The consumers will always complain about price hikes. Their best bet is to just do it anyways. From a business perspective I doubt their submissions would drop.
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So prices have gone up across the board, yet quality has gone down, and the only solution you see is to⌠raise prices? Maybe to improve service they should dip into their profits and just hire more workers. (we know that wonât happen LOL)
honestly, this terrible service is here to stay. business is booming. no need to improve and take on more overhead if they can get away with it. PSA had a standard and now the bar has been permanently lowered.
I know not everyone is okay with paying $15 per card on a bulk order, but I personally am willing to pay that much. If paying $15 dollars allows for faster, better quality service and provides a better quality of life for card graders, then it is worth it to me.
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Prices have not increased with the level of growth. The recent price increase is still a fraction of the growth.
I would be fine with that. As a few people have said in the past, thereâs a lot of low value and/or modern cards being graded that really shouldnât be. A healthy price increase might make people think twice about the quality of cards they are sending.
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if Iâm making 20 sales a day and making 200.00 profit within that infrastructure then suddenly start making 40 sales a day, what do you do? How about doubling your infrastructure which would produce double your profits without affecting shipping times. 400.00 profit beats 200.00 profit unless you donât care about profitsâŚwhich IS sometimes the case but thatâs another story.
I certainly wouldnât double my prices to encourage fewer sales and less profits.
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I sincerely canât believe you guys made the above two comments. âSlow down submissionsâ and âmaking people think twiceâ about how they utilize the service by cutting back. You guys would be on the street if I ran or owned the business;)
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Exactly. The profits keep going up and up but theyâre keeping their infrastructure at the same level which makes no sense. If you want all this business and you want to keep taking all these orders then you should make sure youâre equipped with enough staff to actually fulfill them in a timely manner
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âIncrease infrastructureâ isnât pushing a button. Itâs a process. Part of that process is getting a pace they can handle.
Ebay sales analogies are irrelevant. The grading process is inherently time consuming. It takes a negligible amount of time to ship twice as many packages compared to twice as many cards to grade. Hiring someone to do a remedial task like shipping packages is also much easier than hiring and teaching graders.
Also increasing prices lowers volume while keeping the same profit margin.
The worst part of the whole situation has to be the daily life of a employee of PSA. After a full day of non stop grading and being pressed by bosses to get more done. If I was a current employee at PSA I picture myself sitting there at a tiny desk constantly feeling like a robot grading cards all day. And i picture there being boxes to the ceiling of customers orders you also have to grade and organize and case. Than go to computer and log everything. It just sounds so exhausting. I donât know what itâs really like there currently but it has to be hell on earth as a employee
If I read the article correctly theyâve already hired a firm to evaluate the efficiency of their current process with their current processing capacities. If that firm recommends Opening new offices and expanding further then thatâs still going to further delay at the current time frames. Opening a new store pulls employees that could be grading away to train new employees and will ultimately increase the cost of the end product.
At least the employees have a job. Anyone should be grateful for that.
This isnât rocket science though. I know a hundred people that could step right in to any of those positions with minimal trainingâŚone or two days. Also, I didnât say âeBayâ. Any company that sells a product or service would apply. Say a pizza joint is backed up on deliveryâs by two hours every night. Is the answer to change the price of a 20.00 pizza to 40.00 or is there a better solution?
To use increases to discourage sales, at the expense of profit, wellâŚthatâs a new one on me.
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The increase of price wouldnât be at the expense of profit though. This is simply a question of demand elasticity which is why the pizza comparison doesnât work so well. If you raise the price of pizza, consumers have plenty of alternatives which means any change in price will dramatically change demand aka high elasticity. With grading, this isnât the case as you realistically have two options, PSA or BGS. So if PSA were to change their price, I would imagine that demand would change but not by the same amount that price did. Obviously we canât know for certain unless the change is implemented, but I would bet that the demand for PSA grading is somewhat inelastic.
Your assuming thereâs other pizza places in the delivery area. I didnât say that there were.
Demand elasticity is an after the price change effect on demand. Again, totally unresponsive to anything I said.
Having two options, BGS and PSA, has nothing to do with my point either. I was simply explaining psaâs situation.
Yes, PSA grading would be inelastic if the price went up a little. It would NOT be inelastic if the price doubled or a monthly special cut the price in half.
You are sadly mistaking if you truly believe price doesnât matter which you DID say, â but I would bet that the demand for PSA grading is somewhat inelasticâ. Reductions (monthly specials) have always affected submissions as would a prohibitive increase in price.
You had great answers to questions that werenât asked:*
I have been collecting modern sports cards pretty heavily the last 4 years, grading the last 2 years. I am apart of 3 other sports forums and these questions come up just as often as they do on here. I can tell you a lot of people would not be sending modern sports card to PSA if the bulk price was changed to $15. Many already prefer BGS over PSA for sports cards and this would just push more people to BGS. Both services have their issues but PSA has had a lot more negative talk over on the sports forums.
As for Pokemon it is hard to tell how it would impact, but I donât think that is the solution. I know demand has increased even though they have pretty much got rid of quarterly specials but they have already increased the price considerably over the last few years. When I first got into grading Pokemon cards one quarterly special I got for bulk was $5.50 per card, (normal specials would not be this low $6 was more common) now the current cheapest price is $8.50 per card that is over a 50% increase in price. If we push that bulk price to $15 that is another 75% increase in price seems insane.
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My response was mainly aimed at the claim that profit would suffer if they were to raise prices. I brought up the point of only having two options as that is one of the the reasons why demand for PSA grading is somewhat inelastic. If we both agree that PSA grading is fairly inelastic, then they can afford to raise prices as demand change wouldnât be greater than price change. Obviously PSA grading isnât perfectly inelastic as price changes do change demand, I am not denying that. I was just stating that I think that PSA can raise prices without hurting profit.
I was simply answering the question from a customerâs standpoint. I would be ok with higher prices in exchange for a higher quality of service and quicker turnaround times. Iâm assuming that PSA can accomplish that without sacrificing profitability, but perhaps Iâm an outlier customer type and Iâm wrong about that. They certainly know their customer base better than I do.
There are different ways to run businesses, from low quality / low margin / high volume to high quality / high margin / low volume. Obviously if raising prices would lose them money theyâre not going to do that. But if they could maintain or increase profitability by improving the service and charging more, with less volume, while also resulting in a more satisfied customer base, why wouldnât they consider that?
Any amount? I did say a minimal amount wouldnât affect anything, Going to 15.00 bulk Iâd have to disagree with you. That increase would hurt profits because if not, why wouldnât they do it?
Yea I think we agree in general. Obviously PSA is going to know by how much they can increase their rates by much better than I do, but I donât see a 5-10% increase each year until they hit an inflection point being out of the question.