Bad Experience with Heritage Fun Auction - Faith restored

Windycity

Though I posted this message at the end of the original thread, I wanted to post it here for those who quit reading the long thread.

All,

I had the opportunity to talk with Greg Rohan at Heritage about this and am pleased to say he took the time to explain in detail and to my complete satisfaction exactly what happened. Every company has problems at times and Heritage is dealing with this in the proper manner. He was not only helpful but very professional. My faith in Heritage has been restored and I now feel very comfortable doing business with them again. I only wish Greg and I had spoken immediately after the auction.

Thanks all for a wonderfully intelligent discussion.

Pat

Steve

I am glad you feel better about your dealings with Heritage, but unfortunately, we readers are left "hanging". I can imagine your communication is private, but you did make the incident public by starting the other thread. Unfortunately, the readers here will not be satisfied with you just stating "you are now happy". Please consider explaining what caused the problems, or at least, request that Greg get on here and tell us. Thank you. Steve

leothelyon

Where there any "bonus bucks" in the deal?

Leo

Windycity

Steve,

Greg was very forthcoming with details about how the mistake occured and, with the professionalism I always expected from Heritage, took full responsibilty for the problem. I have done enough business with Heritage in the past that what I wanted more than anything was a straigh forward answer and some assurance that future dealings will be done with the highest quality control. I know have that assurance and know how Greg would deal with problems if they were to arise. That's what I was looking for.

Pat

jpkinla

I expected nothing less from them and am glad to see your problem has been resolved. Considering the number of auction lots involved and the enormous complexities involved in their FUN auctions, I think they did a great job. I am sure that Mr. Hugon, Al Adams and the other Platinum consignors are smiling.

My $10 Indian Gold Registry Set

segoja

Still hanging.

Think that same answer gets applied more than once????

Vegas has odds on it!

lablover

Shoot first and ask questions later, great!

KentuckyJ

So, what was the screw up all about?

KJ

Mistercoinman

Considering your post has spawn three or four other post, with fellow board members having the same problems, I think its' important that a explanation is owed all of us. I am happy that your problems have been resolved but leaves quite a few of us with the same bad taste in our mouth. Maybe someone from Heritage can address the board!!

Windycity

I would suggest that if others are unsatisfied with their treatment form Heritage, they talk with Greg Rohan. I wish we had had that conversation on day one rather than two weeks later. My guess is he would get involved to provide answers. Certainly that was my experience.

Pat

HeritageGreg

Dear Forum members,

Since many of you have asked, here is a brief rundown of what happened with WindyCity and a few others. A consignor gave us his reserves well in advance of the sale posting on-line. We inadvertently mis-filed it resulting in the reserves not getting posted. The morning after the session where 8 of the coins sold, the consignor brought it to our attention. Item #17 of our Terms and Condition of Sale state as follows:

Auctioneer reserves the right to rescind the sale in the event of nonpayment, breach of a warranty, disputed ownership, auctioneer's clerical error or omission in exercising bids and reserves, or otherwise.

We still felt terrible about the error as it was completely our fault. Three of us (myself included) spent 4 hours that morning in Florida figuring out what happened, meeting with the consignor, and meeting with the buyers who were in attendance at FUN. In as many instances as possible, we worked out a deal with the consignor so the bidder got to buy the item at a fair price well below the reserve and we paid the consignor and made up the difference out of our own pockets, which we believed was more than fair considering that we had every legal right based on the terms to negate the sale in the event of a misplaced reserve.

Looking back on the situation, we absolutely should have called those bidders (like WindyCity) who were not in attendance at FUN that morning and dealt with them the same as the bidders we sat down with in person. I regret having not done that. I won't make excuses, we made some mistakes that morning with how this was handled, and I take full responsibility for that serious lapse in customer service.

Though things went pretty darn smooth at the Heritage FUN Signature Sales, with 8,000+ bidders and $61MM in coins and currency sold to 2,950 unique bidders, we learned from this incident and have since placed a double check system in place to help insure this doesn't happen again. If it does, hopefully we will handle it better. Steve, Jim and I have been involved with rare coins since childhood, we love what we do and we don't take it for granted. We are working every day to make the customer experience as good as we can, whether buyer, seller, bidder or consignor, which is one of the reasons we have been the only company to disclose reserves on-line so you know if you are bidding against a real bidder or against a consignors reserve. We know that they key to customer confidence is transparency, and we learn more every day.

This forum seems to be nice place for some people (not WindyCity who is a first class guy in my book) to throw out random attacks on us while hiding behind the anonymity of a username. You certainly have every right to do so, but if you truly want to resolve your problem I invite you to email me directly to Greg@HeritageGalleries.com and let me see if I or someone on our staff can either fix your problem or explain why we did what we did. Even though I'd love to, in the litigious society in which we live in we won't get into a public debate on a Forum with anyone about their business dealings with us, even to defend ourselves when we are confident in the fairness and reasonableness of our position.

Thank you all for your input.

Sincerely,
Greg Rohan

===
Gregory J. Rohan
President
Heritage Galleries & Auctioneers
3500 Maple Avenue, 17th floor
Dallas, Texas 75219-3941
Phone: 214-528-3500/800-USCOINS(872-6467)
Direct fax: 214-528-2596
Email to: Greg@HeritageGalleries.com
Assistant: Vandy Little 214-252-4218 Email:Vandy@HeritageGalleries.com
===
Join www.HeritageCoins.com. Please also visit www.HeritageGalleries.com and www.HeritageComics.com. Over 185,000 members!

PTVETTER

A proper response from Heritage.

That's just my position

RegistryCoin

<< <i>This forum seems to be nice place for some people (not WindyCity who is a first class guy in my book) to throw out random attacks on us while hiding behind the anonymity of a username. >>


Most all of us here in nice place know each other by proper name, if not by face... just hang around a bit. Most all of us here aren't throwing out random attacks, but recalling an experience, probably a bad one, probably one that was discussed to some end with one of your people.
ps. "pretty darn smooth" isn't good enough w/o flexibility. If you make a mistake, grappling for the "fine print" conclusion in your favor, doesn't seem appropriate.

RBinTex

Glad it all worked out

Robgetty

It seems like an honest mistake, and the principles involved are now satisfied.
I know that I make occasional mistakes, it is not unreasonable in an auction
that size that someone else did too.

monsterman

>>>> My faith in Heritage has been restored and I now feel very comfortable doing business with them again. I only wish Greg and I had spoken immediately after the auction. >>>


over the years i have dealt with greg rohan i expected nothing less of him than your satisfaction...he is a true professional

gregg bingham