I’m preparing a submission and have about 10 cards that will likely fall in the $475-$575 value range depending on what data source/metric you use.
If PSA decides to upcharge me to the $501+ tier I’ll get absolutely destroyed because the cost to grade goes from $19 to $75 per card.
Being so close to the threshold I imagine I could dispute the upcharge if it comes that but disputing 10x cards doesn’t sound fun at all…
What is the likelihood of an upcharge in this scenario?
Thanks
In my experience, PSA rarely upcharges for anything at/near the threshold . . . that’s just my anecdotal experience though.
If you have Charizards and umbreons then you are for sure getting caught. Everything else there’s a good chance it slides by when the value is in range
In my experiences they are pretty lenient for stuff even a few hundred dollars more than $500 which is why is always submit through bulk tier
Thanks for the input! But…yikes that’s brutal 
Especially at this threshold considering how big the jump in grading cost is from $500 - $501.
It feels like there should be an additional tier between 500 - 1500 but I assume PSA makes a killing in this range so I won’t hold my breath.
I’m fairly certain you can’t dispute upcharges.
But like others mentioned, I’d say 70-80% of the time it slides. Depends on the QA/QC staff person and the individual card. For example, ime nearly 100% of base set Charizards in PSA 7-8 get upcharged.
I had 2 cards in my most recent submission that were around $800 in value, they got upcharged to $50. No idea how that works since there is no $50 tier…
A few other cards that were around the $500-$600 range only got upcharged to $19. That’s usually how it goes in my experience
That’s very lucky to sneak a $3000 10 quality gold star through bulk.
Not even bulk, this was regular service
Upcharging has always (and still does) feels completely random, sometimes i get hit for $400-500 modern cards and other times $1k+ and rarer items fly straight through.
It makes sense when you are first/early to market on newer and more obscure cards, but (recent example) this went through the Value Plus tier with no upcharge despite plenty of data now. 
Have noticed that since the start of the PSA Vault/eBay collaboration i’ve been upcharged more than ever before.
Assume they have a much bigger data set to choose from because of it, so automated upcharges are set off much more frequently.
All those years of upcharges… if PSA doesn’t pay out appropriately, there should be a class action lawsuit going after every upcharge the past 5 years
Oh I agree.
Also, and I am unsure about accurancy but hearing reports of this:
I think upcharges are a scam and I will die on that hill. They should let the customer decide how much insurance to put on their cards themselves, such as what BGS do. You pay $7 per $1000 value.
I don’t think there’s a single person who said upcharges are good, let alone a “brigade”.
Several people in Efour have stated that they are “for the authenticity guarantee” or “for insurance” meaning it’s a benefit of the PSA offering. You see this narrative frequently online too.
Did you miss the part where they got a reply that they were sent the wrong spreadsheet? The upcharge is still definitely for insurance, based on what they’ve stated in terms of this payout.
They only updated the spreadsheet because the guy disagreed. If he agreed they would have happily cut the check.
Again, incorrect. There was a discrepancy to begin with and it would have not gotten to where the incorrect amount would have been given.
