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Posted By: tbob

Scott, speaking solely for myself, the reason I turned to GAI was three fold: 1) PSA seemed to be grading cards which appeared to many collectors to be altered and their reputation was erroding as being objective in grading despite who the submitter was; 2) SGC was being brutal on their grading of caramel cards and I felt their grades were unduly harsh (I have since learned that they are that way on almost everyone's caramel cards) and 3) Mike Baker was at GAI and he is a respected grader plus the holders looked nice (except I soon learned they had a lot of floaters coming back to me) and GAI appeared to be a collector/consumer friendly company, thus I submitted many cards to them over the past year and a half. I felt the grading was consistent although not always what I had hoped for, but I think all collectors think their cards should grade higher.
What I didn't care for was the lack of assistance I received from GAI during this whole fiasco. When I emailed Steve Rocchi and then called on November 2nd because my graded cards had not made it back to me yet and it seemed like it was taking an inordinate amount of time, I was just told that "oh your cards have already been shipped." Period, nothing else. No offer to check and see what was going on. Because I relied on that answer and that attitude of nonchalance, I didn't know GAI had shipped them October 15th, so it wasn't until I started doing my own checking around that I found that the cards had been lying around at the Little Rock UPS facility since October 25th. This discovery wasn't made until the middle of November and any chance of finding them had by that time disappeared. How simple it would have been if someone at GAI had simply answered my emails during the latter part of October, early part of November to say, "gee, Bob, let us check what is going on, we sent them on October 15th, they should have been there by now. Let me do a quick check with UPS and find out what happened." Instead I was constantly told when calling GAI during the middle of November that people would "get back to me after lunch" or other excuses and no one ever called. Finally I got hold of Johnny Moe in shipping and together we pieced things together. I still was the one who had to request the trace, the one who call to UPS, etc, and the ironic part was that UPS would tell me that since I was not the shipper they couldn't tell me squat, I would have to contact the sender (who wasn't telling me anything).
Thank God I received my reimbursement check after staying on GAI. I had to fax them the paperwork from UPS to complete the claim, myself, and wait and wait.
It was not a very pleasant situation. I thought I might receive an apology from GAI or even a few free submissions or something (not that I expected it) out of courtesy to a loyal customer, but I received nothing. I credit Johnny Moe at GAI for his help but the rest of the people at GAI were totally indifferent. I know I have read a coupe of posts about what great guys Rocchi and Baker are, but I am simply relating my experiences with them.
P.S. I sent a large submission to SGC recently and am planning to send another one soon.