Jkelly

Heres a fun one: Ive posted on here endless times about my problems i have been experiencing similar to the Bry video above with newton rings. Ive sent back over 12 boxes this year alone. Ive asked CS every time to get me in touch with a manager to no avail until I reached out to Michael from this board who was actually pretty helpful and connected me direct to Matt Nelson. I have no way to know this for sure but Matt supposedly supervised an entire re-casing of my books to verify there were no newton rings and then when I received them back - a few still had the rings. His theory is that the weather/heat is causing expansion because he swears the rings were gone when he supervised. Who knows, but he wants me to send them back direct to him for a fix. So I am hopeful now that Matt is involved they are actually trying to triage this rampant problem. Now heres the fun part... I just got a box back over the weekend that was a CCS and a CGC pre screen. This book went through two pre screens (CCS & CGC) + a QC and no one thought to flag this. There is absolutely no way I would send over a pre screen book without checking it, let alone opening the first page of the book. But yet somehow a cigarette shaped hole was burned through the center of the book and the book still came back a 9.8. Either CCS burnt my book in press, or CGC really has it out for me after all of the mechanical errors I have sent back. Still waiting for a reply from Matt and Michael about where to go with this, but I thought this might be a good warning for anyone considering CCS...

Hey Mike, I, like what it seems to be many others, continue to get full shipments of books that are just riddled with newton rings. This year alone I have sent 11 full boxes back to CGC (todays box will be my 12th in 8 months). Sometimes they come back fixed, often times they come back with more newton rings (which seems like the answer to the question above is that no one is communicating why these books are coming back for a re-holder). This cannot be cost effective for CGC because you are constantly paying for the next day shipping back and forth when it seems like it's just better to fix the issue out the gate. It's not even like these are small newton rings. The books I'm getting back have full blobs on the cover. Ive spoken to so many customer service reps who all seem uninformed on what is actually going on. One person literally told me to put my slabs in a refridgerator to see if that would help make them go away. One person told me to send a note but wasn't sure if it would even get to who needs to see it. Another person told me they would have the Manager of customer service call me as soon as possible (that call never came). It just seems like there is NO communication going on department to department, when the simple solution should be to make sure no book goes out with errors and deliver a great product. Thats why we pay this company a premium. I really don't know what left I can do as a consumer at this point other than just cancel my membership and charge back any cgc bills that contain newton rings to my credit card. I really hope you are able to help with this situation, I have exhausted all options and I am running out of faith with CGC. Here is a small sample of the box I got back today:

You are totally right. Egg on my face on that one. I realized i didnt check the box in the calculator to include business days like i normally do before i post. However, I did get CS to admit that the countdown is calculated by the time the package is delivered NOT opened and entered into system, so regardless they are still over the allotted time.

Update: Im still fighting with Customer Service on this topic. They sent back another canned response that they are well within their TATs which is categorically false either way they try and spin it. Modern Package was delivered to CGC on April 28th - that puts us at 169 business days (TAT in April was 111 business days) Modern Package was entered into CGCs system on June 14th - that puts us at 122 business days (again, TAT was 111 business days) So basically either way they cut it - anyone sitting on moderns from mid June should have had their books already. I hate this company so much.

I did. I also brought up that i have a Pre screen that was received a month after (7/14) that is in QC right now that somehow bypassed my regular modern. It was through email so they didn't even address those points and have since stopped responding to my questions after I got the "End of November" answer. When I email them they are great at ducking real questions. If you get someone on the phone Id love to hear what they tell you.

I hit up customer service to try and get an estimate and an explanation of whats going on with all these Moderns in the June range that have been sitting in G/E/I for weeks (If your submission was received in their system on June 14th, by my calculations we should have had our books back by September 30th. TATs were at 111 business days when we submitted back in May). Customer service gave me canned answers the first 3 back and forths and then they finally told me "End of November" would be when we get our books back. I'm not sure if they are just saying some far projection to get us off their backs or if that is real life. If thats true thats putting them almost 2 months past what their projections were back in June, and currently their TATs have gone down to 106. Nothing makes sense at this company. In my experience the past year, their TAT's are fairly spot on and I've never sat in G/E/I for more than two weeks on modern.

I have a weird one that I am scratching my head on. I have a Slow Modern received 6/14 that has been in G/I/E for close to 3+ weeks. But I have a Pre-Screen Modern that was received on 7/14 that moved to Quality Control on Friday

@Inhuman Fiend From my experience the last few months, Your FT modern will probably be knocked out fairly quickly. Probably a week or so. FT Economy takes FOREVER when it gets to G/E/I, I have one thats been sitting at that stage for almost a month now.

I have some non-FT pre-screens that went into G/E/I today from 4/29. My last normal modern that shipped out was also from 4/29 and shipped Early July, the next modern I have in the pipeline is from 6/14 and is still at SFG but I would imagine thats probably my next box that will move to G/E/I, by my calculations of their ETA's that should be wrapped in the next two weeks.

My experience with CCS as a product is pretty solid. I've had a few blue chip books that I got from shops that were quoted at like an 8.5 (and I would have been happy with) that came back a 9.6. If CCS had a normal turn around time I would probably continue to use them for convenience and for insurance just in case a book i pressed on my own hits a corner the wrong way in transit to CGC. I personally, have not had any horror experiences with them messing up a book or going lower than anticipated but I am sure they are out there.

It's honestly psychotic. I can't grasp why I continue to submit. I have an excel tracker I built to get an idea where my books are based on their ETAs and my most recent pre screen batch that they received Monday wont get back to me til February of next year if CGCs estimations are correct.

I think Pre-screens still have a looooong way to go unfortunately. I just got a Modern Pre-Screen that was delivered to CGC 3/3 back last week. I have another batch delivered 4/1 that hasn't been updated to G/E/I yet.

Thanks for the heads up! My ME was delivered to them Monday and i was able to sneak my next batch in with it which was pretty nice to see them all go into the system with it and not the two month wait. Hopefully the Mechanical error fix is on a similar timeline as yours.

You never know what will go awry with CGC. Half my box I got last week had wrong labels. Thankfully they paid for the shipping back so I threw my next submission in with it... In true CGC fashion only 3 of the 6 invoices that were in that box were checked in. So who knows what may happen.

This your CCS order? If so, probably not. I think the CCS ETA includes grading time baked in. One of my boxes took 9 days, the other took 12 as soon as it got back to CGC proper last month.