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For many, securing a profitable return on investments and retirement plans is a top priority. Navigating this path, however, can be daunting for those striving to make sound financial decisions for a stable future.
One critical aspect of this endeavor is selecting the right vendor to support and manage your financial interests. The key question becomes: How do you identify the best partner for your financial needs?
We are here to guide you through this process by providing comprehensive reviews of financial firms.
In this article, we present our detailed review of GoldStar Precious Metals IRA, offering insights to help you make an informed decision.
Before we get started, investing your savings is a serious task. When it comes to adding precious metals to your portfolio, how do you know which companies to trust?
That is why we have researched every company in the industry and selected the very few with the highest customer service standards.
This way you can easily compare the best companies in the business, and choose one that fits your needs and investment goals.
Read the list to see if Goldstar passed our strict customer service standards to become one of our top recommendations.
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About GoldStar Trust
GoldStar Trust is extremely upfront with who they are and what they do. If you are interested in buying and selling gold for investment or collection purposes, you are on the wrong website.
However, as additional pages on their website make extremely clear, the company provides a vast, vast array of financial products and education that helps differentiate them from the rest of the vendors that are involved in this area.
An About Us page gives additional information about who the company is and why you should consider doing business with them. They have been in operation since 1989, manage over $3 billion in assets, and provide services to over 60,000 customers and institutions. There is also a long history of the company, as well as contact information for the highest-ranking officers of the business.
In other words, the company is very transparent about who they are, what their business philosophy is, and why you should do business with them. This should help any customer who is interested in gaining access to the company and getting a better understanding of why they would consider investing their money with GoldStar.
Services Provided
The most obvious function that GoldStar Precious Metals IRA operates is a self-directed IRA. This allows interested individuals to invest their money in an area that meets their financial needs, thus ensuring that they can invest in precious metals and prepare for their retirement.
The self-directed nature of the IRA means that investors can choose how much money to invest and what to invest in. However, GoldStar does have staff available to help guide these decisions.
That being said, GoldStar also offers services to individuals and institutional investors that extend well beyond traditional services. These opportunities include investing in privately held investments and real estate investment trusts (REITs). This obviously extends beyond the traditional area of precious metal IRAs, but it does help to diversify the type of holdings in which an individual can invest.
Things get much more focused with some of GoldStar's additional investment areas. For example, churches can use GoldStar to invest in Church bonds. These bonds allow churches to get access to financing that they can use to renovate their facilities.
Individuals can invest in these bonds and help to fund the expansion of religious facilities that they believe in. At the same time, they can potentially earn an attractive rate of return on their investment.
Finally, GoldStar also offers Crowdfunding options. This allows individuals to invest in business startups or projects that are looking for equity or investment. These types of investments are unquestionably riskier and much be approached more cautiously.
However, depending on the investment itself, they do offer an attractive rate of return. Businesses can use crowdfunding to access equity that they would not otherwise be able to get.
Resources Provided
GoldStar offers an entire "education" tab that lays out information about the various types of investments you can make through the company. Their educational resources are roughly broken into type sections: Investment Types and Investor Awareness.
Clicking on the various questions in each tab reveals questions you should ask yourself and some generalized information on each type of investment. It's not the best education section we've seen, but it's certainly not the worst.
Scrolling further down reveals a bit more information, including questions to ask yourself before/after you invest, as well as general investment questions. To their credit, these sections seem more generalized towards building awareness about what is a good investment and what isn't, not necessarily towards selling GoldStar products.
This section is clearly meant to not only build awareness about what each investment offering provides but also to ensure that individuals know how to avoid a scam investment. The fact that GoldStar is trying to help investors achieve this level of comfort shows that they are very comfortable with the products they offer meeting these criteria.
Unfortunately, the resource section is lacking to an extent. For example, it's worth noting that there is a variety of information that we typically see in a well-structured previous metal vendor that isn't here. This includes news, price charts, blogs, and more.
There are sometimes instructional videos, instead of text, that you have to click on to access. This isn't the end of the world, but it is worth noting that the resource section is a bit thin.
If you have questions about the company or the services they provide, a contact form and phone number are listed. However, there doesn't appear to be a separate way that you can contact the company if you are an already existing customer unless there is an online portal that we cannot access as a non-customer.
