Trading comics to mycomicshop.com. Lone Star Comics

[nomatophobia-migration]

I recently completed my first transaction selling books to mycomicshop.com. Based on getting 120% more for store credit I chose that option instead of taking the cash. After receiving my store credit things changed with the look of the site. Now all the comics I was interested in have a new 25% higher store credit price. This is never mentioned anywhere in the selling FAQ. The only way to see this new store credit price (unless I missed something) is after you have some store credit. Then you get a link to this (enjoy for anyone thinking of selling stuff for credit):

Trade Credit

 

Trade credit can be earned by trading us comics through our Online comic Buying System or through our Affiliate Program. Trade credit can be used to purchase items from mycomicshop.com. In most cases trade credit functions just like cash, with the following exceptions:

 

* Many items priced $40 or more will list a trade credit price in addition to the regular retail price. The trade credit price is the amount of trade credit required to purchase the item. For example, an item priced $80 might have a trade credit price of $100. This item could be purchased with:

o $80 paid by credit card or PayPal

o Or, $100 in trade credit

o Or, a combination of standard payment and trade credit. For example, if you had $60 in trade credit, your credit would pay for 60% of the item price ($60 is 60% of the $100 trade credit price). You would then have to pay for the other 40% of the item price via credit card or PayPal. 40% of $80 is $32, so you could buy this item for $60 in trade credit plus a $32 payment.

* Trade credit cannot be used to purchase consignment items.

* Trade credit cannot be used to purchase items from our subscription service.

* If your order contains any consignment items, trade credit cannot be used to pay your shipping and handling or tax, if any.

 

This appears extremely deceptive to me. I have sent an e-mail to customer support about this so we'll see how they handle it, but I wanted to put this out there for anyone unaware of the higher price for their books using store credit.

 

Now that I have this in a new topic. I tried to find anything related to this policy without being logged in with an account that had trade credit and couldn't. If it is not fraudulent they do a horrible job of disclosing this very important information about their trade in credit.

 

[Bunky Brian]

"This appears extremely deceptive to me"

 

I would agree, seems like this info should be available for you to read, before you make your trade sale.

 

 

[Junkdrawer]

since last week gold has gone up like $25/oz, silver has gone up $3/oz, gas has gone up $.25/gallon. I can only imagine lots of things keep going up everyday in everyone's world. If you had some sort of an outlet to sell your books you would understand what goes into selling, pictures, scans, grading, supplies, packaging, shipping, etc. Call the guy up, I think he may consider cutting a deal if the prices were recently increased. If not ask for the cash you agreed and go elsewhere.

[oakman29]

As a customer I don't want to have to read all that BS,just tell me how much it costs and we'll go from there.Don't jack up prices for trades and if your at a con selling.I will not buy from your booth or web site if you do . I am a very simple person that likes to know who I am dealing with,and deals with people I like. Rant over!

[dupont2005]

since last week gold has gone up like $25/oz, silver has gone up $3/oz, gas has gone up $.25/gallon. I can only imagine lots of things keep going up everyday in everyone's world. If you had some sort of an outlet to sell your books you would understand what goes into selling, pictures, scans, grading, supplies, packaging, shipping, etc. Call the guy up, I think he may consider cutting a deal if the prices were recently increased. If not ask for the cash you agreed and go elsewhere.

Sounds like prices are only increased for those with store credit. Like two different prices.

[nomatophobia-migration]

I understand if these rules need to be kept in place for business reasons. My problem is the rules are not disclosed before making a transaction. I am glad I started with a rather small transaction to see the process. I had a second set of books I was planning on sending in. I still see the value of being able to trade in some lesser value books, but trading in books that are easy sales in other venues is not as enticing as they make it seem. We'll see how they handle things. They really need to add something on their FAQ page.

[nomatophobia-migration]

Sounds like prices are only increased for those with store credit. Like two different prices.

 

Right.. For instance, before I have trade credit I see this listed as a price:

 

All-Star Comics 14

CGC 6.5 Add to cart

$954.00

 

Now I log into my account and it becomes:

 

All-Star Comics 14

CGC 6.5 Add to cart

$954.00

The trade credit price is $1,193.00

 

The beauty of this is that I have $200 in trade credit. If I use it on this purchase I end up paying $993 dollars for the book, .

