BGS No Longer Guaranteeing 10, 20 and 45-Day Turnaround

http://www.beckett.com/news/beckett-grading-changes-turnaround-time-guarantee-policy/

"After much discussion, we decided to make a change to one of the things Beckett Grading has always been known for. Starting in 2017, we will continue to guarantee turnaround times on 2- and 5-day submissions. Those aren’t changing. However, we are eliminating the guaranteed turnaround times on 10-, 20- and 45-day service levels.

But that doesn’t mean there are big delays in getting your grading done. In fact, we’re hoping the change is barely noticeable. Let me explain the change, why we decided to make it and exactly what we will offer on the service you select.

Our main aim with this shift is to give your cards the time and care they deserve. We stand by our guarantee. But to make those guaranteed turnaround times, it meant some long days to get it done. When you look at cards for long periods of time or work in production, it’s draining. In this industry, that can increase the odds of something going wrong. That’s the last thing anybody wants, especially the Beckett Grading team.

We want to ensure your cards that are graded and encased are given the time and quality you expect and we demand of ourselves.

We know there are times you need your cards by a specific date or time. Maybe you’re at a show. Maybe they’re for a gift. Perhaps you simply don’t want to wait for your prized possessions. So what we’re doing is adding a five-day window to the 10-, 20- and 45-day levels of service.

This means our current 10-day guarantee becomes a 10-15 day guarantee service. The current 20-day guarantee becomes a 20-25-day service. The 45-day guarantee becomes a 45-50-day turnaround. In most instances, we don’t think this should make a huge difference for most situations. And just because we’re opening up a bit of a window doesn’t mean we won’t do our best to get you your cards back even faster.

Again, the 2- and 5-day service levels see no change."

I'm not big into the grading unless its vintage, and that's more just for authentication purposes than anything, so maybe I'm not the best person to give a judgement here but nothing in this release seems unreasonable. Is it fluffed a little when it talks about long days and getting it right? Yeah maybe, but there is a pearl of truth there I imagine. It would be nice if it came with a modest price break, but I can't imagine that was even considered.

I like how that article carefully detailed what adding 5 to 10/20/45 days would equal.

Hopefully they think about lowering the price per graded card if it can take and extra week to grade.

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hive17 said:

I like how that article carefully detailed what adding 5 to 10/20/45 days would equal.

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I was struggling to figure it out so I was grateful

Collecting: Phil Bickford, Brandon Wood (still), Yankees and Rockies

Quite good potential insight of BGS. If business is so great, why are they understaffed at BGS? "Long hours" and "don't give the cards the quality time they deserve" likely means there is so much turnover at BGS that it affects the service quality. If no signficant turnover and related training costs of new employees is going on, maybe BGS found overtime labor very expensive to meet guarantees or there were so many missed guarantees even working long hours that it's expensive to offer free gradings or whatever their make-good for missing a service deadline is. Maybe BGS just wants to push people into the 2 or 5 day guarantees at more money by adding to the time it takes to grade cards at the 10,20, 45 day levels.

chris19978 said:

Hopefully they think about lowering the price per graded card if it can take and extra week to grade.

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My first thought as well. Maybe each day past the 10 day window is $1 off per card. They pushed my last sub to the 11th hour on a 10 day.

Just like comc raising prices, I see no issue with this. Can you imagine sheer amount of cards they receive?! You can only add so much help without sacrificing quality control.

A company I do work for sent in approx 1500 cards in February. Rep stated approx 20 day turn around and at 8/card on the deal. Order was not returned til September and billed at 14/card. It was a crazy situation, and I couldn't beleive how the service was. Lots of errors in the order etc. They are more than understaffed.