Our Rating
Advantages
Many things about GoldStar are very positive.
First, the overall messaging of the site is extremely oriented towards ensuring that new customers are as comfortable as possible before making a purchase. The tone is objective, not sales-oriented, and even the material on their various products and services seems relatively toned down.
The education material, though somewhat sparse, seems like something you would find on a website that was geared toward educating individuals about various financial products, not just selling various retirement or financial investment opportunities.
There are also robust online options for individuals who want to do their financial business without talking to anyone. Everything from opening an account to making investments can be done via the Internet, and you never have to pick up the phone and call anyone.
Furthermore, GoldStar offers some financial products - like Church Bonds and Crowdfunding - that aren't available at any of the other websites we have visited.
While there may be some concerns about what they don't offer, it seems worth noting that the offerings on this website may go a long way towards helping people find new investment vehicles that achieve social and financial offerings.
Disadvantages
The same services that provide potential investors with more diversity may also present some investors with greater challenges and reasons not to do business with GoldStar. Yes, they clearly offer an array of different products and services.
However, that may cause some investors to think that the company isn't quite as focused on managing their precious metal IRA as others. Ultimately, it's up to each investor to determine what specifically they want and if this "distraction" is worth it.
Furthermore, individuals who are purely looking for the chance to invest in precious metals may be disappointed. After all, GoldStar does not offer individuals the chance to buy or sell precious metals outside of a traditional IRA.
Interested in buying specific precious metals? Unfortunately, we can't see what metals are available and what aren't. This creates a major challenge for individuals who want to buy certain products for their retirement accounts.
It seems worth noting that the website is a bit strange. You can usually see what a company wants you to click on by the layout of the various headers at the top of the page.
This page is formatted strangely in that it has a few sections - like "pay your fees" and "update your address" alongside major functions, like "open an account." The fact that you have to click certain text boxes to expand them is also somewhat strange.
Finally, the resource section is thin. It's awkwardly formatted, and while the information that is there is solid and objective, there are quite a few pieces of information that are not present. This is challenging to prospective buyers, particularly those who don't know what they are looking for in a precious metal investment.
Goldstar Reviews
You can often find out quite a bit of extra information on a company based on what people say - or don't say - about them.
Many companies lean heavily into reviews that have been made by outside customers, advertising them on their website and linking directly to places where you can read the happy reviews of other customers. GoldStar does not - in fact, they don't ever mention reviews or testimonials.
A quick review of the available reviews immediately reveals why. The reviews we found had the following scores:
The Yelp and Google reviews are two of the worst we've ever seen when reviewing precious metal websites. It is also worth noting that the complaints about the company were remarkably similar: There were issues with the timeliness of orders, slow customer service, major communication breakdowns, and more.
In some cases, people said that they simply could not access the precious metals that they had purchased and had not been able to connect with the company despite repeated attempts to do so.
What is interesting is that the TrustPilot review is much more positive. There are similar complaints to those left on Google and Yelp, but many more people are praising the customer service, expressing appreciation for a "transparent and open fee structure," and saying that they made IRA rollovers easy.
However, it is worth noting that 5 of the past six most recent customer reviews are at least somewhat negative, leaving open the possibility that something has changed within the business model.
Final Verdict
GoldStar has some very unique offerings that may appeal to individuals who are looking for alternative investments. However, there are far too many negatives here. The website is awkward, you can't see the types of precious metals you may want to buy, and they don't offer a solid level of customer resources when it comes to education.
The customer reviews placed are downright frightening, with some customers complaining of utter horror stories. The fact that the scores for Google or Yelp are among the lowest we have ever seen isn't increasing our comfort level with GoldStar.
In short, there are major problems with GoldStar. Yes, they may fit some unique business niches, but we can't recommend doing business with them.
There are much better options for precious metals investors that want to protect their savings with physical gold and silver IRA.
Remember to read out list of the Top Gold Companies to see if Goldstar Trust made the cut.
>> Click HERE to read our Best Precious Metals Investment Companies list <<
Or, if you like what you read about Goldstar Trust, you can visit their website below.
At Digital Financing Task Force, we provide research and analysis for people that want to take control of their financial future and protect the savings that they have.
