Beckett Grading Suspends 10-Day Service
Well, if you have not heard the rumbles/rumors, we are here to confirm that BGS will be temporarily suspending the 10-day service for the next few weeks. It might sound like a crazy thing to do with the strength of the market and number of cards coming in for grading but it is a move we feel is necessary right now. We are going to pull the curtain back slightly and let you know why we have decided to do this, at one of the busiest times of the year.
-We are closing in on an 11-month turnaround on non-guaranteed orders…that is simply not acceptable or fair to our customers. Our goal during this 10-day service hiatus will be to work on this backlog and get the turnaround back to an acceptable level. The non-guaranteed service was created so people could save some money on their submissions, especially on cards that might have a little lower value or large quantity orders. It was not created to hold our customer’s cards in our vault for a year.
-We are the only service in this industry that continues to offers a 100% money-back-guaranteed turnaround on three service levels (2, 5, and 10-day)*. In this market, that is a crazy thing to offer, but is something we have prided ourselves on for the last 19+ years. The 10-day service is our most popular of those guaranteed services, which is why we selected that one for the change. If you remember, about a year ago, we ran into a similar wave of submissions and adjusted our policies and submission levels. We are getting close to that again, so instead of raising prices or taking the guarantee away, we have decided to do this. We simply don’t think it is fair to rush orders through in order to make the guarantee date, nor do we think it is fair to push 10-day orders past their due date, which we have done to many valued customers.
These are the two main reasons we have decided to suspend the 10-day grading level for the next several weeks. This was a decision made by our staff and from the feedback we received from our customers (at all levels). Our end goal is to get caught up so we can give you the service and product you desire from Beckett. We realize some customers might not submit to Beckett during this time and that is understandable. Of course, it’s not our desire, but we understand it. It is crazy knowing, we are taking our most popular service level away right now but we feel that for the good of the company it is best to slow down so we can speed up. Our goal is to hit all guaranteed submission levels and get our non-guaranteed submissions out in a reasonable timeframe…right now, that is not the case and we are truly sorry.
As always, we want to hear from you. Email us your thoughts, concerns, suggestions, etc to grading@beckett.com.
Sincerely,
The Beckett Grading Staff
*Money-back guarantee is based on orders paying full grading prices/rates. Any discounts or promotions void the guarantee.
Why don’t you guys hire more graders? You’re obviously busy enough to afford it b
Great idea! If you have anyone that is interested in working at Beckett Grading, have them send us a resume. We wish there was a line of people, ready to plug into grading, immediately, but that is harder then it sounds.
Hey,
I sent in a 10 service level that my tracking shows it was received on Monday. I do see it listed under my current orders.
This will still be honored, right?
Sincerely,
Carl Kissa
Yes, your service level begins the first business day after an order is received. It may take a day or two to enter but that doesn’t matter with service level you select.
Is Hiring/Training new graders not an option? Now seems a great time to expand your staff, because you are obviously in a position that more than justifies it.
Of course, adding head count is never popular, so this is a risk management situation…risk losing customers at the cost of not adding more resources.
If you had my cards at a “non-guaranteed service time” for 11 months, I do not think I would continue to use your services…especially with such a volatile market, where a guy can be good last year, great this year, and junk next year, and you have my card of that guy for more than a season.
Yes, hiring and training new graders is a great idea! We need help finding the graders though so if you have someone that might be interested, tell them to send us a resume. We tend to agree with your last paragraph, which is why we are suspending our most popular service. We want to drop that turnaround time as much as possible.
I am glad you are doing something to be proactive about the issues. We have non-guaranteed stuff that has been there for 10 months, and most of the players that were in those have had the market crash on them costing our customers quite a bit of money.
The pricing increase didn’t seem to help quell the issue (so I do hope you consider reducing that back down to its normal rate when you are caught up). Your team might have already thought of this, but I would like to bring it up for your consideration if you haven’t.
When you are caught up, and unlock the 10-day again, I hope you take a phased approach to it and limit submissions. Many use your service, so they will be sitting on cards waiting for it to open again, and the items will build. Once you unlock it again, you will have a floodgate of items that the expectation is that you turn them around in 10 days. As such, I suggest when you first unlock it, only allow X submission then close it again for a week. Then allow X submissions again and close it for a week. Do this until you are no longer saturated so that service levels are what are expected and the cards are treated with the diligence that is expected. While people will complain, it should alleviate the same issue happening again.
Thanks for reading.
Great comments and appreciate your time to send this. We don;t want to raise rates and lower the quality of product/service we provide. We apologize for the extended delay
It is about time you are working on these non guarantee cards. Mine have been there since Aug of 2017
Agreed! We are sorry as that is not fair to you
Thank you for the honesty and integrity!!
We appreciate the comment!
Not an easy decision, I am sure, but feel like you are taking the right steps in rectifying your current situation. To increase the price would have been an easy solution but you took the hard one. Good on you for making the right choice and being open and honest.
Thank you for the comment!
Prices have been going up more often than it used and the 20 day service was took a way. Why not expand higher more people and not close for weeks and shows always have staff on 8 hours shifts around the clock until cought up fully as long as you got the staff to do it. Like to see the 20 day service level back. As for grading why not change the labels to only show subgrades of quad 9.5 and better anything low no subgrades. And the cases that have the extre auto grade on the front for pristine autos 10 only. Other than that lower auto grades are better on the back. This could save you time. I know I sure like have a quad 9.5 show subs and the auto label on the front when I have a 10. But for thing not quad 9.5 I like the sub grades gone.
Great suggestions! First, would love to hire more people to grade. We are constantly looking so if you know anyone interested in grading for us, please have them send us their resume. We truly wish there was a line of people willing to grade and be able to do it quickly. Second, we would love to bring the 20-day turnaround back especially if it was under the non-guaranteed level (price point). Don;t rule it out but we need to get caught up with what is here first. Finally, we have spoken about eliminating sub grades on certain cards, depending on the grades. The idea did not go over well but neither does holding cards as long as we are. It’s a tough spot to be in as Beckett is known for offering sub grades on their modern cards.
So it’s been over a year since myself and customers have received their cards. We were lied to for a year regarding the status of the cards. I guess this explains the terrible turn around. It definitely deterred many of our customers from using BGS ever again. Beckett won’t even compensate us for our troubles.
We hate to hear about the delay and what you were told. Email us your name, location, and job number so we can look into the matter for you. We don;t want to keep your cards any longer then what we have to so let’s see if we can figure out a solution. grading@beckett.com
Nice decision! Keep up with good work.
Thank you!
So no more 10 day service but 5 day for ten more dollars to me that’s is discussing move
on your part
Right now, as mentioned in the press release, we are simply suspending our most popular service so we can catch up with the growing backlog. If the price point isn’t what you are looking to spend, then we have a non-guaranteed level for a lower price. If our goal was to make more money, we would continue to offer 10-day grading and push the lower priced service back even further. As mentioned, it’s not fair right now which is why we made this move.
Is here any people in the place your company is looking for work maybe hire more workers
Always looking to hire more people. If you or someone you know is interested in a job with Beckett, send us your resume.
I ‘d love to be a grader but im in NC.