PSA cards being undergraded... now that's something I've never read on this board before.
I'm not surprised about the customer service story here even though I still still with PSA for the bulk of my submissions. It can be very frustrating. I often check my submission progress online daily. Once the grades pop, I need to check it before they ship it out. I've had a couple of times when I wrote on the form to slab Authentic, but they didn't. I had to talk to customer service, and after I did, they agreed to slab the cards as Authentic. This is even after I wrote I wanted all cards slabbed if possible.
With qualifiers, it could be screwup, which wouldn't be surprising. However, some qualifiers cannot be removed. For example, PSA will remove OC qualifier (but lower the number grade), but cannot remove other qualifiers like MK (marks) or MC (miscut).
The cannot mix orders has always annoyed me to no end. Saying that I've always been able to squeeze one postcard size card into a regular card size order every now and then, and they've processed the order still, but gave me a warning that they're doing this a complimentary service, but may not allow it in the future.
SGC has always been better than PSA in a lot of important ways including (1) consistent grading (2) allowing mixed size orders (3) higher declared value for the lowest service level <$250 vs $100> and (4) faster turnaround at the lowest service level <30 business days vs 45 busines days>. Also for turnaround, SGC consistently beats PSA is finishing the order in that time or less. I've waited for some PSA orders FOREVER.
The reasons I end up sticking w/ PSA more often are that (1) the Registry is simply better, and they are constantly improving it unlike SGC < I asked months ago on the SGC BB that the SGC Set Registry Ruth Master Set be updated since it only included cards from 1916-~1923, and it's never been updated, so I just gave up and have been crossing cards to PSA>, (2) PSA specials at the low end can be cheaper <$5 vs $6>, and (3) on average, I've found that PSA cards sell for slightly higher prices. Again, this isn't true for all cases, and I plan to use PSA and SGC regularly in the future. (I also use Beckett too for oversized premiums that PSA or SGC can't handle, and GAI for wrappers.)