Auction House thievery Lelands style

[jethrod3]

This reminds me of some shenanigans I recently experienced with Beckett regarding insurance and shipping. A few months ago Beckett came to our local show. They did onsite grading and accepted cards that they would take back with them for grading and autograph authentication. I rarely grade cards, but I had an autographed card that was starting to rise rapidly and I wanted to know where it stood. So I submitted it for grading.

The cost of the grading and slabbing was reasonable. What wasn't was the insurance and shipping costs. I put the value at $2K (I wasn't quite sure what grade would be returned and felt this was accurate as I assumed it could come back even with a "6"). Insurance was $28 which seemed steep, but whatever----I accepted it. But I asked for the cheapest shipping method with a signature to be requested. It was suggested by the Beckett rep that I go with FED-EX 2-day delivery rather than FED-EX ground (because of "increased risk of jostling"), and that they would request a signature before leaving the package.

Not only did the FED-EX delivery person fail to attempt to get my signature, but they left just the package on my doorstep without knocking or ringing the doorbell. Even more concerning is that apparently they didn't even approach the doorstep. I have RING, and when we viewed the recording, there was no evidence of any delivery person entering the doorway area. This means that the person must have tossed the package onto the doorstep from several feet away, outside of the camera's view. To Beckett's credit, they had packed the slabbed card very well. There was no damage. But I felt it was wrong to pay an exorbitant rate for a service that was not provided. So I contacted Beckett. I received an email response from a lower level rep telling me that I was free to contact FED-EX myself, but that Beckett had nothing to do with the issue. So I emailed again, told them that this was hogwash because they arranged for the shipping, and asked to talk with a supervisor. The supervisor called me, apologized but gave no real reasonable explanation except to say that there have been other complaints about FED-EX by Beckett customers, and then offered to give me a credit of $7 toward my next submission. I have yet to receive an email confirming that.

The only happy ending is that the card came back faster than I thought, and with a grade that was much better than I expected (OK, much better---I'll never understand how people grade chicken-scratch autographs!!!) However, I remain soured on the overall grading card experience; something like this doesn't make me want to submit cards again any time soon.