This discussion adds more weight to the idea that eBay would be a happier place for everyone if messages had an opt-out feature.
No perception of poor customer service, no nonsense from buyers and non-buyers. Important things go straight to eBay.
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I actually think the answer is just to improve your customer service if you’re operating at this scale. Either that or just don’t sweat it when people complain about poor customer service on message boards.
As much as we individual sellers “get” how problematic buyer are, if you are running a large and serious operation then you are working under a different set of expectations. For example, poor customer experience from Ebay itself or Fanatics Collect is far less excusable because of their scale. There’s a line between an individual seller and an auction platform where the expectations begin to shift.
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It depends how much a person wants to or cares to work for a sale.
I almost always respond in good faith to everyone who messages me, and many times I do get sales in the end.
I have a fair number of low pop niche cards listed. I recently had a guy who messaged me trying to take the transaction off ebay. He evaded the eBay censorship. I bet a lot of people here would have ignored them outright.
I messaged him and politely told him I want to stick to eBay, and I patiently answered his other questions. Turned out he has a high rank PSA Set Registry in that same niche category. He bought multiple cards from me at prices no one else is paying. Now I have a new direct contact I can reach out to when I get my next PSA return.
Everyone here is going to operate their business differently, but personally I would sooner leave this space before ever sacrificing on customer service.
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I’ve always felt that I see a lot of entitlement from the selling perspective on E4. Far too many times I see low effort descriptions, minimal pictures, and still you have this common attitude with “I won’t waste my time responding unless I think it’s a serious buyer” kind of thing.
Ebay is this wonderful place of incredible item exposure where you sit from your own home, print your own label without going anywhere, and in many cases, don’t even go to the post office and walk 30 feet to a box or an office and have a local carrier pick it up. And all you have to do in return is advertise your item. Imagine going into a retail store and seeing very little dimension to a photo and asking to see it and having the owner have such an attitude. I understand there are ridiculous buyers out there, just as there are ridiculous sellers with their time wasting titles and prices taking up space on my searches which significantly adds up over the years. A side note, it is completely fair to complain about high fees on high value (including fee’ing on sales tax and other issues), but ebay still is incredible, no doubt.
Outside of one single instance where a buyer tried to falsely return a sealed pack wherein I won the case, I’ve never had one single bad experience selling on ebay in 13 years. I’ve sold possibly 3000 items or so. I always respond, I’m always kind, patient, and polite, and I almost always have and attract positive people and experiences. I’m just speaking for the generality. You cannot fix bad people with bad intentions or some unavoidable bad luck situations.
I bought an item from z&g a few months ago and it took them 2 weeks to ship it. It’s just a card so I wasn’t about to message them, but if it were anything else, that would have been completely unacceptable (it still is, they just have the fortune of knowing most people aren’t in a rush to get a useless collectible). They do need better service and from what I am reading, communication. It is part of the experience of selling on ebay. I have pity for those who find this incredible way of selling items and making money this easily — especially in a hobby where for many others beside myself saw incredible price increases allowing you to make ridiculous profits in the first place — to be something to feel entitled about.
If you don’t like the way the world is reacting to you, change the way you react to the world. Of course, I’m not going to change anyone’s mind, but I’ve felt compelled to express myself just as others have. 
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i think part of the issue is ebay’s buyer friendly policies so no one wants to deal with a potential problem buyer and the easiest way to avoid entirely is just dont respond.
although in pokemon specifically you can basically remove all risk by only selling >$250 single slabs graded by only psa/bgs/cgc so everything goes through auth
but personally i’ve never had anyone buy anything after you answer a question that can be determined from the listing 
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Buying through Z/G–EASY. Have never had any issues.
Consigning through Z/G–also EASY. Why would I take on the hassle of selling items one at a time and pay ebay at least 14% when James will handle everything for me for as low as 5% for higher end and no more than 12%? And his auctions have tons of eyes on them–more than I could draw in. And he has done great to get the nonpaying bidders down by banning the S out of people and it has not hurt the sales or sales prices one bit that I can tell.
Literally mail him a package with your info in it and like clockwork the items will be up and auctions listed exactly the Sunday to Sunday he advertises. In his time in the hobby he has established (ie. EARNED) a trustworthy, honest reputation for himself and although I don’t know James personally, I root for people like him and want them to remain in this space as a force of honesty and credibility with a good dose of knowledge and experience to back it up.
