Please invest in database management 1 1

[Ron Churches]

The 28th deadline has exposed a serious issue with regards to your submission software. You absolutely need to optimize your database queries. This is embarrassing for CGC.

[Lazyboy]

20 minutes ago, Ron Churches said:

The 28th deadline has exposed a serious issue with regards to your submission software. You absolutely need to optimize your database queries. This is embarrassing for CGC.

Yeah, no other site has ever had problems when thousands of people tried to simultaneously access it.

But it's good that you made yet another thread about it, just in case somebody missed all the others.

[William Weitz]

PSA had the same issues upon announcing price increase.

[Oreos]

Glad you made a post on this, had no idea their database submission forms were running slow. Maybe give them a call and let them know - they probably have no idea 

[Ron Churches]

8 hours ago, Lazyboy said:

Yeah, no other site has ever had problems when thousands of people tried to simultaneously access it.

But it's good that you made yet another thread about it, just in case somebody missed all the others.

Their business has increased, what, tenfold in a year? Has there been any improvements to their IT infrastructure? I don't think so. Find a bigger defender of CGC's grading on these boards than I have been. I've cut them a lot of slack. This one stings, though, and the response has (for the first time I've seen) seemed to be passive-aggressive toward the average customer. 

As for my posting volume, I made a joke thread and then this one. Your valuable feedback on my posting technique is noted. I assume you are compelled to click each thread, which can be problematic. It will not hurt my feelings if you would like to ignore my topics, generally speaking.

[Jeffro.]

1 minute ago, Ron Churches said:

Their business has increased, what, tenfold in a year? Has there been any improvements to their IT infrastructure? I don't think so.

How would you know that? I certainly don't. It's not unusual for websites to get overloaded by unexpected volume. It doesn't automatically mean they've dropped the ball on this. They could have but I have no way of knowing that and neither do you.

[Ron Churches]

Just now, Jeffro. said:

How would you know that? I certainly don't. It's not unusual for websites to get overloaded by unexpected volume. It doesn't automatically mean they've dropped the ball on this. They could have but I have no way of knowing that and neither do you.

How would I know that, indeed. I'm sure they've had to make a few hardware upgrades to accommodate increased traffic. If you look through the boards there have been a lot of posts related to their software being erratic over the last few months. These are not new issues and they persist. It's embarrassing. Their query times are atrocious, even when traffic is lower. Notice how long it takes for fields to populate when you tab through the form? The site runs like an early 2000s web form.

Things like this fly in the face of how they are trying to differentiate their product as high quality. Note that the reason they are getting slammed is largely a function of their lower price compared to peers, yet they have a reputation for being high quality in terms of the grade on the slab. From a business standpoint these have long been at odds for CGC, which I think leads to confusion in the marketplace (and a factor in why their resale is lower than PSA despite having a better reputation, generally, in terms of grading strictness).  

My larger point is that taking the cheap way out in terms of IT infrastructure sends a signal that they are aiming to be a discount marketplace, not a top flight shop. It's at odds with their overall marketing strategy, and you can feel the anger from folks who are having to reset expectations on their service quality. You can feel it in Paul's passive aggressive replies on these boards, which are now being quoted and mocked, because they ended up being paper thin and patronizing in light of the catastrophic level of service they have deployed in the last few days. 

A world class shop should be embarrassed by this performance. If CGC isn't, that's enough to give me pause on future business with them. I like the slabs, I like the quality, and we are now being asked to trade price for...what? What is the consumer getting from their increased prices? I'm ok with the price increase, only as a function of it delivering a better experience when I use them as a service.

[Yeahiwasder4dat]

1 minute ago, Ron Churches said:

How would I know that, indeed. I'm sure they've had to make a few hardware upgrades to accommodate increased traffic. If you look through the boards there have been a lot of posts related to their software being erratic over the last few months. These are not new issues and they persist. It's embarrassing. Their query times are atrocious, even when traffic is lower. Notice how long it takes for fields to populate when you tab through the form? The site runs like an early 2000s web form.

Things like this fly in the face of how they are trying to differentiate their product as high quality. Note that the reason they are getting slammed is largely a function of their lower price compared to peers, yet they have a reputation for being high quality in terms of the grade on the slab. From a business standpoint these have long been at odds for CGC, which I think leads to confusion in the marketplace (and a factor in why their resale is lower than PSA despite having a better reputation, generally, in terms of grading strictness).  

My larger point is that taking the cheap way out in terms of IT infrastructure sends a signal that they are aiming to be a discount marketplace, not a top flight shop. It's at odds with their overall marketing strategy, and you can feel the anger from folks who are having to reset expectations on their service quality. You can feel it in Paul's passive aggressive replies on these boards, which are now being quoted and mocked, because they ended up being paper thin and patronizing in light of the catastrophic level of service they have deployed in the last few days. 

