Problems with SGC ?

[whitey19thcentury]

Originally Posted by egbeachley

Another possibility, maybe remote, is that the "fresh pack" was resealed.

This opens up another can of worms, if so. The pack was broken out of a PSA slab (either an 8 or 9, can't remember) on live stream. For this to be a resealed pack, sent in to PSA for grading and come back with such a high grade, well then, that's another story.

Another poster said this irked me more than the lateness. It kind of does. Really, I don't care. It is not a five-figure (or even four figure) card, but this gets added to my list of pet peeves about TPGs and TPAs.

[whitehse]

I sent in a small, nine card submission to SGC and today it is the 22nd business day. Now this is my first submission in 15 years to anyone TPG and the cards are not expected to be high grade vintage but the hope is they come back as 7's or better (one can only hope). I am just anxious to see the grades and have been checking the website for a week now but I still receive the dreaded "submitted" status. I called on Monday to ask about timing and was told they are very backed up and estimated times for grading are just that...estimated times.

We have all been in the hobby for years and understand that these times are estimated but it just surprises me how companies can advertise a service and not deliver on their stated promise. Seems to me they should offer waiting times like the following:

-Sometime soon
-Maybe before the end of the year
-If your envelope falls off of the shelf before others we will get to it next
-Hey! We will get to it when we get to it otherwise don't worry about it!

As I said I am a small time collector and generally don't submit cards but I thought I would give it a shot. Depending on how these grades come back I may submit again but I just wish they would be more realistic in their submission times and also understand why we all get upset when they miss their stated number of days to have an order completed. There should be some sort of penalty for missing their obligations. I am willing to give a little but how long must anyone wait beyond the stated expectations without some sort of kick back from the company?

ok...I will get off of my soapbox.

[swarmee]

One of the problems with that is that all TPGs have been getting double their regular submissions this year. BGS got so backed up that their bulk services are taking A FULL YEAR to complete. So if your building can only fit so many, and you can only train so many, you can't grade all the ones that have been sent this year at the same timeline.
PSA actually changed their time estimates and pricing about three months ago; what did that do? Make more people send in even more bulk submissions to get in before the deadline that the price got raised, backing them up even further.

[Rhotchkiss]

I am not condoning missing promised deadlines (especially when you pay extra), and any service company with poor customer service is missing the point, BUT I would rather the TPG get it right, then get it done quickly and wrong. So what is the balance? How can these companies give top quality service, with consistent top quality results- as we all expect and spend major money in reliance on- when the pressure is constantly there to hurry up and to keep prices down?

We complain about the cost. But how is the company supposed to hire and train a sufficient amount of qualified people if they can’t pay them sufficiently? And how can the company do top quality and consistent work when they are pressured to move massive amounts of products to meet time limits? I know these are problems the TPGs created and it’s their business so they need to figure it out - But just saying that the most important thing for the hobby and for the customer, in my opinion, is that they get it right, and we should not lose site of that and maybe forgive some tardiness if that’s the cost of good work product.

Regarding SGC specifically, I think their issue is reholdering. They came out with these new flips and everyone wants their SGC cards in the new flips. So I think they are slammed switching already graded cards from one flip to another. I bet the backlog will pass once they get through the reholdering mania.

[Peter_Spaeth]

For the $10 a card SGC's 20 day (estimated) service costs, it isn't a big deal to me to wait a bit longer. Particularly where some of what I am submitting is nonsports that PSA would just kick back if not already in its database.

[Cozumeleno]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

For the $10 a card SGC's 20 day (estimated) service costs, it isn't a big deal to me to wait a bit longer. Particularly where some of what I am submitting is nonsports that PSA would just kick back if not already in its database.

Yeah, I'm mostly the same way. That's part of the reason why I didn't call to bug them about it until I got to 20 days late. Part of me wasn't too concerned and the other part figured they wouldn't have anything to tell me other than, 'We're working on it.'

What I do wish they'd do is post updated turnaround times on their website just so people know what to expect. That wouldn't be too much effort. I know it's a bad look and they don't want to field questions like, 'If I'm paying for 10 days, why is it taking 30.' But I'd personally be much less annoyed if I had even a reasonable timeframe of what to expect. As I said above, I've got no idea if I'm looking at a week longer or a month. Just frustrating from that vantage point.

[Rhotchkiss]

No question that communication goes a loooong way.