[The Amazing Chump]

Sounds like scumbaggery of the highest order and no doubt,

[synch]

wow this is brilliant .. I should try & come up with something like this next time I sell something here put up a lil faq at hthe first post that no one reads saying that once you hit the Itake it sign the prices double .... then wam! Send people a invoice

 

 

[PokerKid]

I did not realize they were jacking up prices on that. I have had a credit for a while and didn't know I would be seeing different prices than those without credit. Seems like flat out fraud/theft.

 

I know they are members on here. Perhaps they can come on and explain if there is a misunderstanding or if they have decided they didn't like their end of the previous trades and so decided to take money from people after both sides agreed to the trade.

[shiverbones]

It really rubbed me the wrong way too, I am done trading with them. I recently did my last trade, and that was just to help a friend consolidate a few books & get some moderns he was missing, but thats it. I probably did over $18k in trades with them over the years too.

[nomatophobia-migration]

Supposedly they lowered their prices of $50 and up books by ~20% (looked like 25% to me)

 

From their site:

 

Regarding Items with a Higher Trade Credit Price

 

Beginning in September 2010, we are making the following change to our pricing structure:

 

Many comics priced $50 or more will have their price reduced by about 20%. This price reduction is a permanent change, not a temporary discount. The price reduction applies to many comics originally priced $50 and over, but excludes graphic novels, books, and consignment comics.

The amount of trade credit required to purchase these comics is not being reduced. If a comic was originally priced $100, the trade credit price will still be $100 even if the retail price has now been lowered to $80. In other words, we're lowering the price if you're paying for your order normally, and keeping the price the same if you're paying with trade credit.

 

To see what items have had their prices reduced, please review this page:

 

List of items affected by ~20% price reduction

 

If you like to trade with us for trade credit, you will continue to earn just as much credit for your items, and your credit will buy just as much. For example, if you had enough credit to buy a $500 comic before the price change, you will still be able to buy that comic for $500 credit after the change. The difference is that after the change you will also have the option of buying the comic for cash at roughly 20% less than you could originally: either $400 cash or $500 trade credit. If you typically use your trade credit to buy items priced less than $50, nothing changes.

 

Evidently they wanted to lower their prices, but didn't want to let people with trade credit get the lower prices.

[Junkdrawer]

Supposedly they lowered their prices of $50 and up books by ~20% (looked like 25% to me)

 

From their site:

 

Regarding Items with a Higher Trade Credit Price

 

Beginning in September 2010, we are making the following change to our pricing structure:

 

Many comics priced $50 or more will have their price reduced by about 20%. This price reduction is a permanent change, not a temporary discount. The price reduction applies to many comics originally priced $50 and over, but excludes graphic novels, books, and consignment comics.

The amount of trade credit required to purchase these comics is not being reduced. If a comic was originally priced $100, the trade credit price will still be $100 even if the retail price has now been lowered to $80. In other words, we're lowering the price if you're paying for your order normally, and keeping the price the same if you're paying with trade credit.

 

To see what items have had their prices reduced, please review this page:

 

List of items affected by ~20% price reduction

 

If you like to trade with us for trade credit, you will continue to earn just as much credit for your items, and your credit will buy just as much. For example, if you had enough credit to buy a $500 comic before the price change, you will still be able to buy that comic for $500 credit after the change. The difference is that after the change you will also have the option of buying the comic for cash at roughly 20% less than you could originally: either $400 cash or $500 trade credit. If you typically use your trade credit to buy items priced less than $50, nothing changes.

 

Evidently they wanted to lower their prices, but didn't want to let people with trade credit get the lower prices.

Sounds like it's worded like that 3% discount comiclink talks about, only to find you dont get one, unless your paying with a credit card and you pay an xtra 3% and they tell you you could have saved it by paying by check or MO.

[mycomicshop]

Hi,

 

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. If you PM me the email address for your mycomicshop account, I will post you an extra 25% credit on your trade, plus $10 for reporting a significant issue.

 

I just now updated our web site to make it clearer up front how trade credit works, and what the limitations are.

