Complaint Review: First Coin Company - Belmont California

Buyer beware!! Do not buy any coins from this company or Nick Karpov!! Has destroyed my business & made my life a living nightmare. Not exaggerating if say absolute worst business experience of lifetime!! Pre-ordered coins over 6 months ago. As soon as they take ur money the customer service ends. Will not respond to questions. All coin orders came over 2 months late. Shipped with cheapest method & overcharged for shipping. When finally received coins & capsules they were badly scratched & could not sell them. Even charged me to ship back damaged coins to exchange for new ones. Had to refund all sales & ruined my reputation & business.

Damage to business unrecoverable. Increased price on coins promised to me over 6 months ago. Left me to refund thousands of dollars to customers. Company makes fake COA's & boxes & sells them as official. No help at all when sent damaged coins & wouldn't respond to emails for 3 weeks. Sold coins promised to me to other customer when didn't respond within hours of email. Now, need to refund those purchases too! Still cleaning up mess! Over 6 months of undue stress of what should've been simple transaction. Worse than any worst case scenario I could've imagined. Takes no responsibility for any mistakes & makes me pay for them-literally! Have email trail mile long for anyone that wants to see. It would blow your mind with what I've had to put up with! Would do almost anything to go back in time & not have placed orders. Don't be a victim yourself!

I have personally gone through so much unnecessary stress because of the utter incompetence, lies, & broken promises. I sell coins on eBay & this guy has wrecked my account & made me look like I don't know what I'm doing to the customers I try my best to deal with integrity, accessibility, transparency & respect. I try to stand out in a sea of a marketplace filled with dishonest sellers & not having the coins delivered to me as promised or shipping me damaged coins which I had to issue refunds for & wait for this piece of garbage to send me them back almost ~2 months later. It's been over a month since I received the damaged coins & it took him 3 weeks to get back to me as I had customers waiting & nothing to tell them. Now, that he has the coins I'm told it will take another month to ship me back new coins.

I apologize if I'm repeating myself. But, I'm going into this in more detail to just show everything that has went on:

The latest twist came this week when I received an email from Nick Karpov after (I'm not kidding) maybe 50 emails asking whether I would be getting these coins at all. This new email explained that he would be increasing the price promised ~6 months ago by about $10 "because of currency rates". I don't know any business that can promise you something 6 months ago for an agreed upon price & then tell you that the price has changed. I know how much this guy pays for these coins & it's not more than about $37 or a little over $5 over spot value for 1 oz silver proof. Over a hundred dollars each wasn't good enough for him & raised the price so it was ~$115 per coin (with the boxes he made himself).

I Pre-sold these coins, expected at the beginning of January at the latest, to my customers & now have to refund all the money & hope I don't get negative feedback. All I do is try my best to be a reputable seller & make an honest living dealing with the ridiculous fees eBay charges. In order to do that I need big margins & if I need to sell these coins again after refunding the customers that have already purchased the coin over 2 months ago & were promised the coin at the latest at the end of January are not going to be happy & too understanding. I sold them an item. I need to get it to them. I can't come with any excuses. Coins like these rapidly change value & can auction for $270 one week & then $200 the next few weeks & now go for about $135. I cannot make a profit buying the coins for $115 selling them for $135 after eBay, PayPal, & listing & shipping fees take off ~15% off all my sales.

The coins I did sell I had to answer questions of whether the COA's & boxes were official when I believe that they were custom-made by the distributor, Nick Karpov, himself. I've been honest with my buyers & have told them that I honestly don't know if they were real. The COA'S have misspellings & grammatical errors a 10 year-old could catch & if the mint made them they did a horrible job, but I know for certain that boxes for the only coins I received undamaged & could sell-I bought 3 different coins, a bunch of each one-were made by the distributor himself & the other boxes look very similar & have the same type of COA. I know this because he admitted it & was selling the boxes he made for about $8 each. These flimsy pieces of cardboard did not fit the clamshell cases that went inside them & a piece of foam was needed to be placed inside so they fit.

And, it's not just money I'm losing & have to refund. I've put so much time into listing the coins at the right time, writing good descriptions, & communicating with customers. I wish I could sue the company & Nick Karpov, but I cant afford to hire a lawyer. I'm a small seller & this the only way I've found I can make a living during these times. I put a great deal of effort & countless hours into making sure I gave my customers a superior experience purchasing from me as there's a ton of competition I have to compete with. All I can do to compete is to provide much better customer service then others. Everything I spent years building is falling apart because of one individual that is most likely a sociopath because he cares nothing about the money I've lost because of his false promises, lies, & simply shipping the coins improperly. All of this could have been avoided if this guy was honest, told me when to expect my coins, shipped them with a little bit of care, & didn't sell coins promised to me to somebody else. I'm stuck trying to find the coins elsewhere which looks to be impossible because when I ordered them over 6 months ago they had sold out within a week. I can't find them anywhere & can't get them to my customers who have been patiently waiting for a very long time.

