Posted By:
MikeU"Shane, I hope you don't own a business or are involved in customer service. Whether a person has bought anything from a business is irrelavent. If I walk in to McDs and ask how the food is prepared and with what, it doesn't matter if I've ever bought anything there before. As a business owner/manager, you better be bending over backwards to make want to spend my money with you. I don't blindly spend my money, especially large sums of it. Salespeople must salivate when they see you since, from your posts, you obviously don't ask any questions before you buy anything. You sir, are what's known as a sucker." - Jay B.
One difficult item for a company/business to cope with is the fact that all customers do not have a net positive gain, nor are they always right. I personally know of several companies that were forced into bankruptcy trying to please OEM's. The recurring problem is nearly uniform:
1. Not being able to tell the customer no when appropriate, particulary in the face of duress/threats.
2. Selling at zero or negative margin in hopes of partnership building and future business.
3. Identifying customers that are too difficult or costly to deal with. Refuse to quote these jobs or include sufficient money to cover "high maintenance" portion.
4. Identify qualified/significant leads and focus on them e.g. all inquiries are not equal and do not deserve the same attention. There are only so many resources and tough choices have to be made.
5. Identify your truly valuable customers e.g. high margin, low hassle etc. and treat them like gold. Many times your most valuable customers (most profit) are not simply the customers you have the most order value with.
Back on Topic:
1. I commend Doug for being truthful last year regarding wrinkle removal.
2. I also commend Doug for changing his wrinkle removal practice after the realization that this was a problem with SGC/PSA and many collectors.
3. I find it humourous that Doug = evil and Rob = innocence. REA has sent out the letter that Mastro lies about there catalog distribution and a letter that people pay more at REA because their customers know that do not alter cards, like everyone else does. Also, REA sent the letter they never resubmit cards, unlike Matro. We know publicly of two examples of cards that were rejected by one company as authentic and slabbed by another company. Apparently, authenticy issues can be resubmitted, just not grade issues. I do agree that REA market perception is probably the pinnacle of integrity in the auction business. However, Rob is a key player involved in perpetuating the biggest the "Holy Grail" sin in the hobby and has a contridiction in the reslabbing of cards deemed unathentic. In any case, is there truly a difference in integrity bewtween Rob and Doug?