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You know what, this is why I felt safe sending my books there in the first place. I've never graded books before in my life, not before this last year. But I watch a lot of comic book YouTube channels and almost always I saw that when people made a video about damaged books, they also said that CGC ended up making it right by paying them for the damages or buying them a new book of the same grade. So I felt that even though there's always a risk with sending books out to someone else to handle, grade, and ship back and forth, I wasnt worried. That carried on to when I submitted and didnt feel the need to take "before" photos, and didnt inspect that closely when they came back. So this is kind of my first and only experience with this company, and I certainly cant say much good about them since they just kind of screwed me by ignoring my claims that they damaged my books and then gaslighted me by saying that the bends are "acceptable" and my 1/4" color-breaking bend is ok in a 9.8.

New data.

CGC = Clearly Gaslighting Customers

Actually, this is a good point. I do have a bunch of older books that will almost certainly not get close to 9.0 and have enough spine damage already that CGC potentially turning them into bananas wont damage them or affect the perceived grade... unlike my 9.8's that are now maybe 9.4 or 9.6. But, yeah, I might send in those to use the credit and then sit tight and wait for a resolution on all this. Of course, even if CGC fixes the issue with bending and damaging books, I still have books that are damaged and CGC has offered ZERO in terms of compensation or satisfactory resolution. So even if they fix Bendgate, I might already never submit anything after my subscription is over.

I havent used up my initial credit for my subscription, so I keep hoping that CGC will fix all this and I can once again submit. I have around 100 books I want to grade, but that's also 100 books I dont want to pay to get damaged and turned into bananas. At the rate this is going, or rather the rate that nothing is happening, I will also likely have to cancel my autorenew and move on to another grading company next year. I know that CGC doesnt care about individual customers and whether we renew the membership or not, submit books or not, or whatever. But, yeah, eventually they will have enough people who will start using their competitors that they WILL care. But, by that point it might be too late.

We already know how productive "contacting customer service" is. Once again, CGC cares much more about censoring this board than they care about their customers (and their customers' property) or the quality of their product. Their reply to me emailing their customer service is that I can send my damaged comics in so they can further damage them, at my expense! Their response to my latest questions is... well, I'm still waiting for it after a week. This board is completely useless. CGC is not interested in dealing with this problem or making customers whole for all the damage they have inflicted on our books. I guess they think that if they gaslight us enough we'll all just go away.

At least they wont blame you when they get them back with ticks and bends.

CGC's crack team of experts beg to differ. In response to my images of a 1/4" bend on the spine of one of my 9.8 books: Of course they also would not agree to press and reholder my book and guarantee the same grade. So... I'm starting to think they might be somewhat less than 100% truthful with me.

If CGC was as diligent about their quality control and customer service as they are about censoring this forum and blocking people who dare to mention their competitors or god-forbid post an image of a non-CGC slab, they'd be a truly remarkable company. Unfortunately, their replies to my complaints that they have damaged my books amount to two options for me, I can either: a) give them more money to press and reholder my books, with the free option for them to possibly lower my grade and further damage my books, or b) I can go pound sand. With this high level of quality and customer support, guess to which company I WONT be sending the 100 books I have waiting to be graded?

I asked ChatGPT to make me an image of CGC and this is what it gave me.

More bent books...

Here are the results of my conversation with CGC customer service: I sent them photos of 3 damaged books (all 9.8 from prescreen, all went in with ZERO spine damage). The worst one now has a color-break and bend that measures 1/4". But, all came back bent and all had spine damage. First response from CGC: The told me the following: There you go, they dont claim to have even seen ANY impact to the condition of books. According to CGC, the color-breaking tick that measures 1/4" is "acceptable" for a 9.8. I'm sure if I crack it and send it back in, it will get a 9.8 again. Right? Right??? and Or, more like "there is no guarantee that the grade will stay the same". I offered them 2 options that would be acceptable to me. 1) Press and re-holder the books at their expense and guarantee that the grade will not change. and 2) I send them the books and they refund me their replacement cost FMV (for 9.8s) in exchange. I think both are reasonable. For #1, the books have clearly had zero damage done to the slabs after they left their facility. The only damage is inside the slabs. So if they graded them a 9.8 they should still be a 9.8, especially after pressing. Any damage that would make them not a 9.8 is entirely their fault. And #2 is also reasonable since I'd just like the value of the comic they sent me and I'm sending back. Their reply: They asked for images of the books prior to being sent in. I dont have such images. Also... So I can pay... again... to have them graded, and possibly damaged again. and finally: So I can resubmit for ME, even thought the spine damage will not qualify as ME and they have already said that a bent inner well is "normal" and "acceptable". And of course once they reject the ME I will have to pay shipping both ways. There you go, customer service as its finest. I can either suck it up and accept that I paid CGC to grade/slab my books and now they're damaged, or I can send them in to maybe get even more damaged and maybe, just maybe they can press them and keep the same grade... but I have to pay for it. No offer to even refund the grading fees, or acknowledgement that there's any problem. In fact, they claim that the books with ticks and bends (in one case 1/4" deep) are acceptable in a 9.8. And, while I'm not an expert grader, I think that's just total B.S. If I send that book in I'd expect maybe a 9.4 or 9.6 at highest. And so now I really have nothing I can do except accept that I spent money and the result is some of my books are damaged, and I have to crack and press them myself to TRY to get them back into their original condition. And then... I'm not sure what else. Start using another grading service? Why would I use CGC again when they wont even make up for their mistakes or even do the bare minimum of offering to refund the grading fees the few books they damaged? I just hope that this serves as a warning to others. Submit books are your own risk. If they come back damaged, you're on your own. Attached photos of 1/4" spine tick/bend for reference.