Ryan



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This is just sad. There's a shortage of graders, a huge backlog of cards, and/or some kind of mismanagement. They were always squishy on their guarantees. "Yes we received your cards 4 days ago, but the timer doesn't start till they're entered in the system, which will be in a couple days maybe." "There was a weather event when the temperature dropped below 50 on Sunday and the whole city shut down, so we're giving ourselves and extra 3 days to grade your crap." "Sorry, our guaranteed time-frame excludes national holidays, and we don't limit ourselves to one particular nation, and it is Founder's Fortnight in Elbonia." Yes, they've always been known for this, and now they're just making it worse by making it a "feature" instead of a "lie." Have to laugh at the idea they'd give a discount for orders that go beyond the suggested timeframe. They couldn't possibly manage that even if they wanted to. And I haven't bothered to look, but I wonder if prices are going up on the 2-5 day levels, or any of them.

Yes, grading cards all day is hard. Physically taxing, mentally exhausting, and ripe for inconsistency. But that's what they've been selling for the last 17 years. To complain about it now and use it as a rationalization for diminishing their services without even relabeling them is disingenuous.

My first thought was, if business is booming, why not expand the business?

"Yeah, we are booked solid with work, so we are going to cut back on our service and not hire additional help to handle the volume." - said no one ever.

RStadlerASU22 said:

A company I do work for sent in approx 1500 cards in February. Rep stated approx 20 day turn around and at 8/card on the deal. Order was not returned til September and billed at 14/card. It was a crazy situation, and I couldn't beleive how the service was. Lots of errors in the order etc. They are more than understaffed.

Ryan



Sent from my SM-G920V using Freedom Card Board mobile app

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That crazy I would think they can actually fight that and get at least the 6 dollars a card extra they were charged. That is $9,000.00 more than what should of been charged. You would think you could make a computer used with a scanner to grade the cards and they would need less workers and save a bunch of time. I would love to know how long a card is looked at before making a final grade I would guess 15 to 20 minutes but I am not sure but anything over that would seem not worth the cost they charge for them. I would not be surprised if it's 5 minutes or less either as they push through the cards to be graded. A computer just seems like the ideal option for most of the grading and only the centering my need to be check by a person.

This has been an issue at BGS for quite some time. The fact is they just do not hire enough graders to handle the mass of cards. They also pay their graders peanuts for the work they do. If business is booming which it is hire more qualified people. This new plan will prevent me from subbing as many cards as I used to. Its honestly an insult to people who have graded with them for many years. It stinks from the head down.

chris19978 said:

That crazy I would think they can actually fight that and get at least the 6 dollars a card extra they were charged. That is $9,000.00 more than what should of been charged. You would think you could make a computer used with a scanner to grade the cards and they would need less workers and save a bunch of time. I would love to know how long a card is looked at before making a final grade I would guess 15 to 20 minutes but I am not sure but anything over that would seem not worth the cost they charge for them. I would not be surprised if it's 5 minutes or less either as they push through the cards to be graded. A computer just seems like the ideal option for most of the grading and only the centering my need to be check by a person.

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We did, the cards were basically held "hostage". Went through multiple avenues Inc CC partial charge back etc. We were really disappointed and yes, it was $10kish more than it should have been. Owner has more patience than I.

Ryan

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chris19978 said:

That crazy I would think they can actually fight that and get at least the 6 dollars a card extra they were charged. That is $9,000.00 more than what should of been charged. You would think you could make a computer used with a scanner to grade the cards and they would need less workers and save a bunch of time. I would love to know how long a card is looked at before making a final grade I would guess 15 to 20 minutes but I am not sure but anything over that would seem not worth the cost they charge for them. I would not be surprised if it's 5 minutes or less either as they push through the cards to be graded. A computer just seems like the ideal option for most of the grading and only the centering my need to be check by a person.