The purpose of me doing this is to warn anyone thinking about Pre-ordering coins or ordering coins already released from First Coin Company & their only representative, Nick Karpov, to not do it. It's not worth it. You cannot trust this company or their representative & as soon as they have your money you'll see how unresponsive they become. You will not get your coins on time, they will very likely come damaged & you can't trust this guy to honor the prices he gives you which are sky high to begin with. It's a big gamble with a fixed casino. You won't win & you'll actually lose money in the process & have your business reputation permanently damaged.

Again, I've probably mentioned this earlier, I have all the emails saved. There must be 100's of them. I have this whole email chain showing everything that happened here. Again. I wish had lawyers on retainer but I'm not a wealthy person & am just doing this to support myself. I thought $1,700 was a large enough order to be treated with a modicum of respect but it doesn't matter. I had my friend that has a lot more money than I do begin to start dealing with him & he was treated pretty much the same & wound up not going through with any orders because this guy kept changing prices on him & charging ridiculous shipping fees ($114 to ship one coin!). I told him not to go through with anything & saved him from experiencing what I am still going through six months later. I just want it to be over with the guy & I'm still waiting to receive new coins in exchange for those that were damaged. So, I'm still pretty much being held hostage here to this day & have to worry about the new coins coming damaged as well. Forget about me making a profit. All I'm doing now is trying to salvage my reputation & get coins that were Pre-sold the the buyers that paid for them.

This is a daily thing I have constantly on my mind & I haven't even been given an approximate time as to when I'll receive them. I tried to get a refund as I don't trust this guy to send me the coins undamaged but he wants his fake boxes & COA'S before he says he can refund anything. Then, he wants me to pay another $15 to ship the coins back to the mint they came from. It's almost humorous because I sent him about five emails asking him if could send the boxes & COA'S with no response. These are coins that came damaged to me! He wants more money! I can't even express the frustration & anger I feel & feel totally helpless. All I can do is leave this review & hope that people see it. Hope that they don't fall for the same bs I did. The third batch of coins I mentioned earlier & where he changed the prices & also sold them to someone else without giving me a day to respond-I mean I've been asking about these coins day after day for months. He did not answer any questions about when I should expect them as I knew I would start hearing from buyers about now. I didn't immediately accept the new price he put on the coins & can no longer get them, but I owe many to customers that have paid as far back as Nov. 28, 2012.

I hope this shows up in search results & anyone thinking of doing business with this company or its representative, Nick Karpov, will at least consider what I've said here & think twice about doing it. I'm not making any of this up & am not a vindictive person. I don't exactly how this site works & if anyone can contact me, but I'd be happy to help anyone considering doing business with these people. If anyone has had a similar experience (there's got to be dozens of people he's done this to; there were delays with the mi t's production but everything could've been handled better in all aspects I can think of). I can't think of anything this guy has done right. Even the boxes came crushed & in poor condition because of careless packaging that could've been easily avoided.

I've been through hell & it's not even over. I still have to issue over a $1,000 of refunds. Money I needed to borrow from family. I'm trying my best to still find these coins for my customers & get them what I promised them. I gave my word & put a lot of value on having integrity. So, even if though this company totally screwed me, I'm still putting in more hours to possibly find the coins from another distributor or try to win auctions from sellers that Im not sure or not if they bought the coins from the same distributor. I know about 3 or 4 sellers that are dealing with the same guy & won't try to win auctions from them because I'll be waiting for them to get me the coins from these same people. The trust I spent a lot of time & energy building with customers trying to keep them coming back to me is all been a waste. I guess could keep going, but this is what I've dealt with.

Again, buyer beware!! Do not send this guy any money. You will regret it & will be worrying every day whether you will receive your coins on time or at all. And, getting your money back will not be easy. This guy will make up anything to charge you more money & make it as difficult as possible to receive replacement coins or get a refund on damaged coins. You'll be paying to ship them back & unless you have lawyer on retainer there will be nothing you can do about it.

I plead with you. Heed my warning. I'm a good, honest person that is being manipulated & taken advantage of. The same will happen to you no matter how much you spend or how business savvy you are. You Pre-sell the coins, & then he can do whatever he likes because you need them for your customers that have already paid.

DO NOT BUY FROM FIRST COIN COMPANY!!