COMC Delivery Speed

[judsonhamlin]

Thought I’d bring this one back. Picked up a few cards off eBay with COMC last moth after not buying from them (for no particular reason) and got a prompt ‘your order is being prepped’ with an estimated delivery date of today. Whatever, it’s just a few junk wax variations. But it’s been radio silence since and I have little hope of getting a reply to my email asking for a realistic shipping date. I get delays, but this is ridiculous. I am astonished that they are that much in the hole with shipping a few cards out.

[Cmvorce]

I bought 8 singles from them cos eBay on March 22. The order has not yet been shipped.

[irv]

I just finished writing them about a card I purchased Jan 9th.
On their site it reads it is still in inventory?

Prior to that, I had won 3 cards which have been in my possession for likely well over a month now.

I find it odd that this card is taking way longer but then again I don't know the process there, and truthfully, I was surprised when I received those other 3 cards as soon as I did.

[Harliduck]

Reading this was giving me ptsd...I JUST got the cards I ordered 2 months ago earlier this week after several emails. Just sucked. As I said A MONTH AGO...seem like nice guys but they will have to have a proven track record of fixing this before I even open one of their listings. Terrible.

[swarmee]

Their CEO explained a little of the problem during an interview at the beginning of April. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JghkghmDcUc

Cliff notes:
1) Demand for cards (and therefore shipments/processing) has skyrocketed during COVID. But it even got further accelerated earlier this year.
2) They decided to move to a new card storage facility in Feb/March but didn't explain that to customers. When they finally notified the world that they had moved to a new storage facility, they decided to post it on April Fools Day (my thoughts: terrible PR).
3) They had let go some long time employees about a year ago who were "one-trick-pony" types instead of people who were cross-trainable. Then they had a hard time hiring through the pandemic to keep up with demand. Still trying to hire.
4) They supposedly aren't able to reduce their eBay listings to focus on core COMC customers because eBay requires them to have a certain number of listings to get the rates they have under their contract.
5) They can't limit people from making shipment requests because people would complain their cards are being held hostage.
6) Middle of February trying to fulfill shipment requests at the new facility, they jumbled up a whole bunch of packages, sending out incomplete shipments and mixing up (thousands of?) other orders. So if you tried to get a rushed or expedited shipment during that time, they were still trying to untangle the screw-up with their newly trained employees.
They also bought some million dollar sorting machine that works on bar codes, so every card (even commons and UD ePack cards) are getting an individual bar code slip of paper now. This will hopefully solve their employees screwing up the packaging of orders.
7) If you paid for Rushed or Expedited and they didn't meet timelines, request a refund of the additional shipping charges and mention Tim's interview and they should refund you the difference.
8) If you just want to cancel your order since they aren't fulfilling it, they will refund your money and eat the loss instead of returning the cards to the original seller on COMC. They will put the cards in a Staff account and try to sell them themselves to recoup their payout.
9) Tim expects it to take them until December to get enough staff trained and working at a high enough pace to clear the backlog. That was 7-8 months from the air date.
10) There is now a global shortage of toploaders. So you can't add them indiscriminately to your cards for shipments anymore; COMC has effectively run out. However, if you ship cards home "worth" $50 or more, they will automatically come toploaded. I'm guessing that means you had to pay $50 or more for them, or have them from Elite scans (black background higher resolution).
11) They no longer cross-post cards from Dean's on COMC.

So there is plenty going wrong, and they have some plans to fix them, but not in any kind of quick fashion. Of course, nobody would believe them if they said they would iron it out and be fully staffed and trained soon.

Unhappy blowout posters have been filing complaints against them through the Better Business Bureau or even the Washington state department of commerce. Their eBay orders are even taking weeks or a month to ship out, so their feedback has been plummeting on eBay.

[deweyinthehall]

I have to ask - is this true??

[swarmee]

Yes, they've quintupled in price in the past year. Most hobby shops will only let you buy a pack or two, and that's with the purchase of a box.
Started last year with the shortage of semirigid sleeves (Cardsavers) with all the people submitting to PSA. Because of that, PSA started accepting cards in regular toploaders last summer, so those started getting hoarded.

Because of COVID, supply chain stuff for products coming from China is all screwed up, so it's hard to manufacture for the increased demand. Then with the March shipping fiasco in the Suez Canal, global shipping lines were delayed.

Stuff piling on stuff piling on more stuff. COMC will buy new/gently used toploaders from people for 10 cents each, but they're worth much more if you sell them straight on eBay. They're trying to track down additional suppliers, but most toploader cases are backordered or again, way too expensive to be throw-ins based on their profit margin.

Add: Just like the price of lumber, plastics are much higher now than previous. Went to lunch today and the owner was saying that to buy a case of plastic take-out containers would cost 5x last year's price, if they could even get them