PMG - Perhaps the Most Gigantic FAIL at customer service

[jtryka]

So I just had an annoying conversation with two people at PMG and honestly I am not sure I how much more failure at customer service I could expect.  I submit notes to use up my grading credit for last year on the economy tier which should take 30 working days, they received them April 2 and send them back May 28, so unless they only work 4 days a week, this is over the tier (but that's not my issue, I am not in a hurry).  Then I get the invoice and it says I owe them an additional $20, so I call their accounting department and a lady tells me sometimes the graders can move notes to a different tier if they think the value is higher than the tier I requested.  This is a note that I paid $850, which is well below the $1,000 limit for the economy tier.  The lady in accounting said I should have received an e-mail explaining what happened, no, the e-mail just said, "Attached is a copy of your invoice" without any explanation.  So the accounting lady transferred me to customer service where the gentleman informed me that the grade probably thought the note was worth more than the $1,000 which is a good thing.  I responded that the note isn't worth more unless someone is willing to pay more, so I asked how much the grader/PMG was willing to pay me for it, since a note or anything else is worth only what someone's willing to pay for it.  Since he explained it was only an "opinion" since they don't buy notes, so again, my opinion and the invoice showing what I paid for it should be sufficient to note the tier I selected, but in any case there should be some explanation, but there was nothing.   This is a minor matter that could have been settled by a simple note saying, "we reviewed this note and our opinion was that it was worth more than the limit, so we will move it to the next tier, hence you owe us $20 more."  But based on this experience, customer service and communication are note PMG's strong suit.  FAIL.

[Revenant]

Was there anything that might have explained WHY the grader thought it was worth more than what you paid? Did you buy it thinking it would grade lower than it did (paid for a 63 and got a 65 kind of thing)? I wonder if they use a price guide or actual recent sales / experience. If they use a price guide I'd be curious to know which one they use. On the NGC side, with the 10G set I collect, their price guide lists a 1876 in MS63 for $475. In the current market, that coin in MS65 seems to rarely go for more than $300-350. They list an 1888 in MS63 for $550 and I bought my 1888 in MS65 for $500.

[jtryka]

Well, there were some developments, apparently the research person found this exact note that was previously graded 25 by PMG that was sold at auction in 2016 for over $2K, but they didn't find the auction where I bought it last year, so I sent them a copy of my invoice and they reversed their decision.  While I appreciate that, I just wish there was a way to be more up front in communicating these things so there are no surprises for me as a customer.  In other interesting items, the grade of this note was the same, but previously they noted minor rust, but now they've removed that notation since the grader thought that with a grade so modest, it doesn't make much difference, so they left it off.  I guess that just shows how much subjectivity there still is on this front.

[Revenant]

9 minutes ago, jtryka said:

Well, there were some developments, apparently the research person found this exact note that was previously graded 25 by PMG that was sold at auction in 2016 for over $2K, but they didn't find the auction where I bought it last year, so I sent them a copy of my invoice and they reversed their decision.  While I appreciate that, I just wish there was a way to be more up front in communicating these things so there are no surprises for me as a customer.  In other interesting items, the grade of this note was the same, but previously they noted minor rust, but now they've removed that notation since the grader thought that with a grade so modest, it doesn't make much difference, so they left it off.  I guess that just shows how much subjectivity there still is on this front.

That's interesting. I've heard elsewhere that the prices of some of the collectable currency has been down - somewhat broadly and across the board. That could lead to problems if the data they're going based on is dated but that also potentially makes things tricky of you have a rare note that doesn't come up for sale often and people can tend to sit on things longer in a falling market because they don't want to sell and accept / realize the loss.