Just Got A Shipment From Provident

Depends how you paid them, Ed. If you pay by personal check it takes Provident close to forever to process your order, when they have your PMs and your money. I used to send them cashier's checks from my bank, that ended after the bank wanted to charge the same as the wire fee, $15.00 per transaction, and also noted that Provident would kinda sorta treat it as a personal check. The easiest solution was to merely buy and send a USPS money order, and if the order was for more than $1,000, I would spread the funds over a couple of money orders, and never had a wait issue ever again. I do think they put orders paid by check on the back burner, and it CAN be forgotten if they are short staffed due to the holidays.

Good show, Ed. I'm closing in on 500 oz., after about 20 years of buying various silver products from most of big players.

I had the same problem Ed. It was strange very strange. Normally I receive my order 5 days after I ordered. It went a few weeks and nothing, so I sent a email asking if there were problems with my order. No reply but I received my order 5 days later.

I never got an email from them or even a tracking order, my status on line showed processing.

I too have been thinking over the issue. It is enough to make me think twice prior to ordering from them again.

It is weird I was going to post something but said maybe it was just me and a one time blip.

For the record I paid by CC.

If that was the case which I do not believe it was then I would be done with them for not listing it as sold out.

782 ounces...wow!

Surely they would not sell any silver they don't have in house yet, as that could be a dangerous game....

Seems like the Hunt brothers an company had issues late with silver in the early 80's, via new regulations which made it impossible for them to fill orders they had promised....

And that lead to one massive price drop, via only being able to sell 5 units to a guy who you promised 100 so the rest had to be sold elsewhere at less an less. The market floods, the price plummets....

Do I think this happens at Provident, no surely they no better an were backed up with orders a good thing....

And they often are out of items, and if they were sellin what they did not have yet, why ever list it as out?

Yes, it did turn out OK in the end. I never thought that there was anything dishonest going on. Provident has a good rep. I'm thinking that maybe they are victims of their own success and are having some troubles with excessive growth. If so, they would not be the first business to have "growing pains". If this is the problem, I sure do hope that they can get it resolved so that their customers get better service than I got this time.



Lol... yeah, well maybe. On the other hand, I am not fooling myself into thinking that they consider me a BIG customer or anything. I probably do buy a little more than average but not like tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth.



Yes, I know that it takes extra time to get a shipment when paying by check. I always pay by check, unless I am shopping at SilverTowne, where CCs are not charged extra fees on the bars that I like. My recent experience was longer than usual when paying by check. This is my 4th or so order from Provident, so I am comparing this most recent shipment to the earlier ones. Personally, I do not know why they cannot vet their customer better and ship immediately upon my check clearing my bank... which it will. Haven't bounced a check in 40+ years and the one time that I did was because my bank mistakenly put a deposit into my savings account instead of my checking account, as I had asked them to do.



That's a great point. I hadn't done that but did upon reading your message. Nope, no email from Provident in the spam or trash boxes.



Yes, that's what happened to me too. Oddly, though, my previous orders with them were quite a bit faster and there was good comm all though the buying and shipping process. This time... nada. When I sent them the email, my order had been showing "processing" for 4 days. I asked them if they could "do less processing and more shipping". No reply but they sure got the order out in a hurry after that!



Did you pay for your order via personal check? If not, then that might be why you got your shipment a week before I did. Even if it was late, at least they sent you an email about it.



Indeed it would. Provident seems to be pretty good about showing what is and what is not currently in stock. The 2012 silver Maples that I bought showed as "in stock" when I ordered them and, as of yesterday, they still showed that on their web site. One of my few gripes about Provident is that quite a few of the things that interest me are "out of stock" quite often. I can see where it could be difficult for them to stay stocked but they really should work harder on that. If they do not have what I want, it is more likely that I will shop elsewhere, rather than wait for them to get restocked.

I know you have not gotten all 780 oz. via Prov, but if you bought every oz. at 35 each, that would be about 27,300 big ones. You are right, there are probably real big fish out there that buy the gold kilo bars, but hey all business is important in my estimation from big dawg gold kilo bar guy/gal, to the little one oz. bottom of the barrel silver bar guy/gal, via myself is important....

And if 25% of that money invested went to Provident, or somewhere close to it, then yeah that is big money in my mind. Like you say, don't restock, take the customers for granite, and loose them to someone else, as there is no shortage of competition to say the least in this ol world....

I always have Provident's back most of the time, as I like there sight. What little I bought from them they shipped very timely....

I DO NOT like the fact that it appears they only accept CC or money order an not pay-pal, and the empty shelves would be my biggest gripe....