The Cert Verification Page Has Been Redesigned

ProofCollection

I'm not sure why they keep insist on re-designing everything especially when there are real problems to fix. The old format was great. And didn't have bugs. This new format leaves a lot to be desired. Now it's laid out vertically so you have to scroll to see everything. And of course it misidentifies coins, like my 1904 Morgan as some World coin. Don't they ever test anything?

yosclimber

Perhaps the new format displays better on smartphones.

ProofCollection

@yosclimber said:
Perhaps the new format displays better on smartphones.

Isn't that what the app is for? Why so much dead space?

PeakRarities

1/4 of my coins come back with non-functioning NFC chips lately. Anyone else?

Southcounty

What a mess, the old version was perfectly fine. A solution looking for a problem.

Alpha2814

@yosclimber said:
Perhaps the new format displays better on smartphones.

Used to be that sites would detect your screen resolution and behave appropriately. There is zero reason to have this kind of layout on a desktop widescreen.

MsMorrisine

@PeakRarities said:
1/4 of my coins come back with non-functioning NFC chips lately. Anyone else?

i have a nfc back from pcgs that th phone recognizes as a chip, but it does absolutely nothing

Maywood

@ProofCollection said: I'm not sure why they keep insist on re-designing everything especially when there are real problems to fix.

This seems to all have begun with the overwhelming presence of cell phones/mobile devices and the migration of the public away from a desktop. It doesn't make sense when you're on a desktop as I am now and there's all the blank space on both sides of a page. If these "designers" are so smart coundn't they just have designed an app for phones and left the desktop view as it was?? Now if they're doing this for the same reason the response from me is one word --- stupid.

The adage "If it ain't broke then don't fix it" would seem to apply here but there is a phenomenon that happens with high levels of intelligence, quite often the trade-off is a loss of common sense. Also, as you noted the entire page now cannot be viewed without scrolling down --- stupid!!

erscolo

That is the fundamental failure of technology. Always updating, never fixing, heaping more garbage on top of that which is already garbage. I have not noticed a change on the NGC website, but yet another upgrade by tech is to be expected. One that actually fixed issues would be earth shattering. I am completely confident that will never happen, here or anywhere.

dbldie55

Now the old page is coming up again.

pcgsregistrycollector

@Southcounty said:
What a mess, the old version was perfectly fine. A solution looking for a problem.

Same here. The new format is ugly IMO.

pcgs_social

Pardon our dust; there is a new version of Cert Verify that we've been working on. Because of some bugs in the release, we have reverted the changes and will evaluate the feedback you all have provided. Thank you all for your patience and understanding as we work to enhance the PCGS customer experience.

ProofCollection

@pcgs_social said:
Pardon our dust; there is a new version of Cert Verify that we've been working on. Because of some bugs in the release, we have reverted the changes and will evaluate the feedback you all have provided. Thank you all for your patience and understanding as we work to enhance the PCGS customer experience.

Are you user-testing the new pages? The old page had a nice compact layout where you could quickly see everything. Now it's spread out with tons of dead space for no reason. Why is that an improvement and who is asking for that? Why does PCGS think that scrolling around and taking 1/4 of the screen to present the population and grade is a better customer experience?

lermish

@ProofCollection said:

Are you user-testing the new pages? The old page had a nice compact layout where you could quickly see everything. Now it's spread out with tons of dead space for no reason. Why is that an improvement and who is asking for that? Why does PCGS think that scrolling around and taking 1/4 of the screen to present the population and grade is a better customer experience?

There, much better.

TomB

@lermish said:

@ProofCollection said:

Are you user-testing the new pages? The old page had a nice compact layout where you could quickly see everything. Now it's spread out with tons of dead space for no reason. Why is that an improvement and who is asking for that? Why does PCGS think that scrolling around and taking 1/4 of the screen to present the population and grade is a better customer experience?

There, much better.

Is that like "what people say..." vs. "what dogs hear..."?

lermish

@TomB said:

@lermish said:

@ProofCollection said:

Are you user-testing the new pages? The old page had a nice compact layout where you could quickly see everything. Now it's spread out with tons of dead space for no reason. Why is that an improvement and who is asking for that? Why does PCGS think that scrolling around and taking 1/4 of the screen to present the population and grade is a better customer experience?

There, much better.

