Ok, it has been a couple weeks since I posted about Why I love our shipping fees. Now my orders from these other sites have arrived, and I just finished opening packages from about 40 different sellers.
This was a great experience. It was a reminder for me about what is important when shipping cards. Here is what I found.
Beckett Marketplace
Beckett Marketplace dealers are on the ball. They all pay at least $250/month to list their cards, so you can be assured that they will jump on your orders right away.
Speed – About 80% of the sellers had the cards shipped within 24 hours. An email with tracking information was sent as soon as the seller had shipped the cards.
Accuracy – Unfortunately 10% of the orders were either canceled or partially canceled because the sellers couldn’t find the cards ordered, and about 1 in 50 cards were incorrect. They gave me the right card number from the wrong set. The accuracy and completeness is about what I expected. As inventories get larger it gets harder to find everything and not make mistakes.
Packaging – All of the cards arrived securely, but about half of the packages were very hard to open. They were taped everywhere or the bubble-mailer used an ultra-sticky glue. It was very common to put multiple cards in an extra-thick toploader, and use of penny sleeves was fairly random. Occasionally cards were shipped in a hinged plastic case and taped shut (very frustrating to try to open).
Sportlots
The Sportlots experience was a little different. It is free to list, and sportlots keeps a cut of the sales. So the responsiveness of the sellers wasn’t quite as good as Beckett Marketplace.
Speed – About 30% of the sellers shipped within 24 hours, 30% within 48 hours, and the rest shipped 3-7 days later. A message was posted on the sportlots website when the order had been filled.
Accuracy – 100% of the 50+ cards ordered were received correctly.
Packaging – All of the cards arrived securely, but about half of the packages were simply mailed in a regular envelop. I guess that is how they cut on costs. Fortunately envelopes are very easy to open. The usage of card savers or toploaders and penny sleeves was also pretty random. Virtually none of the plastic holders were reusable. They had either been taped shut or they were already heavily used.
Check Out My Cards
Here are some key takeaways that I have passed along to our shipping team.
Speed – We have increased the staffing of our shipping team to try to get packages out faster. Our stated guarantee on the website is that we will ship standard orders in 3-5 business days. In reality we have been averaging 2 business days. Now we are going to see how close we can get that to 1 business day. This used to be easy when we were only shipping a few hundred cards per day, but this is now quite a challenge as we are shipping a few thousand cards to hundreds of people all over the world each day. Our shipping team has great leadership, and I am confident we will make good progress on this goal.
Accuracy – Our accuracy is around 1 mistake per 1,000 cards shipped. This is very good, and we will continue to work hard to keep the accuracy high.
Packaging – We have made one nice upgrade in the past couple months. Now all cards that are purchased for $20 or more will be guaranteed to ship in toploaders. Previously it could be random which cards ended up in toploaders after we checked the accuracy of the order. From the 40 packages I received from other sellers, a few were packaged nearly as well as ours, but I didn’t see anything that were packaged better than our packages. Our team does a top notch job, and I have encouraged them to keep that up as we try to increase the speed. Our shipping team takes pride in the work that they do. When you receive a package it should feel like you are opening a present, and it should be an enjoyable experience. We welcome people to post youtube videos of opening the packages they receive from us, and we are always open to suggestions for ways to improve our shipping experience.
Encouraging YouTube videos of your packages being opened is a great idea. Also, kudos for doing a competitive analysis. I do them all the time at my day job.
I think overall COMC does a good job with shipping, but in my last order place on July 31st, I had several cards purchased for $20-$100 each ship without any kind of protective holder at all… not even a penny sleeve. While I usually have cards shipped under the bulk pricing structure, and do appreciate the savings, I don’t think its asking too much to have high dollar cards be put in top loaders when in many cases I’m paying $30-$60 over what the actual postage costs are. So while the cards arrived safely and I was not unhappy, there is still a lot of improvement that needs to be made.
We heard this feedback at the National, and immediately put in place a new policy that will force us to put all cards purchased for $20+ or with a book value of $100+ to be shipped in toploaders no matter which shipping option is selected. All of the bulk shipment requests placed on the past week will get this improved service.
Great to hear about this update! All I’m really concerned about is the cards arriving in the condition I purchased them in. To be honest, even under the old methods, that has never been a problem. The cards always arrived securely and safely. I think it again comes down to perception, and it definitely eases peoples minds to know that high value cards are in protective cases, even if they would have arrived safely otherwise. I was happy with the service before and sounds like I’ll be even happier now.
big SECOND to OhioMike there.
When did the sleeved cards take effect? Just got my large order with I’d guess 50 or more cards booking well over 20 bucks and nothing was sleeved or toploaded and packing on this was last week(shipped 8/30)
The policy is for cards that are purchased for $20+ or that have a book value of $100+. If you paid $10 for a $20 card, we simply guarantee that it will get to you securely. If you pay $20 for a card, we will put it in a toploader for you. If you pay $10 for a card with a $100 book value, we will put it in a toploader for you.
If enough people really want less expensive cards shipped in toploaders, we could add a service where you could pick which cards get toploaders or maybe select an option that puts all cards in toploaders. For labor, supplies, and additional postage costs, I believe it would cost about $0.10 per card. That is an estimate. We would have to do some more analysis to nail down the price.
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