Northwest Territorial Mint, Ross Hansen, Joseph Beitey Took my money, failed to deliver, refused repeated refund requests. Auburn Washington

I paid in full for an order of silver from Northwest Territorial Mint (NWTM) on 07-17-08. The sales person, Allan Snell, wrote on the order "8 -- 10 wks out" and told me that eight to ten weeks is how long it would take for the silver to be shipped to me. 16 weeks passed, during which I was not contacted by NWTM in any way and at that time I wrote a letter to NWTM on 11-10-08 stating that they were in violation of the Consent Decree they signed with the Attorney General's office on 02/06/08, as well as the Terms and Conditions clearly spell out as a part of the sales agreement and that per those terms they must now refund the money I paid them, and that I would no longer accept delivery of their product.

I received a letter in response, dated 11-18-08 from a Mr. Beitey, General Counsel for NWTM alleging a lot of nonsense and miscalculation of dates and stating that I could now pick up my order and that they were refusing to refund my money.

I responded to this letter with my letter of 11-25-08 addressing it point by point and demanding once again that they refund my money as per their agreement with your office.

I have now received a letter from them dated 12-4-08 stating that I "have no basis to be demanding the refund" and refusing to issue such.

The Consent Decree they signed with the Attorney General's office: http://www.atg.wa.gov/uploadedFiles/Home/News/Press_Releases/2008/ConsentDecree091808.pdf states in section 3.3a in sum, that if Defendants explicitly state they will ship an order within a specified number of days they must do so unless they notify their customer no later than that number of days that they cannot deliver the goods and offer the customer the option to buy back their order at the then spot-market price or give them the option of waiting another 30 days. NWTM failed to do this in my case, as we had no contact via mail or phone prior to my letter to them of 11-10-08.

Section 3.3g states in sum that if the Defendants fail to make the above offer by the time their stated shipping date expires and do not deliver the order by that time then they must pay to the customer either the original purchase price or the spot market price for the order on the last day of the expected delivery date, whichever is higher. I have demanded my original purchase price, as this is the higher figure, and they have twice now explicitly refused this request.

Section 3.4 requires that NWTM include the following disclosures clearly and conspicuously in their relations with their customers: "... if we can't ship your goods by the date we've promised we'll contact you and give you the option of continuing to wait up to an additional 30 days for your order. If we can't deliver after that period then we'll buy back your order at either the price you paid or the prevailing market price, whichever is higher." This is the agreement I had with them, clearly posted in their own Terms and Conditions, available at http://bullion.nwtmint.com/buyingbullion.php but a full 12 weeks had passed and they failed in their duty to contact me and failed in their duty to make me an offer to buy back the order and then another 30 days passed and they failed to make delivery during that time or contact me in any way and now they are refusing to buy back my order at the price I paid, being higher than the prevailing market price despite my repeated requests that they do so. Instead, they deluge me with baseless arguments, such as how I am in "breach of (my) duty" to call them, via a sales agreement created out of whole cloth and having nothing to do with the actual Terms and Conditions of the written agreement and that I am engaged in "extortion" (as per their letter of 11-19-08) and "felonious efforts" to make them return my funds. They claim they were "hindered" in their efforts to call me because they had a message phone instead of my home phone, though I returned both of their calls promply and they only called me after failing to make any contact or delivery inside four months. Now, five months later, while they can buy cheap, after silver has been on a roller-coaster price ride, they offer to deliver.

In short, these people are crooks, and were successfully sued by the WA Attorney General's Office for exactly this conduct. Unfortunantly, the AG's Office does not act in response to individual complaints, and surely I am not the only victim of their continuing unfair business practices, so I encourage anyone else cheated by these people to act now.

Madashell
Seattle, Washington
U.S.A.