PCGS Customer Service
Burnie
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I've been on hold to PCGS Customer Service for an hour and 15 minutes. Just trying to find out why my orders have been in Q&A for almost 2 weeks? What is going on there? Maybe our hosts need to hire some more staff. Very disappointed.
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It takes me twice that long on hold to talk to a person from my phone provider. Lol
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I wouldn’t be concerned about the coins being in QA until they enter the 4th week of that stage. My orders have all consistently taken at least 3 weeks in QA.
Call PCGS in the morning and when they ask do you want to get on a callback list, say yes.
No reason to wait on the phone for a long time. They will call you when they are available and it is much easier.
Also, calling will not change the time it takes or give you any reason other than they are working on it.
Just relax and wait for the coins. I have waited more than 6 months several times for grades to complete, and over a month in QA. Long waits are quite normal especially for imaging.
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My latest order was in QA only 3 days. Maybe your order has had too many questions and not enough answers.
The customer service at PCGS, if it's actually as bad as routinely reported, seems to be a symptom of what had been slowly creeping into commerce and took firm hold during the pandemic. It is increasingly difficult to speak with an actual person almost everywhere. We are, in effect, on our own.
Buck up and get used to it.
What Goldminer said.....
If you can get on the callback list, just use it. Otherwise, email does work too.
My orders went to QA yesterday. Submitted at Pittsburgh ANA in early August. Hope it doesn't sit there for 3 weeks but even if it is there a month, this'll still be the quickest submission I've ever had.
Well, I got a call back... what's the reason for my coins being in QC for 2 weeks? Still checking to make sure they are correctly labeled 🙄
Strangely enough, I had another order which was received the day before this one, that was received, graded and delivered back to me all within 10 days! Go figure.
Calling about orders in QA for only two weeks is not worth the time.
It's seems crazy that a 6 month turnaround is common and accepted as stated above. I wonder how a dealer can operate grading lower value coins in the "Regular" or "Economy" tiers and stay in business with having inventory tied up for so long.
I haven't submitted a "regular" submission in years until recently. I have always sent some of my high priced material as walk-through or show grading. Last I remember, a "Regular" or "Economy" was 15-20 business days. I almost fell over when I submitted recently and saw the ETA of 40 business days for Regular.
That’s really not that much longer than they say it’ll take.
Still way too long but at least it’s expected 🤷🏼♂️
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Remember, customer service isn't going to go into the grading room and see where your submission is on the rack of work to be done. It won't go into the restoration area and see where your submission is on the rack of work to be done. It's not going to peer over the shoulders of the encapsulator or the shipping department.
Customer service is deliberately isolated from the people doing the work because if there are too many interruptions NOTHING gets done.
CS will look at the same data used to generate the status page, just seeing the information a little more granular than the outsider does.
It's the same as asking Mom or Dad "Are we there yet?" It doesn't make the car go any faster.
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You mean 80 calendar days, including weekends, right? Not 80 business days?
Yes. 80 Business days. That's 4 months. Their turn around times are posted as 40 days.
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I just watched the episode of Friends where Phoebe was on hold with the manufacturer of her phone for over 2 days.
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I used the call back option yesterday and within a 1/2 hour received a pleasant courteous call back and conversation that resolved my issue.
PCGS, NGC, ANACS and the green bean company should all raise the professional service fee across the board. The grading services are clogged up with people sending in ASE's, brand new Morgan, Peace and other modern commemoratives (as in made yesterday), that actual "coins" take forever. The TPG's should charge more, hire more people and push the modern mint stuff to the back of the line, or just rubber stamp them all "New, Unused, and Uninteresting". Most of the modern stuff should be discussed on the precious metals forum as they are nothing more than bullion anyway.
Moderns pay the bills. For both TPGs and many dealers.
Additionally, many collectors of moderns would take issue with the fact that you think they should be pushed to the back.
Then people should not complain about wait times
Thank you for making my point.
My original post was the time it takes to get hold of anyone at PCGS. Even when you do get through, they have no useful information to share
I simply wanted to know if there was a problem with my order.
I have several orders in process, one of which was received, graded and shipped back to me within just 10 days! Another received the following day, has been in QC for almost 3 weeks now. I simply wanted to know if there was a problem. I can wait, I'm patient. However, customer service is not helpful if they can't speak to any issues that may or may not be occuring.
