You are undoubtedly right, and it is incredibly frustrating for the customer.
Personally I would gladly pay twice the market rate for insurance if it meant I would get paid out automatically for the insured dollar amount in the event of a mishap, no questions asked. If such insurance existed like I described I would happily pay the premium for it, and I imagine others would too, because what’s the alternative? Having to argue for your case with an agent trying to avoid a pay out? The current system leads some of us to ditch insurance altogether because we can’t rely on it when it is actually needed.
I think it’s also an issue of the speculation of the grade of the card and what it could have been worth. When we say $100k was lost in reality the ungraded cost may have been $30k and grading fees of $5k (or whatever). The $100k is what would have been if they were graded and sold but that is the future we will never see. I believe this was one of the issues with the insurance payout because of the simple fact that the counterfactual wasn’t present and all they had was the actual cost of grading and whatever they deemed the ungraded card to be worth.
I think
Honestly though, the whole situation is ridiculous. I understand why insurance didn’t cover everything and in cases of parcels being lost it happens. On such a large scale such as this it looks very suspicious and bigger flags need to be raised to see what happened. My only thing is GG not informing the people that their package was lost. haven’t watched either video all the way through (TL;DR) but it seems that was the case. Everyone is wrong, no one is right, and the people got screwed like always.
So, just curious, who offers the best insurance for cards when dealing with thousands of dollars? Like, say, I wanted to insure a package of card(s) around $5000? Or would it be better to split shipments? I’m sure some of you have experience with this.
I have also used Connor’s grading service way before it became GradedGem, graded easily over 1.5k cards through him and never had any problems and I have nothing but good to say about him and his service.
I always thought he had the best all around grading service out there, from not requiring a full payment untill the cards were actually finished grading at PSA to a fast shipping speeds back and worth etc.
It really sucks what happened with the lost package and him getting all this blame when it was fedex’s fuckup and totally out of his control, and this also shows how many people are totally clueless about how hard and complicated insurance claims can be for collectable items with no fixed prices.
Love this. Even I would feel comfortable using a service that was this simple. Basically, buy 1000.00 in insurance and if package is lost or item damaged, they send you a 1,000.00 check.
The insurance company or shipper would simply have to include the cost in their service.
Great? Looked to me like he spent a lot of time in editing making fun of rattle in the beginning and end and numerous times throughout. That wasn’t great nor professional. Maybe if Connor had left out all the personal attacks and jibes, I would agree with you. After all, Connor was hiding this debacle for nearly a year. Rattle was simply commenting on it. The owner being on the attack is neither “professional” nor indicative of a “great service”.
It is possible to try to defend yourself and not be in attack mode. And needing to attack implies a weak defendable position.
After giving it some thought, I feel that insurance is so convoluted bc of insurance scams. It’s unfortunate that well-meaning people have to deal with this now, but I have heard so many stories of people running operations where they declare high-values, arrange for their items to be stolen/ destroyed, and then receive insurance pay-outs. This stuff has happened in the past and obviously, it’s gray and anecdotal, but I think it’s important to be realistic about why insurance is so slippery in the first place. However, it’s absolutely BS that FedEX can royally fuck up on hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of goods and just shrug their shoulders.
I think it’s unfair to suggest GG was acting in bad faith in this situation. From my perspective, it seems that they wanted to make sure all the options were exhausted and they had a good plan in place before informing hundreds of people their thousands of dollars worth of collectibles were lost.
And by hiding it, and keeping their customers in the dark about it for nearly a year, is a good thing?
Someone just messaged me and said it was because they didn’t want to risk losing subsequent subs during a busy time, so they waited as long as they could get away with? Hmmm…
I mean fundamentally this isn’t accurate. The sub went missing in Feb 2021. They stopped taking subs a few weeks before it was even registered as missing. So stop with this line of rational as it isn’t productive or true.
At the end of the day they could have let people know sooner - I can understand the merits of doing so and not doing so. Fundamentally it wouldn’t have made any difference so let’s stop trying to put a spin on it.
Yes Connor probably could have put out a more charming professional response but it’s not in the same ballpark as the tripe rattle spewed out.
I don’t know, and it’s not my place to speculate especially since I’m not fully familiar and up to date with this drama yet. I just stated that my own personal experiences with him and their service has always been nothing but positive and top notch.
Insurance is for poor people… all joking aside, it doesn’t matter at all what the insurance company paid out, Graded Gem should do what is right and pay out actual fair market value for the cards.
What is “fair” market value? I’m pretty sure he tried his best to find ungraded values for all of the cards. And I’m hugely sorry if that word hurt your feelings for whatever reason.
You can tell when someone doesn’t even bother to look at the videos and just say none sense.
GG did that and give an extra 10% on top. They looked up the sold card price on ebay or tcgplayer (NM only) and took the average sold price. You submitted a MP card, well they still took the NM raw card price and added 10% as compensation.
Rattle’s point in the video is that ïf you ever buy from ebay or tcgplayer, their NM card isn’t really NM but more like LP. That may or may not be true but honestly what more do you want GG to do? A weak point and just grasping at straws here.
I think people are missing the point that I’m not claiming Connor is looking to scam people or necessarily acting in bad faith. Not everything is a 3.5 million dollar fake booster case. I was simply pointing out that they were not professional and a poorly run business which is now showing itself in the misfortune of some of their customers. He wants to be done with middlemanning but should have shut things down the correct way. If he wants to reply to my videos in an unprofessional way, I don’t mind doing the same. Is it the worst Pokemon crime ever committed? Of course not. Should it be a learning lesson for other middleman services and customers? I think so and that’s exactly why I made the original video.
Why are they unprofessional and what were the mistakes made?
Insurance was not what it should have been.
Customers should have been notified and consulted much sooner.
-9 months before refunds.
–Going on 10 months with many still not compensated.
No funds set aside in case of emergency expenses.
Starting another company and becoming director/part owner shortly after the package went missing.
Losing the contract with PSA for creating a competing company.
Lost that PSA contract as a result while they still have customer’s cards out.
Looks like they tried to hide the fact that he was director by making his company part owner.