I purchased the $149 membership and submitted 7 books at Montreal Comic-con on July 7th.
The experience at the show was great.
All my questions were answered, credit card info taken, and my online submission form was in order,
Took about 5 minutes, virtually seamless.
10 days later on the 17th of July I receive an email acknowledging my submission, so I login and it shows my order was invoiced that same day.
So far so good I thought!
Over the next month I see the status changing as expected, from what I can gather, then on August 17th I receive an email from CGC accounting with an invoice attached.
I then login and see my order status has switched to "Shipped/Safe".
Like many other posters I see no mention of my credit being applied so I email twice that week to inquire and receive no answer.
Finally, 2 weeks later on August 31st I call to find out what is going on.
A nice lady tells me she is transferring me to Accounting but does not say why.
A gentleman picks up and tells me they need my credit card info again because it didn't go through.
I said there was no indication of this issue anywhere in an email or on the submission status, how would I have known if I hadn't called?
He mentioned I should have been advised and apologized.
I said fair enough, and fixed up the credit card info and he charged my card for the shipping and applied my sign up credit right there and then.
He said the books were just sitting in the safe since the 17th and would be sent out right away.
I thanked him and hung up.
Another 2 weeks pass and I hear nothing again.
So, knowing emails go unanswered I called again on the 17th of September.
Again, another nice lady answers the phone, takes my info and says she is transferring me to Accounting. I start to tell her we've done this already but to no avail(while on hold I verified my card was charged 18 days ago like I thought).
She then comes back on the line sounding confused and I ask her if there is an issue with my shipment.
She takes another moment to review things and then tells me no, they're fine in the safe ready to ship.....
Naturally I ask why they haven't shipped yet and she says there's an accounting hold on the order...
I ask "again? or still?", and proceed to walk her through the last month of utter customer service confusion.
She finally says she'll remove the hold and ask the guys out back to ship out my order.
I thank her for this and ask if she can explain what happened or why I had to call twice or why I had zero idea/notification that my order needed anyone's attention at any point??
Her answer was, " we receive thousands of submissions every week sir, and now that I look at the entire timeline we are only a couple weeks past the average TaT".
I was quite shocked by that response and managed to ask if I would receive a credit or some sort of compensation for this experience.
She sounded equally as shocked that I would mention this and said she would have to review the matter and consult with her manager on such a request, as it is out of the ordinary.
I really didn't know what else to say to her so I thanked her and hung up.
I've been in the customer service business for 20 years and am completely at a loss right now.
I guess what I need to know is whether or not this is a standard CGC experience?
In 2 months I went from excitement/anticipation to disappointment/apprehension.