He has been uploading YouTube videos about their upscaling/growth issues, he’s moved from AZ to IN within the past year and kept things rolling along which is very hard to do when you have a young family. As I understand it his wife has now stepped in to help with the disbursements and finances and he’s going through the process of handing things off to others as they continue growing.
OK, so what would I like to see improved? Email response time can vary, which he freely admits is a problem he’s working to rectify. Replies for me vary from minutes to 3 days. Also, do I get an email when someone doesn’t pay within the week when I think one of my items is sold? No, I don’t. But when I check my listings a week later, if it’s not paid the item listing will say “re-listed” and for everything else they show as paid on the invoice they email me. They used to email me Sunday evening, now I get the email by Tuesday. He relayed his payout times got pushed back by a few days, but he’s never missed a deadline with me and has always worked with me on any tweaks–ie. listing details, moving things from BIN to auction, price changes, etc. The volume of emails he gets must be very intense. And the bigger problems he’s had to solve are not anything I would want to take on.
My opinion is you show people like this some grace. I am as merciful with good people as I am merciless with scumbags. I am a Z/G fanboy mostly because I get to choose who to buy from and who to sell through and James seems like good people to me and I trust if there is an issue he will work toward an equitable solution. I want him to remain in this space since we need good folks in this space–especially now when the bad actors are proliferating. Plus his rates and selling outcomes are great–better than I could do–and for me that’s the bonus while for most it’s probably the number one thing and nothing wrong with that, either. I’d just rather give him my money than someone else.
Sorry for the wall of text, just my two or twenty cents as this topic appears to continue generating responses and I’ve definitely got some experience with and thoughts about Z/G–take or leave them.
People should understand problem bidders and buyers have created a ton of work for him and there is not upside financially to dealing with them–it’s the cost of doing business and something I would personally target since they only COST him time/money and could also damage his credibility if the non-payment percentage becomes too highly and consigners get frustrated.
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I agree with many things you said but want to highlight why E4 is more sympathetic towards sellers. We skew towards more experience, so the scenarios shared where a buyer is messaging a seller are typically unproductive or unreasonable. For example, every few hours I have someone who messages me about my illustrator. Almost 100% of the messages are pointless, usually rude or something immature.
With that said, I had two sales recently that resulted from messages. One from a repeat buyer who ended up buying a few thousand dollars worth of cards. Another from someone who really loved komiya art and their warm hearted message resulted in me taking a lower price on an already cheap card.
Anyway, I just wanted to add some context for sellers responding to messages, it’s more about the statical reality of most shared here being unproductive. Either way, this has nothing to do with zng. There is a fine line between ignoring bad messages vs not running your business. I couldn’t agree more that things like not shipping for weeks is just not properly running your business.
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I’d echo everything said in this post.
I have used Z&G for years as a buyer via eBay and more recently as a consignor and have only had good experiences. He’s chosen to shave off a little bit of the (mostly unnecessary) “customer service” end in exchange for offering amazing consignment rates. As a result of that, his platform sees a huge variety of cards at all price tiers come through that generally sell for fair market value.
I’ve used other consignment services with flashy apps and customer service, and they tend to give lower percentage payouts, fetch lower prices and have higher unpaid rates. I’m not throwing shade at any service specifically. There are quite a few options in the hobby now competing for business, but I mostly use Z&G because I get excellent value for my cards, the service level is adequate for my needs, and the process is very smooth. Simple as that.
James’ YouTube videos give insight into his character and although I don’t know him personally, he clearly operates with integrity. If buyers have issues with his customer service, eBay provides the appropriate channels for that. I assume most of the messages he gets are people used to special treatment or fishing for partial refunds anyway.
As a consigner, if I could get better rates elsewhere, I would go there, and have no specific loyalty to Z&G. I still buy from him too because of the sheer volume going through his store, he often has the cards that pique my interest.
I also realize I’m posting this on a fourum owned by a competing consignor so there’s some sensitivity around the topic. Sorry. 
For those who want better customer service as consignors and are willing to pay for it, there may be better options.
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Also check to see Sunday night if your items have been relisted. If not, they were paid for and you will get a paid invoice on about Tuesday depending upon your preferred pay out method. They usually contact consigners before paying out to verify the payment avenue. I think they give buyers 4 days to pay now but I’d recommend not bothering to email them about “if it was paid or not” and just “trust the process” as you have already mentioned.
