O O Ø O O O O
An Experience at Scotiabank’s Bullion Desk
Scotiabank Head Office
44 King St West
Toronto ON
M5H 1H1
To whom it may concern:
Over the past several years I have been saving some money for the purpose of purchasing some pottery. I recently decided that the smallish bills gradually accumulating in their unspecified location in my sock drawer were a pretty bad store of value, considering the length of time it was taking me to stash money away, and my inaction in actually buying the pot. I decided to turn the cash into something that would preserve value over time, namely ounces of silver.
One fine Tuesday afternoon past, I made a jaunty trip along Second Street to your downtown Bank of Nova Scotia—Canada’s (self-appointed) Bullion Bank—where I knew there was a bullion counter.
After a hardly insignificant wait in front of the sneeze-proof glass shield, I was attended to by a man in his early twenties. I asked to buy a quantity of silver bars, which, after confirmation and negotiation over what form factors of silver he had in stock, I changed to single silver ounces.
Twentysomething man futzed in the back for a while, and conferred with the other twentysomething man I normally see working at the counter. Eventually, he pulled out the carbon form, requested two pieces of ID and fumbled a portion of the ounces I requested onto the counter. He then quoted me a price for them fully $2.60 per ounce higher than the price posted on the digital board behind his head, which brought the price of an ounce of bullion to the same approximate price as a Canadian Silver Maple Leaf Coin.
I stopped him in mid calculation, and demanded to know why the price was so off kelter.
“That was this morning’s price. The price is updated every thirty seconds.”
“You mean to tell me that silver jumped $2.60 this morning?“
“Yes. That’s the market price.”
“(Unbelieving) Okay, I’ll wait until that corrects itself later in the week. (While departing.) Out of curiosity, what is the current price of Silver Leafs?”
After some quiet fumbling, twentysomething man told me $21.70, just fifty cents higher than the price of the bullion.
“Pardon me? What happened to the spread between bullion and coins?”
“Those are just the market prices that are constantly updated.”
(Other twentysomething man from behind his desk.) “That’s just the price.”
“Then sell me the coins instead, if you’re discounting them that much.”
And he did. I bought a lesser quantity of the Silver Maple Leafs (because of their price premium). Directly I returned to work, I looked up the spot price of silver on the Kitco website, and without surprise discovered that there was no spectacular movement in the price of silver that morning.
So why am I writing this?
Kind Scotiabank people, I have two recommendations.
First, advise your staff not to roll their eyes and exchange knowing glances with each other when a customer is at their teller, asking pertinent and justifiable questions.
Second, if you are serious about being Canada’s bullion bank, and you must staff your precious metals counters with boobs, please ensure the boobs know something about the bullion they are selling.
Evan Spence
April 22, 2008
OOØOOOODCCCLXX
April 25th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Man that is just insulting. Are you planning on calling or writing to the Bank Manager on this one? I’m surprised this isn’t such a letter?