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Posted By: Joann

It's not a membership fee, but it does create an effective minimum annual volume of 6 submissions per submittor.

It's really not a bad idea if their business model is to try to avoid the disportionate cost and effort that go into trying to service a large number of extremely small orders. That's an issue in just about any business that deals - naturally or by design - in volume processing. A lot of companies have minimum order quantities. PSA just solves it by charging for 6 up front. If you take them throughout the year, fine. But if you don't, you have paid enough to make it worth their while.

The real question is how SGC can take the onesies and twosies and be competitive. Now that's something.

Joann

PS: I know. Some people will send in their six submissions one card at a time, so PSA is effectively processing six small orders anyways. But at least in those cases the customer set-up is already done. But more likely is that people who have prepaid for six will send in more than one card at a time, or even all six. Anything that gets them off one-person-one-card-one-time increases efficiency.