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The idea is to not be cynical. I have just as much experience as the next person who doesn’t do insane bulk, but I certainly don’t list 5 figure items or any illustrator. Surely you know having an illustrator listed as a collection highlight with no serious intention to sell unless the crazy price is met will meet all sorts of exceptional and outlandish messages simply because we live on planet earth. Actually, just having an illustrator listed period will invite this in general. That isn’t really relevant in this scenario..
However, it’s good that you, a person I know to be quite cynical about messages through your years of comments, isn’t completely shut off to general correspondence. It does go without saying that I never mean to imply that a rude message won’t be met with a rude answer. And you also happen to be a person who has internet reputation so you probably get more rude messages out of nowhere which aren’t usual for the ordinary unknown pokemon or hobby seller. Reputation and presence invites more of the scorn, but again this something I know you know. It’s an unfortunate reality with the internet, but being someone like you will get the exceptional and skewed end of the brunt of the “bad” side of selling.
This whole debate is brought up at least a few times a year, and I always want to stand up for buyers, because a lot of the things I see are ridiculous and/or entitled.
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We are on a similar thought process, although I do try to respond to the majority of them. It really helps we use “Templify” and have a couple dozen responses to the most common questions, saves us a bunch of time.
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Memes aside, I’ve purchased from Z&G many times and haven’t ever had an issue.
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I think I’m cynical in conversation about messages but optimistic in practice! 
And you are right about receiving added scorn for being a public figure. Honestly it just feels good to see that acknowledged as it’s an internal struggle that I try not to share. I definitely had less negative experiences before doing videos. It’s why I stopped. Perhaps I have a soft spot for people like zng, as we are in similar positions.
Therapy aside, if they or any business can’t get packages out in a week, they need to downsize or hire more employees. Logistics was one of the biggest reasons why I switched my auctions to PWCC/Fanatics.
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I don’t have a dog in the fight but scaling or descaling a business does take time.
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Scaling back on volume can be done in an instant by raising the price of services. PSA certainly showed us that during the previous boom.
Not saying I think Z&G should do that (I don’t have much opinion as I’ve only consigned with him once), but it’s definitely a way to put downward pressure on the volume of orders, if there’s too many to keep up with.
James won’t deal outside eBay in case anyone wastes time trying to get ahold of him. Tried to do a deal for multiple items on IG but he said he only sells on eBay. Fair enough, he must be getting a tasty cut on fee %
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People consign with him specifically to sell on ebay. That aside, the whole process gets a lot messier for him from a reporting / transparency standpoint if he starts doing deals off platform. Imo it makes complete sense why he wouldn’t want to hassle with it.
If my business was built around selling items on ebay on behalf of my customers, I wouldn’t turn around and sell their items on other platforms either - that’s not what the customers signed up for.
Your last sentence implies he’s made that decision out of greed, I don’t think that’s a fair statement.
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He has already responded that he will not increase prices unless as a last resort.
He does not want to change prices every few months because demand changes, many customers would complain. Packages already shipped would be sent back because they did not know about the change etc. It would create too much confusion.
PSA is much easier, there is a format to choose etc. manual operations, where with ZANDG it is not necessary. Send with a note and it’s done.
This is my experience with ZandG as a buyer and as a consignor.
Consignor :
I have been using his service for years, some problems have happened, but they have all been solved in the best way, you just need to be patient.
The problems that have happened are:
- forgotten payout.
- forgotten to list some cards.
I repeat, they have all been solved in a short time.
Buyer :
I have purchased many cards, never had problems.
When purchasing graded cards there are not many questions to ask.
If you go and check his negative feedback on Ebay, they are all the type of people that I would avoid and block immediately.
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scratches on the slabs
Anyone who has ever graded knows that it is impossible to have 0 scratches on the slabs, if you can’t accept this fact, do not buy/collect graded. Have always a PlasticX ready is a must if you collect graded cards. -
slow shipping
No one can control the speed of the couriers. All the purchases I have made have been shipped within 5 days. Of course it can happen that packages have not been shipped for weeks, 1 in 1000 “oversights” can happen… -
Combined shipping
All my shipments have been combined, except for cards with values over $250 that are shipped to Ebay Authenticity, I read many who complain that it does not combine shipping, it seems strange to me, perhaps the buyers paid too quickly without giving it time to combine? Or other factors, certainly not a common things.
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Bought dozens of cards from them, no issues at all. Great experience
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I’ve purchased from them a few times without issue. I’ve only ever asked one question about shipping cards to them for consigning and it was answered within a few hours.
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