Ebay Authentication is a real head-scratcher

[raulus]

A short little story about my own AG experience, just happened yesterday.

TLDR: I am a fan of the AG program, and continue to be. My experience is that the communication is solid, which gives the buyer some options if stuff goes awry.

Last week I purchased a rare raw Marichal card for $2k (see pics below). As part of the AG program, the seller shipped it to the authenticator (I think CSG in this case). The authenticator authenticated the card, but in the process, identified a couple of small creases that were not disclosed in the listing. The authenticator contacted me to ask if I still wanted the card. My options were to:

1) Proceed with my purchase, or
2) Return it to the seller for a full refund

After a bit of thinking and some close inspection of the scans from the authenticator pointing out the creases, I decided to proceed with my purchase. In large part, this is because I concluded that it was still a good deal for this item, even with the very small creases.

This is actually the 2nd time that the AG has contacted me because there was an issue with an item that I had purchased. The last time it was because a graded item had a case that popped open. Both times, the authenticator contacted me to give me the option of either rejecting the item for a full refund, or accepting the item as-is.

There does seem to be a limited window for making this decision. If you don't decide within 3 days, then they automatically cancel the order and ship the item back to the seller. My guess is that others have experienced problems because they're not getting these messages, or because they're not responding within the 3 day window, and so the transaction gets mysteriously cancelled with what appears to be no communication.