Experience with COMC
TMCerebus
Posts: 18 ✭
So, I send COMC a number of boxes of PSA slabbed cards to sell for me on eBay.
One week after tracking shows that COMC received the boxes ... I had no confirmation of their arrival from COMC.
Their website says acknowledgement (and processing beginning) is usually 1-2 business days after postal arrival. The website also says to contact them IF you have not received confirmation after one week.
Since that was my case, I sent them an email identifying the tracking numbers and mentioning that it has been one week.
I have to send this email three times, over three days, to get any kind of response.
When they reply, they give the normal "we are busy, yada yada yada".
I told them that I'm new to COMC and that our relationship is off to a "bad start".
The COMC rep responds that they will be returning all of my boxes to me. I wasn't asked if I wanted this, I wasn't consulted ... they are just returning the boxes and don't want my business!
And yes, they said I'd be financially responsible for the shipping charges to have them returned.
PROBABLY good that I learned about COMC early on, and not during the selling of my cards.
Comments
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It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
I've been on COMC for quite awhile. Primarily as a buyer. I have also sent them cards to process a handful of times.
On the processing side, I have not had any issues with them posting receipt of my packages. That said, I have heard this more recently, after they did the slab special. I sent in some junky slabs that I got in a collection, since they were doing the no processing fee thing, but I guess I was lucky - I didn't have an issue with them posting receipt of my shipment. Those items are delayed in processing, though - they were supposed to be processed by the 20th, but my dates are pushed back to late September. Kind of annoying, but for zero processing fee, I really can't complain. I do like selling on there, though - I can price my stuff, choose to receive offers if I want to, don't have to package or ship anything that sells, and don't have to communicate with anyone. Plus, it gives me some seed money to buy stuff I actually want on the site.
I really like the platform as a buyer. Been able to add PC cards and cards for set builds. They recently raised their shipping rates, so your common cards that sell for $1 or less just got significantly more expensive, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not bad. For lower-end cards, I just accumulate and then do a bulk shipment. For higher dollar cards, or cards I want more quickly, I will pay the expedited shipping, within reason.
All-in-all, I like the site. It's not without its problems, but I like it.
customer service is dog poop. about 50% of the cards i receive have corner issues, probably because of the way they stpre the cards. ive spent a lot of money with them but usually come away a little disappointed.
Thanks for the heads up. Wont go that route for consigning. Feel like when I see their stuff I am hesitant to bid on it. Maybe cause they seem like one of those sellers that say we have 5 of a thing and they act like it doesn't matter which one you get. Like hey we got 5, you want one click Buy It Now. So I probably wont buy from them either after that story.
That's not really how it works. When there is a BIN listing from COMC on ebay for which COMC has multiples of, you are able to select the card you are buying. The scan will change when you select each item.
For COMC auctions on eBay, you are bidding on the actual card you see. For these, though, you do need to be careful because it could be a card that COMC gave EX to NM notation when it was processed, but that is not spelled out in the eBay listing. I did win a card in a COMC auction that way once, so I'm now very careful in doing some homework on the card if I want to bid on it.
Customer service is certainly not great - the OP's story is consistent with other rumblings I've heard. My only need to deal with customer service was when I won a COMC auction, paid for it on eBay, but realized the auto-pay function on COMC was turned on, meaning they took the amount out of my COMC balance, so I ended up double paying. It took a couple of days, but they fixed the situation and I got reimbursed. I messaged them through eBay and messaged them directly via email. The help I got was through the eBay channel. I did get a response directly from them via email, but it came days later, to which I informed them the siutation was taken care of.
As for dinged up cards, I've had a couple of instances where the card came in with a ding I didn't see on scan. I don't grade, though, so if the issue is you're buying cards with the intent to submit for grading, you're certainly taking a chance. I'm careful to analyze the card that I'm buying and have been satisfied with what I've received for the most part.
I will also say they ship very well - the packages I've received from them are well put together - I have gotten worse packaging from ebay purchases than I have gotten from COMC.
I've subbed 840 raw cards in 2022, and they were on schedule and customer support answered quickly.
