If you have never done business at a pawn shop before, then it is completely understandable that you wouldn’t necessarily understand all of the rules and regulations of the establishments in question. If all you have seen of pawn shops is from cliche crime movies, then you might assume that they are places that don’t have many rules at all, but this isn’t the case. Something that lots of people use pawn shops for is the buying and selling of gold, and if you have an amount that you would like to either get rid of or get hold of, a pawn shop can be the perfect place to do it. With this in mind, here is some information about whether or not transactions at a gold and loan pawn shop are private.
In order to comply with strict state and federal laws, pawn shops are required to collect a certain amount of personal information from customers when selling or buying certain items, and precious jewelry is often included in this list.
During every transaction, staff will likely ask for a government issued photo ID that helps to confirm that you are indeed who you say you are, and this will be the main part of the record that they keep on you for their own safety and transparency.
In addition to this, shops will also keep a log of every item that comes in and out of their inventory, and this is submitted to a national database that authorities like the police can search through in the event of a stolen goods crime being reported in your area.
The length of time that a pawn shop keeps these details of yours is pretty much dependent on the quality of their record keeping software, and also can be dependent on the rules of any given state. On average, though, you can expect the history of your dealings with a pawn shop to be kept on record for anywhere between three and five years. After this period is up, your records will be shredded, either physically or electronically!
The reason that pawn shops don’t keep your information on file forever is to try to protect you from any kind of data breach years down the line. It is important for them to keep you in their records in the short term for reasons that we have already discussed, but years down the line when your pawn shop dealings are a distant memory, there is no need for your personal information to still be held by them.
If you think that you want to explore your options with a gold and loan pawn shop, then head over to the LA Loan Company website for a great starting point. You will find all of the information that you could possibly need, and answers to every question that you might have. Don’t make the mistake of ignoring the pawn shop option. It can often be the best solution for plenty of situations.