A Heritage puzzle

baron

I admit that this one has me puzzled. On Sunday the 3rd, while browsing Heritage's offerings. I noticed a 1901 pcgs pr66 liberty nickel I had a hankering for. I bit the bullet and bought it. on Tuesday I recieved a regret that they couldn't honor the purchase. Oh well, win some, lose some. today while browsing their just opened Internet Only auction, (lot 13071) I see the same coin up for auction. Of course I will give them a call tomorrow, but I thought I would post and see if any had experienced a similiar situation. Thanks

RGL

Heritage is screwy lately and needs to improve service before they begin losing customers. I won a lot in NYC Bullet Sale, but it was three, four days before invoices were available online. Once they were up, I paid immediately. Then, yesterday, I receive an e-mail saying my payment was past due and would I please pay. I send back an e-mail saying, I did pay, please check your records and confirm receipt of payment. Then, I receive another e-mail, saying they had not yet waded through all the credit card confirmation e-mails. (Well, why are you ticking off buyers with past-due notices when you have not even gone through all your payments?) And, then later today, confirmation my payment had been received. Sheeeesh!

BNE

RGL -- I have had the same experience and I will tell you I am livid! I tried to pay immediately for one of the auctions on-line. Payment appeared to go through, but I did not receive any confirmation that payment had been received. Received an e-mail a few days later: saying call us to make payment. I call, and they say they can't process my payment because they don't even have the invoices yet. I give my credit card info, anyway. I get an e-mail last night saying "please call and give us your credit card info." I send a nasty e-mail back saying "I paid you guys a week ago on your website." An e-mail this morning. "We found your payment. Thanks!" An e-mail this afternoon. "Please call us to make payment." I call right away. Everyone's gone for the evening, message machine is not on.

I listed all my complaints to the poor operator, and she asked me to call Norma Pedrero to discuss them.

15% juice. Plus 5% for one of the auctions, through eBay. The worst coordination I have ever seen with an auction. No one seems to know what anyone else is doing, and the poor customers keep on being harrassed with requests for payment that they can't seem to be able to process.

This is a p.r. debacle for Heritage, and I will tell them so tomorrow.

gmarguli

Heritage is screwed up. I got the winning bidder email. It took a cuple of days until my invoice was online.

Previously I won a coin and the invoice said payment was due on a certain date. Then a few days later I get a past due notice, but I received the notice befoire the original due date had passed.

I've given up trying to figure them out. I'm just hoping they don't send these lots I won in a priority envelope with delivery conformation. It sits at my front door facing the street until I get home.

lathmach

I ordered a coin from them from their fixed price list on the Coin World Site. They wouldn't honor it. I'd given them my credit card info and received a confirmation from them that I had bought the coin.
I've bought coins from them on Ebay with no problems.
I don't get it.

Ray

Placid

"I've given up trying to figure them out. I'm just hoping they don't send these lots I won in a priority envelope with delivery conformation. It sits at my front door facing the street until I get home".

I just got a $20 gold double eagle. It was just in a priority envelope in the mail box. No signature required.
I was a little mad last night as well when I got the e-mail saying my payment was overdue for a lot from the bullet auction that I had already paid for on-line at the Heritage site last week.


baron I hope they give it to you or give you a good explination as to why they didn't when you call.

jtryka

Well, I won a lot in the signature sale, and it took 5 days to get the e-mail notice, and yesterday I got the mail notice. I paid it today on their website, but the payment wasn't due until this Saturday anyway. I hope it went through today. As far as the shipping, all I buy from them is gold, primarily double eagles, and I have received shipments of as many as 8 saints in a priority envelope with delivery confirm (fortunately I have a locking mailbox). But I long for the day that the coins do not arrive, and I call my credit card company to dispute the charge. They charge $11 for shipping which is fine with me since I know how much postal insurance costs, but they never use it! Just delivery confirm. All I know is that if they are ever lost in the mail, it's not coming out of my pocket!

kranky

You can't make them sell you the coin, but you can tell them that you will need a darn good explanation in order to continue to do business with them. That stinks.