Is that like "what people say..." vs. "what dogs hear..."?

At this stage it's just a cry for help. Whether it's lashing out in anger, begging, pleading, threatening...it doesn't matter. PCGS either doesn't pay attention to our pleas for help or just doesn't care.

This turned darker than expected but it's been extremely frustrating trying to keep this company from shooting itself in the foot (and hitting us small clients with shrapnel) over the last couple of years.

yosclimber

@Alpha2814 said:

@yosclimber said:
Perhaps the new format displays better on smartphones.

Used to be that sites would detect your screen resolution and behave appropriately. There is zero reason to have this kind of layout on a desktop widescreen.

Yes, this is most likely how it will work when finished.
Probably the screen detection failed and we got the smartphone version on our PCs (for a few hours).

It takes considerable work to design a page to display well on both PCs and smartphones.
And for modern smartphones, the web server has to keep checking to see if the user rotated their phone
and then switch the display from "tall mode" to "wide mode" (or back).

It is not sufficient to just build a smartphone app to display various PCGS features.
The user might still use the browser on their smartphone to view the regular PCGS web pages,
and those also have to work well.

I am not sure why some forum users are so negative about a temporary web page bug, when it is something they get for free.
I guess it is frustration over customer service (email non-response), and maintenance of registry sets with modern coins that keep needing updates.
Perhaps there could be a new tier of paid PCGS Membership which is guaranteed under 24 hour response to emails?
Then members could have a paid option to get what they want.
And PCGS would have a revenue source to fund people to do the email replies.

Barberian

@pcgs_social said:
Pardon our dust; ... Thank you all for your patience and understanding as we work to enhance the PCGS customer experience.

Is "enhancing the customer experience" a good thing?

My PCGS customer experience has me switching now to CACG.

Alpha2814

@yosclimber said:
I am not sure why some forum users are so negative about a temporary web page bug, when it is something they get for free.

There's no way for us to know it was temporary, and although it is free, a change like this can have perceived negative value. We got something of value for free, then we got something of less value for free.

pcgsregistrycollector

@lermish said:

@ProofCollection said:

Are you user-testing the new pages? The old page had a nice compact layout where you could quickly see everything. Now it's spread out with tons of dead space for no reason. Why is that an improvement and who is asking for that? Why does PCGS think that scrolling around and taking 1/4 of the screen to present the population and grade is a better customer experience?

There, much better.

bros going to get a permanent ban frfr

PeakRarities

@yosclimber said:

Perhaps there could be a new tier of paid PCGS Membership which is guaranteed under 24 hour response to emails?
Then members could have a paid option to get what they want.
And PCGS would have a revenue source to fund people to do the email replies.

I would gladly pay for this, considering that my membership fee pales in comparison to my submission fees. I'd be thrilled to see this same solution applied to photography, don't even include it anymore if the volume is unmanageable at the current rate (even though the rates have seemingly been adjusted for inflation enough), but regardless, they could make it an add on by tier level. Base $5, Express $10, Walkthrough $20 and Rarities $40. Please take my money, when these images are attached to these coins permanently for all to see and pass judgement prematurely.

oih82w8

I've been BLOCKED!

pcgsregistrycollector

@oih82w8 said:
I've been BLOCKED!

What did you do?

PeakRarities

Or make dealers pay a flat rate for all of them if they want it, and include it for collectors for free if you want. Don't care, just need a better option for the publicly displayed appearance.

ProofCollection

@yosclimber said:

@Alpha2814 said:

@yosclimber said:
Perhaps the new format displays better on smartphones.

Used to be that sites would detect your screen resolution and behave appropriately. There is zero reason to have this kind of layout on a desktop widescreen.

Yes, this is most likely how it will work when finished.
Probably the screen detection failed and we got the smartphone version on our PCs (for a few hours).

It takes considerable work to design a page to display well on both PCs and smartphones.
And for modern smartphones, the web server has to keep checking to see if the user rotated their phone
and then switch the display from "tall mode" to "wide mode" (or back).

It is not sufficient to just build a smartphone app to display various PCGS features.
The user might still use the browser on their smartphone to view the regular PCGS web pages,
and those also have to work well.