A world class shop should be embarrassed by this performance. If CGC isn't, that's enough to give me pause on future business with them. I like the slabs, I like the quality, and we are now being asked to trade price for...what? What is the consumer getting from their increased prices? I'm ok with the price increase, only as a function of it delivering a better experience when I use them as a service.

Their UI like you said is clunky compared to every other one I've used. Even when traffic is low it still runs slowly on populating the fields. I've noticed that as well. 

That was something that was noticable right off the rip on my first submission 5 months ago. Felt like using windows 98 with Compuserve again 😂

[Ron Churches]

Just now, Yeahiwasder4dat said:

Their UI like you said is clunky compared to every other one I've used. Even when traffic is low it still runs slowly on populating the fields. I've noticed that as well. 

That was something that was noticable right off the rip on my first submission 5 months ago. Felt like using windows 98 with Compuserve again 😂

Exactly. PSA's site is much smoother. It's odd to me, though, because they had this same infrastructure for the comics, as well, and then leveraged it again for sports cards. It's all sitting on top of the same database infrastructure. I know they are all separate companies, so I am imagining a hot mess of an organizational structure around their IT. These systems also feed billing, which I also know are a bit of a mess (both CGC and CSG has somehow had my billing information disconnect from the orders as the invoice gets routed through the process). These things point towards lack of investment, which is an organizational strategy that is legitimately questioned when things go poorly. 

I'm connecting the dots, as well, on their lack of a population report. 

[Yeahiwasder4dat]

14 minutes ago, Ron Churches said:

Exactly. PSA's site is much smoother. It's odd to me, though, because they had this same infrastructure for the comics, as well, and then leveraged it again for sports cards. It's all sitting on top of the same database infrastructure. I know they are all separate companies, so I am imagining a hot mess of an organizational structure around their IT. These systems also feed billing, which I also know are a bit of a mess (both CGC and CSG has somehow had my billing information disconnect from the orders as the invoice gets routed through the process). These things point towards lack of investment, which is an organizational strategy that is legitimately questioned when things go poorly. 

I'm connecting the dots, as well, on their lack of a population report. 

The part that has me confused is between the price increases, TAT getting so long, and everything else is that their falling into the same mess that I would say most of us came here to get away from. PSA resale is higher, not that I think it should be that way, but it simply is. They're getting caught in the same traps I came here to try to escape. At this point I'm getting close to the point I'd rather just wait for them to start taking subs again and go back there. I subbed a large chunk to CSG as well, but it looks like I'm going to end up in the same situation.

I'd honestly rather only be able to submit 25 cards a month or something, have good TAT, and a decent price. I honestly think they're destroying all the selling points they had as a company. I'd prefer to stick with them if I could. I like the cases more, any time I've called customer service they've been good.

At the end of the day, if there isn't reliability and accountability it's going to be a situation where money is money. I know from my sales, they still can't pull close to what PSA can and if the services are equal on all other fronts I won't have a choice but to return to the one that brings in the most money even if I don't necessarily like the product or the company.

 

 

[Ron Churches]

2 minutes ago, Yeahiwasder4dat said:

The part that has me confused is between the price increases, TAT getting so long, and everything else is that their falling into the same mess that I would say most of us came here to get away from. PSA resale is higher, not that I think it should be that way, but it simply is. They're getting caught in the same traps I came here to try to escape. At this point I'm getting close to the point I'd rather just wait for them to start taking subs again and go back there. I subbed a large chunk to CSG as well, but it looks like I'm going to end up in the same situation.

I'd honestly rather only be able to submit 25 cards a month or something, have good TAT, and a decent price. I honestly think they're destroying all the selling points they had as a company. I'd prefer to stick with them if I could. I like the cases more, any time I've called customer service they've been good.

At the end of the day, if there isn't reliability and accountability it's going to be a situation where money is money. I know from my sales, they still can't pull close to what PSA can and if the services are equal on all other fronts I won't have a choice but to return to the one that brings in the most money even if I don't necessarily like the product or the company.

 

 

I do think their competitive value versus PSA has narrowed with this price increase, but this price increase was also necessary to squash down demand a bit so they can keep TaT in line with...well, inside of a year. The market dynamics are tough to nail down and PSA had the first mover advantage by doubling their prices AND shutting doors for a couple of months, which sent folks to CGC faster than they could handle. I doubt PSA drew it up like that, but they had to see the benefit of handcuffing CGC while also hitting their own operational priorities when they made their recent moves. 