JJacks

Gees, and when I signed up with Heritage a few weeks ago, I thought this was an established company that probably wouldn't make basic mistakes, etc.

Heritage needs to send some people some apologies before they really start losing customers. Sending people past-due notices that are incorrect is very, very low in my opinion.

JJacks

IrishMike

The last coin I bought from them they sent to me before they had received payment.

IrishMike

Oh and yes I have washed my hands of doing business with them, the 20% fee did me in.

dragon

Wow!, glad to know that at least I'm not the only one that wrote Heritage off some time ago. It took me numerous calls and emails, speaking to 3 people, then the president, the vice president, and the general manager and 2 1/2 weeks just to be removed from their email and mailing lists.

Dragon

RGL

FYI, I e-mailed a link to this thread to Ivy and Halperin. Heritage is better than this -- and its buyers deserve better.

Should anyone else care to chime in:

steve@heritagecoin.com

jim@heritagecoin.com

gmarguli

They charge $11 for shipping which is fine with me since I know how much postal insurance costs, but they never use it! Just delivery confirm. All I know is that if they are ever lost in the mail, it's not coming out of my pocket!

I wonder if they would pull the "well delivery conformation says the item was delivered" if it ever got stolen. It kind of makes me not want to do business with them..

gmarguli

It took me numerous calls and emails, speaking to 3 people, then the president, the vice president, and the general manager and 2 1/2 weeks just to be removed from their email and mailing lists.

I was at the point where I wasn't going to do anymore business with them because they wouldn't allow me to remove an old email address from their database. All my invoices came with that email address on the invoice. Thankfully after complaining about it ON THESE FORUMS the ptobelm got taken care of.

I do have to give credit to Heritage, they have addressed their problems publicly in these forums. Not many other companies would do that.

Mark

Greg:

Based on this comment: I'm just hoping they don't send these lots I won in a priority envelope with delivery conformation. It sits at my front door facing the street until I get home would you mind posting your home address for those of us with inquiring minds?

More seriously, why does any company send expensive coins and not use insurance that requires a signiture??? Is this sort of self-insurance actually cheaper than the real kind?

Mark

roadrunner

I won some lots at the FUN sale (internet and auction floor) and paid for them all at once. About 2 weeks later
I received a notice that I owned money on 2 generic gold lots in a sale. I couldn't recall exactly what I had bid on but I sent the money since I was sure they must be right. A few weeks later they told me that they double billed me for the FUN internet lots and returned my payment.

roadrunner

boiler78

I talked to Heritage at Central States about a coin that I had seen on their web site and the rep tells me that they didn't bring the coin to the show but he would call me about it the following Monday. On Monday following the show I called him and he said the coin had been sold. I asked him what the coin sold for and he said he could not reveal the selling price because it was a "private treaty" sale, so I said thanks anyway. Two days later the coin shows up in their internet only sale. I was a little pissed but I really liked the looks of the coin so I bid on it and going into the weekend I was the high bidder. In the last day before the sale I was outbid and didn't think too much of it until the same coin shows up back in Heritages inventory the following week!

HMMMMM????

RGL

Here is Steve Ivy's reply ...

I appreciate you forwarding me these message board comments. I do feel obliged to put all of this in context. We currently do business with well over 10,000 active clients. 98% of these people are happy with us and the vast majority make many repeat purchases. The comments we receive from the comment section of our website are 20-to-1 favorable, as are the comments we hear at coin shows. This past week we conducted by far the largest coin auction in our history based on number of lots. We sold over 10,000 lots to over 1,500 people and I can assure you that most of the transactions went flawlessly. And this was with half of our staff in NYC.

That said, we know that we make mistakes and errors, and that some of our policies could be more user-friendly. Heritage's business has expanded dramatically this year and with that has come growing pains. We try to address complaints in a timely manner, and are constantly looking for ways to improve our service. I can assure you that our service will get even better over time.