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LOL. It is less than one minute. 5 minutes would be too much for a trained eye - but certainly what they spend is crazy. While a computer sounds like a great idea, keep in mind you still have to spend time loading it in and all that. I do agree that centering is always an issue and there have been documented cases where people send in for regrades and the centering changes. Than is one area that should never change. I have not graded much the last few years because of many issues I have with ALL the grading companies. My main grader of choice is for Beckett, but not for their great service, prices, wonderful alternative with BCCG and wonderful labels that NEVER change(end sarcasm here), it is for the one good thing they have going - the CASES. While it seems like there have been some rare instances where a BGS slab can be tampered with without too much damage, PSA and other companies tend to be flimsy, tamper issues and just plain flaws that cause the card to be damaged on the inside.
Grading is here to stay and we all might have a better way to do it in theory, until the corruption and all the little flaws that each company has, we will always find things wrong and not be happy.
I for one agree that with all the issues I have had with Beckett Grading, it seems every now and then they tend to chalk one more problem up with their business model. One day I would like them to answer questions I have asked and fix some of my graded(and lack of grade) on some of my cards before I go and invest too much more money with them.

Just my two cents...

chris19978 said:

A computer just seems like the ideal option for most of the grading and only the centering my need to be check by a person.

Click to expand...

centering could be done by computer. I'm surprised BGS isn't using computers to speed up the process of each card. The grader could lay the card down on a table, click a button on the computer and an imager could take the picture of the card, auto-sense the border, do the measurements and calculate the left/right and up/down centering percentages and do a quick measurement of the card and if the card seems not the right dimension, flag the grader to check the card size. Grader than picks up card, does surface scans for surface flaws, inspects corners, grades the boldness of the auto if needed and then is done other than slabbing it.

DISCLAIMER-- The below sorta my husbands take on what they said. I tried wording it best I could-- he mumbled some stuff about making sure the sarcasm wasn't laid on too deep ::facepalm::


"After much discussion, we decided to make a change to one of the things Beckett Grading has always been known for. Starting in 2017, we will continue to guarantee turnaround times on 2- and 5-day submissions. Those aren’t changing. However, we are eliminating the guaranteed turnaround times on 10-, 20- and 45-day service levels.

TRANSLATION: Our bread & butter money makers will remain commitments. But we see now why our main competitor has flexible "approximate" times and we need our profits raised more so we are copying that business model since no one can really do anything about grading companies taking more time. Seems to work well for our competitor and they seem not to have lost any business .

But that doesn’t mean there are big delays in getting your grading done. In fact, we’re hoping the change is barely noticeable. Let me explain the change, why we decided to make it and exactly what we will offer on the service you select.

TRANSLATION: We are hoping the change doesn't impact business too much . Now we'll explain why we had to do it.

Our main aim with this shift is to give your cards the time and care they deserve. We stand by our guarantee. But to make those guaranteed turnaround times, it meant some long days to get it done. When you look at cards for long periods of time or work in production, it’s draining. In this industry, that can increase the odds of something going wrong. That’s the last thing anybody wants, especially the Beckett Grading team.

TRANSLATION: Too many public errors and paying out of missed deadlines forced our hands. New owners don't want to hire or pay for better staff so hence the solution sort of dictated itself. By the way the entire team of graders is exhausted from the amount of labor required to handle business and one of us will most likely drop on the job with a health problem if it continues. A few of us already are experiencing issues as can be seen by the numerous errors making headlines. Nobody wants more of them especially our customers

We want to ensure your cards that are graded and encased are given the time and quality you expect and we demand of ourselves.

We know there are times you need your cards by a specific date or time. Maybe you’re at a show. Maybe they’re for a gift. Perhaps you simply don’t want to wait for your prized possessions. So what we’re doing is adding a five-day window to the 10-, 20- and 45-day levels of service.

This means our current 10-day guarantee becomes a 10-15 day guarantee service. The current 20-day guarantee becomes a 20-25-day service. The 45-day guarantee becomes a 45-50-day turnaround. In most instances, we don’t think this should make a huge difference for most situations. And just because we’re opening up a bit of a window doesn’t mean we won’t do our best to get you your cards back even faster.

Again, the 2- and 5-day service levels see no change."

TRANSLATION: Nothing we can do about the times-- we'll work had to get it back on time but no promises at all if you go the cheap route. This is the way of the world now in grading when you go cheap-- you get to wait longer .

Maybe more expensive times will work ?? Maybe ?? We need more profit- think about it ..