I do think CGC is going to have to navigate a 'death by a thousand papercuts' situation now, as if their website couldn't handle the load, that means they are about to get an unprecedented number of cards and will be forced to shift TaT again. They've gone to the 'price increase' well twice now; they probably regret going so modest on that first price hike. I imagine we'll see them shut down a few service tiers, like PSA did, in the coming month or two.

[Yeahiwasder4dat]

15 minutes ago, Ron Churches said:

I do think their competitive value versus PSA has narrowed with this price increase, but this price increase was also necessary to squash down demand a bit so they can keep TaT in line with...well, inside of a year. The market dynamics are tough to nail down and PSA had the first mover advantage by doubling their prices AND shutting doors for a couple of months, which sent folks to CGC faster than they could handle. I doubt PSA drew it up like that, but they had to see the benefit of handcuffing CGC while also hitting their own operational priorities when they made their recent moves. 

I do think CGC is going to have to navigate a 'death by a thousand papercuts' situation now, as if their website couldn't handle the load, that means they are about to get an unprecedented number of cards and will be forced to shift TaT again. They've gone to the 'price increase' well twice now; they probably regret going so modest on that first price hike. I imagine we'll see them shut down a few service tiers, like PSA did, in the coming month or two.

If there were enough people subbing to crash the servers I can only imagine the stupid number of cards they're about to receive. They're already backlogged in receiving and TAT appear to have already been stretched beyond what's listed before the announcement. The chain of events PSA set in motion seemed to have gone unnoticed. While price increases should decrease subs in the long run, I doubt this hike was even high enough. In the short term, I just can't begin to understand their line of thought. CGC it appears chose not to act on that information for some time.

This price hike isn't even high enough to cut out a tremendous amount. So it's not like volume will decrease that drastically. If bulk/econ went to $25/30 I could see it. The higher tiers should see some decrease now as the prices are high enough I would think to weed out cheap stuff.

At some point input is going to have to be reduced below output to work through the backlog but seems to constantly head in the other direction. I foresee another price hike in the coming months. I just can't grasp why not go one and done? The thing that cripples all the companies are the cards under $20. Sports cards, Pokemon, etc. Once you hit the $20-25 threshold cards tend to be fewer and worth more significantly more. At $12.75 you can still make enough to send those cards in and make $10-15 a card. Once you eliminate the profit on those you're removing a sizable chunk of what people are selling.

[Ron Churches]

Agreed. I was miffed about the future of low end bulk (I like to grade some questionable stuff for my PC and my kids), but it's still ONLY 13.50 a card with the membership, no subgrades. This is still too low to stop the insanity, I think. If anything, it might boost some of the asks on the marketplace and pull the price of low end CGC slabs up a slight bit.

[Math Teacher]

1 hour ago, Jeffro. said:

How would you know that? I certainly don't. It's not unusual for websites to get overloaded by unexpected volume. It doesn't automatically mean they've dropped the ball on this. They could have but I have no way of knowing that and neither do you.

Really? Are you telling me that CGC couldn't have foreseen a substantial increase in the number of submissions prior to the price raising deadline? If that is what you are saying, it only makes them look more incompetent.

[Yeahiwasder4dat]

4 minutes ago, Ron Churches said:

Agreed. I was miffed about the future of low end bulk (I like to grade some questionable stuff for my PC and my kids), but it's still ONLY 13.50 a card with the membership, no subgrades. This is still too low to stop the insanity, I think. If anything, it might boost some of the asks on the marketplace and pull the price of low end CGC slabs up a slight bit.

I do as well, but there's a time and place for everything. I grade some rookies in the hope they pop off, but I wouldn't feel any animosity if they forced me to stop. Right now isn't the time nor the place. If they took on a crazy number of subs, but the prices were high enough to also significantly cut submissions I could have seen this working out. As it stands I see an "Out of the frying pan into the fire" scenario about to play out.

[theCapraAegagrus]

11 minutes ago, Math Teacher said:

Really? Are you telling me that CGC couldn't have foreseen a substantial increase in the number of submissions prior to the price raising deadline? If that is what you are saying, it only makes them look more incompetent.

Are you telling me that CGC could have accurately predicted the increase amount? That would be absolute nonsense.

[Ron Churches]

3 minutes ago, Angel of Death said:

Are you telling me that CGC could have accurately predicted the increase amount? That would be absolute nonsense.

I am begging you to never run an IT shop. Please, promise me you will stay out of IT.

[theCapraAegagrus]

3 minutes ago, Ron Churches said:

I am begging you to never run an IT shop. Please, promise me you will stay out of IT.

No.

[Ron Churches]

3 minutes ago, Angel of Death said:

No.

You've outed yourself as the CGC database programmer. Please optimize your stuff.

[theCapraAegagrus]

Just now, Ron Churches said:

You've outed yourself as the CGC database programmer. Please optimize your stuff.

Also no.