Heritage's management does read the message boards, and we often gain valuable insights from the comments. Furthermore, if anyone is ever dissatisfied with any transaction, they should feel free to email me directly. Feel free to post this response.

Steve Ivy

My thanks, Steve, and I believe others, for your prompt and personal reply.

jtryka

I have some issues with Heritage, but I must say that most of my business with them has been pleasant and fair. That's not to say there isn't room for improvement! As for how they would respond on the loss/delivery confirm issue, well I don't know what the law is exactly, but I don't think it stands up in court like sending certified with return receipt. No signature is required, and the mailman could easily deliver the package to my neighbor, and it would show up as "delivered." Delivery confirm only shows whether an item was delivered, not who it was delivered to, or whether it was delivered to the correct recipient. Either way, it would end up being Heritage fighting with my credit card issuer, and could end up being a long drawn out process. The bottom line is, the postal insurance costs just a few dollars on what could be an invoice of $1000 or more, a small price to pay to get a signature on delivery, and reimbursement in the even of loss or damage, so why not use it?

FlyTooHigh

Look at the math here:

Mint charges $3.95 shipping (Priority Mail, no less),

Ebay fees average ~ 5% (selling),



<< <i>the 20% fee did me in >>



Most credit card companies charge 10 - 18% to suckers!

So, WHY are we tolerating the ourageous Heritage fees in the face of CRA**Y service?

Give me some legitimate reasons!

Placid

I think Heritage only makes a profit on the selling of coins as a "broker" or at least most of their profit.

So I guess they have to pay their employee's,rent, electric, phone,advertising and whatever other opertaing expense there is from the % they get on sales. The 20% for the eBay live thing was supposed to be to cover the added expense of the live feed over their usual 15%.

I have never been to Heritage so I have no idea how big a operation it is. Let's guess they have 20 employee's they pay $2,000 a month. So just to make the paychecks if they were charging 10% juice they would need to sell $400,000 of coins every month.

Maybe they are gouging at 15% I don't know. I do notice most of the coin's that sell during their internet only sales go for less than at eBay, probably because the bidders are adding the 15% to what they will bid so I guess on those the price difference isn't really hurting the buyer only on the auctions where there are floor bidders and internet bidders competing.

I also have no idea what fee the sellers pay if any.

eBay has probably close to a million items listed every day. So just on the listing fee they are taking in alot right there before you even add the 5% from every sale.

mercury1

What's with the 20% fee. I thought they only did a 15%?

FlyTooHigh

From BNE's post:



<< <i>15% juice. Plus 5% for one of the auctions, through eBay. The worst coordination I have ever seen with an auction. No one seems to know what anyone else is doing, and the poor customers keep on being harrassed with requests for payment that they can't seem to be able to process. >>

BNE

Yes, I paid the extra 5% for one of the auctions I participated in through eBay Live. This was a coin that, for some reason, wasn't listed on the straight Heritage site as up for auction. (Please don't ask me to explain why this occurred, right now I am having trouble figuring out what Heritage is doing with its plethora of methods to participate in an auction.)

I guess I find Mr. Ivy's comments a little dismissing and insulting, although it was very good that he got back so quickly. Basically, he is saying everyone but us loves Heritage. He does not address the fact that people are being inundated with pay messages after they have paid, or tried to pay, several times. Can't he at least say that they will take a look at their spam "pay up" e-mail feature, and try to tailor it to people who actually owe money? The response seemed canned.

Whatever. If I want the coin, I suppose, I gots to go through the folks putting it up. . . .

dragon

FlyTooHigh,

You are correct, Heritage is the most disorganized firm I've ever dealt with, and their customer service is non-existant and incompetent. Not to even mention that their auction pics are very poor and many times very misleading, and most of their inventory consists of all the low end coins that other dealers can't sell IMO and end up wholesaling it off to Heritage, which they then offer at full retail prices. Then after nobody buys them after a month, they get recycled into an Exclusively Internet auction with another 15% juice, and then to Ebay and then back to their inventory and so forth.