I am not sure why some forum users are so negative about a temporary web page bug, when it is something they get for free.
I guess it is frustration over customer service (email non-response), and maintenance of registry sets with modern coins that keep needing updates.
Perhaps there could be a new tier of paid PCGS Membership which is guaranteed under 24 hour response to emails?
Then members could have a paid option to get what they want.
And PCGS would have a revenue source to fund people to do the email replies.

Doubtful. Keep in mind the new submission forms are designed in a similar fashion with everything spread out vertical ly with unnecessary pop-ups, as well as the PCGS newsletter email design. Clearly they think spacing everything out and scrolling is what users are demanding for some reason. But beyond that, the old submission page is unavailable and we are left with only the Beta version to use for now, so there's plenty of examples of PCGS deploying things before they are ready, and of course, failing to (or taking a really long time) to fix things that are broken and used to work.

Second, it's not free. Yes it's free in that anyone on the Internet can use the cert verifier, but if you think every fee and subscription we pay doesn't go to pay for all of this infrastructure and that these resources are one big charity, then you don't understand the business.

@PeakRarities said:

@yosclimber said:

Perhaps there could be a new tier of paid PCGS Membership which is guaranteed under 24 hour response to emails?
Then members could have a paid option to get what they want.
And PCGS would have a revenue source to fund people to do the email replies.

I would gladly pay for this, considering that my membership fee pales in comparison to my submission fees. I'd be thrilled to see this same solution applied to photography, don't even include it anymore if the volume is unmanageable at the current rate (even though the rates have seemingly been adjusted for inflation enough), but regardless, they could make it an add on by tier level. Base $5, Express $10, Walkthrough $20 and Rarities $40. Please take my money, when these images are attached to these coins permanently for all to see and pass judgement prematurely.

The problem is that is creates a perverse incentive to provide poor service to drive people to pay for good service. Kind of like how you pay a GP on a regrade.

PeakRarities

@ProofCollection said:

The problem is that is creates a perverse incentive to provide poor service to drive people to pay for good service. Kind of like how you pay a GP on a regrade.

As opposed to? .....

lol

The cost is already baked into the fee, and there's probably many collectors or dealers who don't care about the TVs. So whether it is a new add on fee, or they itemize it and subtract from the already established charge (probably a better chance of me getting pregnant), it at least will cut down on the sheer volume.

The quality between TV's should not have variance, the cost difference is just based on value like it is now, but for submissions where its not a necessity, they could do an ngc style quick slab shot or something just for id purposes. But somehow, some way, there either needs to be more photographers on payroll, or less coins to shoot if we want to see improvements. I don't really know of a better option, but thats why I even suggested to charge the dealers more to subsidize the collector perks. Whatever it needs to be, but it takes considerable effort and resources just to get some of my coins in the building with shipping and insurance risk, I'd rather pay an extra $20 to have a good photo done then and there, than have a botched one that would cost $200 in shipping/ins to get back there.

PeakRarities

OR just give me the option to deactivate the TV from the cert page, that would work too. Id rather have nothing, t nothinghan a poor shot that will reflect poorly on the coin.

And for those who would say "You can just take your own pics or hire someone to do that" Yes I know, I can and I do. But unless I'm able to use my photo for the public TV, that does me no good when it's still attached to the coin's cert page.

blu62vette

I saw this a month or so ago for just a little while on the site. I was hoping they would not implement it.

pcgs_social

@oih82w8 said:
I've been BLOCKED!

Hi @oih82w8, we recommend you do not use a VPN when trying to use PCGS websites & mobile apps as it can cause access issues. Disconnecting from your VPN should restore full functionality.

Bikergeek

@pcgs_social said:
Pardon our dust; there is a new version of Cert Verify that we've been working on. Because of some bugs in the release, we have reverted the changes and will evaluate the feedback you all have provided. Thank you all for your patience and understanding as we work to enhance the PCGS customer experience.

Isa - I offer to be a User Acceptance Tester, or a Beta tester, or otherwise join whatever program you have to ensure that user/systems needs are captured and that products are meeting those needs.

Dropping an unasked-for, unanticipated change on the population and waiting for the hate to roll in is one way to do it - but it's sub-optimal. HMU!

ChrisH821

@PeakRarities said:
1/4 of my coins come back with non-functioning NFC chips lately. Anyone else?

That's been an ongoing problem since their introduction. I don't understand how they can get through QC without checking this.