I pay a membership fee and grading fees, I expect better customer service for my money.
Seriously ? It's been said many times here. Collect what you like. Just because you don't like moderns, or bullion, or commeratives. Why should our hosts only cater to your " actual " likes ?
People aren't complaining just about wait times. For many of them, the issue is customer service and/or the fact that wait times are often much longer than estimated.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
Customer service doesn't have to walk into those rooms to see what position in the queue a certain order is. They should be able to provide more info than they are, just by looking at their computer screen.
And while a customer service representative shouldn't be able to move orders up or down in the queue, the customer service MANAGER absolutely should have this authority.
Michael Jordon famously once said that he didn’t want to piss off half the people who buy sneakers.
Why would PCGS want to antagonize their biggest (I think) source of income?
The flow through the system as shown below seems to cause a lot of problems. That's peculiar because I have to think the whole reason for it is to tell a submitter where an order is. If it was kept updated in timely fashion it would seem to make questions like the one posed by the OP unnecessary. Maybe there should be, if there already isn't, an employee whose sole responsibility is to maintain that information accurately.
I know that with most every submission I make it is almost never accurate so I don't know where "MY" coins are at and that bothers me as it seems to bother everyone else.
I wrote the piece below on August 4th to vent regarding PCGS service. I decided not to post until today after seeing this thread.
I am posting this now because I wants PCGS to succeed and be the best grading service however they need to raise their game. I hope they are listening.
——— august 4th ———
“This is getting really old and I am confident the vast majority of people on this forum has experienced this. I want to vent.
I writing this because I care about PCGS and a number of dealers I know have given up and switched to their competition. Some may view this text as in bad taste against our host however I have run businesses and this type of service would have been very detrimental to my bottom line.
several times I call PCGS about two hours after they open and I get that terrible message that we reached our maximum call backs for the day. every time, except one, when I called a competitor I got a live person almost immediately, hmmmmmm. Is PCGS volume of calls that much higher than the competition? Are the calls mostly because of delays in submissions? Is this a technology and or manpower issue?
Example:
Today I called PCGS immediately when they opened and there were six callers in the queue ahead of me and longest wait time 3 minutes.
After 31 minutes one caller ahead of me and longest wait time 31 minutes and up to this time the number of callers ahead of me continued to go down but longest wait time kept increasing.
After 33 minutes zero allers ahead, zero minutes longest wait time.
After 35 minutes next caller in queue, zero minutes wait time
At 36 minutes someone picked up. I called because my submission has been stuck in encapsulation and total time has been over 40 business days.
I am not sure why this type of poor service continues. If it’s a manpower issue in the service and/or the grading ..etc departments then maybe it’s time to do something drastic like move operations.”
When I joined over 10 years ago, Express was 2 to 3 days, Regular grading was 10 days, Economy 15 days... This NONSENSE of having accept turnaround times of 2+ months is just UNACCEPTABLE... I just don't understand how so many here think this is just ok and business as usual.... Rant over.
They may be bad at " guess the time" , but they're good when it comes to " guess the grade".
How does PCGS turnaround times compare to the other grading services? Is it possible that CACG poached a few of PCGS's graders resulting in a shortage of skilled graders thus creating a bottleneck in their operation? Is it possible that coin collecting has become so popular that PCGS just can't keep up with the increased demand for their services? There's so much we don't know.
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CACG didn’t “poach” or hire any PCGS graders.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
The problem with "world renowned" is the popularity which ensues. Backlogs are normal especially in abnormal times. These aren't the "old days", bro. Sad to see and say.
It would be nice if we could see how PCGS graded themselves every month. Key Performance Indicators…KPIs
And then from month to month how are they doing. Improving, stagnant or going backwards. It would also be nice to know who owns the KPIs…
I think the major grading companies have had adequate time to adjust to the popularity that has ensued.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
You may, but that doesn't fix the issue. Hence, more time.
I'll take Marks word that our hosts didn't lose graders as I'm not privy to that information. IMO, I tend to believe it's the number of submissions our hosts are receiving. Currently have three submissions in, they moved into QA fairly quick compared to others posting here. Quickest submissions I've ever experienced. I would like to see them post a more realistic time frame for submissions as apparently the current posted times don't appear to be accurate.
CAC took pcgs customer service personnel, that hurts more than losing the graders.