To identify fake reviews, you should check the following things:
- Does the review give a perfect rating?
- Has the reviewer given more reviews on the platform?
- How detailed is the 5-star review?
If there are many 5-star reviews with no ‘Verified’ mark, it indicates that most of the reviews are fake. Below the name of every reviewer, Trustpilot shows the number of total reviews that user has posted there.
If the number is one or two, it shows that the person created an account only to post a 5-star review on that business.
On the Trustpilot page of Orion Metal Exchange, you can see that most of the reviews are from accounts with no other reviews:
It puts the legitimacy of OME’s Trustpilot rating in question.
Orion Metal Exchange’s online reviews seem fake as the reviewers have only posted 1 or 2 reviews on those platforms, provide nearly zero details, and are in a huge quantity. They seem suspicious.
Apart from that, you should also know that there are many people who “sell” Trustpilot:
So getting fake 5-star reviews on Trustpilot isn’t difficult. You should know this, because Orion Metal Exchange’s rating is nearly perfect.
Affiliate’s Orion Metal Exchange Review
A prominent review on Orion Metal Exchange is on an investment advice site. The article praises OME and claims it’s a great bullion coin provider.
But the reviewer is an affiliate. Affiliates earn money when you click on a certain link present on their website. They get money for recommending you the partner’s product or service.
Affiliate reviews are biased because they make money when you click on their suggested product. It’s a legitimate business model but there’s a big problem.
Many affiliates make their reviews seem like they are from unbiased people, when they are clearly not.
Affiliate reviews hide their truth in fine print to avoid any legal trouble. For example, here’s a snippet of the affiliate review on Orion Metal Exchange:
Unless a person reads this, they would think the article is completely unbiased and gives honest recommendations. Just notice how they have given a flawless rating to OME.
It would be counterproductive for them not to give a positive rating.
In my opinion, it’s certainly unethical for both RetirementLiving and Orion Metal Exchange to resort to such strategies. It begs the question, “Why does Orion Metal Exchange need to use such unethical methods to promote its business?”
About Orion Metal Exchange
Orion Metal Exchange is a precious metals IRA dealer. They are a PCGS (Professional Coin Grading Service) Authorized Dealer and offer additional services such as grading accuracy and authenticity. They are based in Los Angeles, California. Their address is 12301 Wilshire Blvd #412, Los Angeles, CA, 90025.
They have plenty of user reviews online as we have discussed earlier. Orion Metal Exchange claims to offer personalized services by assigning experienced account representatives to their clients.
Some of the information they claim to provide their clients with include precious metal news, spot pricing, and economic events. OME claims to have more than 50 years of industry experience.
While trying to find information on this firm, I faced a lot of difficulty. That’s because this company doesn’t have a strong online presence, as we have discussed already.
Orion Metal Exchange doesn’t have a setup fee for IRA. It sells gold, silver, palladium, and platinum. They offer three storage options to customers: IRA, Secure Vault, Home Storage.
Reasons Why You Should Avoid Orion Metal Exchange:
Apart from the various shady qualities I pointed out before, here are some additional reasons why you shouldn’t do business with Orion Metal Exchange:
Gold is Not a Good IRA Choice
Not only gold, but any other precious metal is also a bad choice for your IRA. Gold, silver are types of currency. They don’t generate income or increase in value like a stock does. The only reason why their value increases is because of long-term inflation.
Gold’s biggest advantage is its liquidity. If you need money, you can sell gold quickly and get the required sum.
However, by law you must keep the IRA in the possession of a custodian (someone else) so possessing gold in your IRA removes its primary advantage.
Another issue with gold is that many gold coins are classified as collectibles. And the tax code prohibits an IRA holder from investing in collectibles, life insurance, and an S-corporation’s stock.
It’s quite confusing because some gold coins are permissible but some aren’t. Clearly, buying precious metals for your IRA has plenty of disadvantages when you consider these points.
Plenty of Alternatives:
Instead of investing in precious metals and bullion coins, you should invest in something that would generate income while increasing in value with time. You can invest in ETFs, buy stocks, or invest in mutual funds.
Not only would they give you more returns but would generate income too. You can invest in precious metal ETFs if you’re interested in buying precious metals.
In any case, you don’t have to buy bullion coins. They aren’t worth your money. And they are certainly not a good investment.
Orion Metal Exchange Review: Conclusion
I don’t recommend working with the Orion Metal Exchange. Their online reviews are suspicious and they use unethical practices to promote their business. It would be best to avoid them.
Apart from those things, it would be best to avoid owning physical gold (or any other precious metal). There are better alternatives available which would generate you an income while increasing in value.
Considering how shady Orion Metal Exchange is, I wouldn’t advise doing business with them. You should avoid working with those people.