So to answer your question, there IS no reason to do business with them IMO, there are plenty of other good companies out there. These however are strictly my opinions and I'm sure there are those who enjoy doing business with them.

Dragon

griffin6

Heritage self-insures.

dbldie55

To follow up on insurance. They self-insure, or have outside insurance. Many times it is much cheaper to use an insurance company instead of paying everytime through the post office. Not sure how that would work when something say's it was delivered, but the intended recipient did not get it (stolen out of the mail box, delivered to the wrong person etc). Not sure I would want to find that out. I have received the delivery confirmations too, only I use a PO box, so no outsider can steal it (but the PO is very well noted for placing mail in the wrong box)

1jester

I've never done business with Heritage, but from what I'm reading it seems that they don't put the customer first. Their "growing pains" are no excuse to not value their customers and treat them as they deserve to be treated. It seems that Mr. Ivy's comments are very cavalier, and indicative of a company on its way down, not up. The good news is that these boards have helped a lot of people know more about the market, and there are many dealers out there willing to go the extra mile to satisfy current clients and gain the next one.

Thanks for the information; until now I thought Heritage was a reputable organization.

BAJJERFAN

I was a winning bidder in a recent tues nite auction. I mailed a personal check for the item on thurs lunch hour. Thurs afternoon I get an email saying my item has been shipped. I did NOT pay online. I replied to the email complimenting the USPS for extraordinary service LOL. Ames, IA to Dallas in 2 hours. Sat afternoon coin is in my mailbox ,a real nice pcgs66 Morgan at a good price. Not too shabby IMHO.

jtryka

Bajjerfan,

I don't think Heritage publicizes this, but with their customers that have had a longstanding relationship, they develop a profile, or pseudo-credit line, where that will ship your coins prior to payment if it's under a certain amount. I once asked one of their people about a statement on an invoice that talked about paying on time to maintain my A-1 rating and I asked what that meant, and she said that they would just ship coins immediately if the invoice was under $500. Of course given my penchant for double eagles, I can't remember the last time I had an invoice from them that was less than $500. So that may be what happened to you.

Sealyp

<< <i>I admit that this one has me puzzled. On Sunday the 3rd, while browsing Heritage's offerings. I noticed a 1901 pcgs pr66 liberty nickel I had a hankering for. I bit the bullet and bought it. on Tuesday I recieved a regret that they couldn't honor the purchase. Oh well, win some, lose some. today while browsing their just opened Internet Only auction, (lot 13071) I see the same coin up for auction. Of course I will give them a call tomorrow, but I thought I would post and see if any had experienced a similiar situation. Thanks >>



Personally I'm still waiting to hear what happend here. I havn't had any dealings with Heritage in just over a year. I had a few problems with them in the past, however they did get me straight so I have no hostility towards them. I just havn't seen anythi8ng that I have liked for the money. However I do keep looking! Depending on how baron's story turns out, I may be much less likey to jump on the next "good deal" I see over there.

Sealyp

1jester

Welcome, Sealyp!

Johnscoin

I personally have never had any problems with Heritage and I wouldn't worry about the Postal Service losing something of theirs until it happens. It will be take care of. I believe that they are an extremely reputable company and they certainly work hard at what they do. As far as employees, try around 100 or so. They have a rather large operation and a history of success.

Russ

<< <i>I guess I find Mr. Ivy's comments a little dismissing and insulting >>



I agree. Why do these companies always give us 500 words about their 98% of happy customers, and a sentence addressing the problem?

Russ, NCNE

gmarguli

A-1 rating and I asked what that meant, and she said that they would just ship coins immediately if the invoice was under $500.

Is there something better than A-1? My invoice said the same thing, but I'm almost positive they recently sent me my winnings which were over $500 before I paid.

Is there an A-2 or something else?