I sounds like their graded card promo overwhelmed them causing delays.
Of the 23 raw cards I've bought, mostly 80s and some 70s, I've only had 3 disappointments.
The 16 cards I sent for grading resulted in (2) PSA10s, (8) PSA9s, (5) PSA8s, and (1) PSA5 (that I blame PSA for).
COMC is WAY better than Beckett Marketplace where every card is "NM-MT" and has no picture. Trust me they're not.
The fees are the killer at COMC for sellers. Fees on top of fees. (My fault. Didn't do proper due diligence)
And using COMC credits to buy from Blowout cards, COMC charged me a $20 fee for me to use $250 of MY money.
All of my saved searches on ebay have them specifically excluded as a seller. I've heard so many stories about how bad their service is that I would rather not have a card I want than deal with them.
About 2 weeks ago I was trying to finish a subset of 1962 topps venezuelan cards that cost a few hundred each as compared to their regular topps counterpart of a few dollars. They had a graded venezuelan card that was even properly labeled as venezuelan, listed as a regular topps card. I sent a note, since it was probably a consignment and didn't want the owner to miss out, and instead of correcting their mistake listing it, they just ended the listing.
Instead of "too big to fail" they're maybe "too big to care".
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COMC has been entering new submissions around 7 to 10 business days after receiving them as of late. Due to them getting an influx of submissions from the National and running the graded card submission special.
I have sold over 22,000 cards on COMC since 2018 with minimal issues. Sure, COMC has areas to improve upon with communication being near the top, but they do provide a great service for sellers and buyers overall.
COMC should update their submission page with the current timeline for new submissions being entered into the system. That would eliminate a lot of the worry and inquiries as to why a submission has not been entered in the 1 to 3 business days that the website currently says.
And it is strange that they would return your submissions - can you post the exact messages between you and COMC about that? Feel like were missing a bit of context.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. One thing I will say about Beckett is it can get tricky. I had a similar experience where I handed them cards at a show and maybe it was entered 12 days later and I contacted them and was probably not my best self complaining and talking about what service I paid for and can you change the date or charge me for the cheaper slower service, etc. Even though I didn't make any progress in that convo, think the grades popped surprisingly soon after. Think I had a couple of experiences like this so dont think my speaking out hurt or helped. I think they just take a long time to say Received but they may grade quicker than you'd think after acknowledging receipt. Like maybe they dont enter until they are ready to grade. It might take a while to get cards in hand after grading but me personally dont mind that too much, the impatience is in knowing the grade.
Have not done much with trying to sell raw cards so do find all of the feedback here valuable. That day will probably come soon as I have a ton of not-grading-worthy raw.
At this point I only consign with 4 Sharp Corners and will say I love the experience. I think they have a bad stigma attached to them cause most everyone is bitter that they have seemed to submit a gazillion cards and get better grades on ugly cards than most of us would get. But put that aside and I think of the consignment space as its own world and it works very well. It works great if they are at a show you are at and can just walk up to them and hand them a box or boxes of stuff. Not much paperwork. The whole experience can take a few minutes. Think the customer service is A+. Typically see stuff listed between 10-14 days after I provide it. Payment usually 2 to 3 weeks after the completed auction.
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This did strike me as odd as well. I would think that is not typical behavior to just send them back without any reason. They want the fees, so just sending them back seems unusual.
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Not a great negotiation technique for them to throw out the ultimatum/give up at the beginning of the talk.
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Odd situation all around...
COMC does not turn away paying customers usually. They gain nothing by sending back a submission without getting paid to handle / process it. So, just very odd that they would send back your submission with no reason given.
And as far as locating your entire submission - they receive hundreds of packages per day so your 9 different packages could have been directed to various processing points with some maybe being in the middle of being processed. It isn't as easy as looking in one spot for all of your 9 packages so takes a bit of time to locate them all.
As I said before - having submitted over 23,000 cards to COMC since 2018 - I have encountered very minimal issues using COMC. And those issues were very minor / easily fixed by COMC.