Of course they are, that's the normal and expected outcome of their encapsulation process according to CGC.

Indeed, and probably never will.

Ok, sorry then. I thought your issue with the video was the claim that CGC was lying and the book are indeed being damaged. Personally I thought the video brings some useful data to this issue. For example, it's notable that the slab itself didnt appear to be putting pressure on the inner well, and it stayed bent after being taken out. To me this says there's a high likelihood that the issue is either 1) the process of sealing the book in the inner well, or 2) mishandling of the inner well after it's sealed. I tend to think it's 2) because I have a feeling that at some point these books get bent to a much bigger angle than what we end up seeing, and THAT causes the damage. The permanently bent inner well is just the symptom and not the cause.

I can see why you might say that, but the other side of the argument is that even without spine ticks or bends, having the book be bent (seemingly permanent bend by the looks of it) is already damage to the book. Yes, CGC has admitted that they bend books, but they also claim there's no damage being done. I would say that even without any VISIBLE damage like ticks, a bend ALWAYS causes damage to a book because it will be tearing the paper fibers at a small scale. Also, we have to ask what larger bend was put on that book in the first place to cause that small permanent bend. I mean, if that bend only caused by the inner well being bent that much, or was the entire thing bent to a much larger extent before being put into the slab? In any case, to me at least, any bend on the book is unacceptable. And being gaslighted by being told that this is "normal" and "does not damage" the book is part of why people are so upset.

That's really sad. Sure, there were already ticks there beforehand, but they were pressed and pretty minor color breaks. Whatever CGC did definitely took that down a grade or two from the pressed submission. This is basically what happened to my books, except in some cases the ticks that were introduced were definitely not there in the first place.

I know what you mean, but honestly I'd expect that for books that have been sitting in those bags for at least 10 years. In any case, if they're looking like that after a couple of years... then I guess you can go with mylar bags. I have a lot of my books in mylar, but there are of course downsides. They are expensive, especially if you're bagging hundreds/thousands of books. They will also take up more space in your boxes than regular bags. But they do look nice especially if you're displaying them and not just keeping them in boxes. But, really, if you have the comics in boxes and in a nice dry area... a regular bag will last you 10 years easy. Before I re-bagged mine recently, I had some that had been in regular bags for nearly 40 years. The bags had the ripples you're describing, but otherwise fine. The backing boards had yellow images of whatever was on the back cover, but I'm guessing this is because they were cheap boards that were not acid-free. I would not worry too much with a regular bad and acid-free boards, even if I'm storing the books for decades. More important, at least IMO, is the environment where you're keeping them.

Why are you changing them every 2 years?

There's a difference between what they "say" and how they actually grade comics. It could just be that some of their graders are way harsher, but I've seen many 9.6 books that should be 9.8 by that criteria. Also, the size of the spine ticks matters. When they talk about spine ticks (color breaking or otherwise) on 9.8 books, they usually mean at or less than 1/16" to 1/8". Or, at least that's my impression. The ticks I'm seeing on the books pictured above are way larger than 1/16". I got a couple others with multiple small ticks that are all less than 1/16" so I didnt send them those. But again, it's hard to capture the full size of these ticks on photos. Only looking at them in person do you see just how big they are and how far from the spine they extend. The most severe tick/bend on one of my books here extends 1/4". Is anyone going to seriously tell me that a spine tick/bend that's 1/4" is going to still get a 9.8?

The 3 books I'm discussing are 9.8s. I know all of that pre-screen batch that I sent in were absolutely flawless since I picked the best of the best (in terms of lack of flaws) that I had to send in.

I'm communicating with CGC at the moment about my books, and so far they've commented that the issues on the photos I sent them look like they're all acceptable for 9.8 comics. (I'll post the ones I sent below for reference) However, one thing that occurred to me is that it's hard to capture these bends and ticks adequately on photos and they tend to look worse when you're actually holding the book in hand. But I'm not sure what else to do since photos is basically all I can actually provide as evidence, plus my assurance that these were not there originally. But if they say "these are ok for 9.8"... there's just no way I can refute that in any way since it's their opinion based on photos that dont really convey how the book looks in person. =(