 

In our online buying system, next to where it mentions paying 120% to twice as much in trade credit as cash, I've added a link to "trade credit details & restrictions" that explains how it works. The same information is repeated if you go to submit a trade to us, so it should be very hard to miss seeing it now.

 

We made these changes last September and discussed them with our traders at the time, but I failed to properly update our terms regarding the changes. That was my fault.

 

Personally, the current system is more complex than I would like. I'd much rather buy comics using a single cash/credit ratio, and have the retail price be the same regardless of whether cash or trade credit is used. The system we have now works, but it can be complicated to explain. It's a result of the way our buying system developed over time, and the way that we set our buying and selling prices.

 

Our goal is to treat sellers fairly, pay them well, and keep them happy so that they will keep selling and trading us comics. We have thousands of sellers who do just that--return to us time and again with more comics for sale or trade.

[mycomicshop]

I did not realize they were jacking up prices on that. I have had a credit for a while and didn't know I would be seeing different prices than those without credit. Seems like flat out fraud/theft.

 

I know they are members on here. Perhaps they can come on and explain if there is a misunderstanding or if they have decided they didn't like their end of the previous trades and so decided to take money from people after both sides agreed to the trade.

 

The trade credit price is shown in addition to the regular price, not instead of the regular price. It's not like you'd see one price and somebody without credit would see another. You both would see the same retail price, but if you had trade credit in your account, and the item you were looking at had a retail price of $40 or more, you'd also see a trade credit price that was 25% higher than the regular price.

 

The trade credit price only shows up if you're logged in with an account that has trade credit available, because we don't want to clutter up the listings with additional price info that isn't relevant if you don't have trade credit.

[mycomicshop]

Supposedly they lowered their prices of $50 and up books by ~20% (looked like 25% to me)

 

...

 

Evidently they wanted to lower their prices, but didn't want to let people with trade credit get the lower prices.

 

Yeah, pretty much right. As succinctly as I can:

 

1) For cheap comics, we pay more in trade: 1.5x to 2x the cash amount. For expensive comics, the ratio is smaller, 1.2x the cash price.

 

2) Our margins are narrower for expensive comics. I.e., we might pay $0.20 for a book we'll sell for a dollar, but pay $70 for a book we'd sell for $100, or $800 for a book we'd sell for $1000.

 

3) Many sellers like to trade us a lot of cheaper books because we're the easiest way to get good value for them, and then use their credit to buy one or two expensive comics.

 

4) Because credit was being earned on low dollar books where we paid 1.5x to 2x more in credit, and then used to buy expensive comics where our margins are tighter and we may have sunk a fair amount of cash into buying the comic, we ended up pricing our more expensive comics higher than they otherwise would be, because it was possible that if they were purchased entirely with trade credit we could lose money on the deal.

 

5) As a result, we felt that our more expensive comics were priced appropriately for buyers who had a trade credit to spend with us, but were somewhat overpriced for buyers who didn't have credit.

 

6) The solution we employed when we made these changes last September was to create a separate trade credit price that is 25% higher than the retail price. At the time we made the change, we simultaneously lowered our retail price by 20% on all the comics that were affected. The end result was that if you had trade credit, it had exactly the same buying power as before, but our prices were now 20% cheaper than before for regular buyers not using trade credit. (Example: a book that was $100 before the change, had its price dropped 20% to $80, and could then be purchased for $80 cash or $80 * 1.25 = $100 trade credit)

 

The fact that it requires this much explanation is why I'm not particularly a fan of this arrangement. I'd prefer to have a single credit/cash ratio (say 1.2x or 1.25x), and then have our selling prices be the same whether you're paying with trade credit or not.

 

 

 

 

[mikenyc]

I did not realize they were jacking up prices on that. I have had a credit for a while and didn't know I would be seeing different prices than those without credit. Seems like flat out fraud/theft.

 

I know they are members on here. Perhaps they can come on and explain if there is a misunderstanding or if they have decided they didn't like their end of the previous trades and so decided to take money from people after both sides agreed to the trade.

 

The trade credit price is shown in addition to the regular price, not instead of the regular price. It's not like you'd see one price and somebody without credit would see another. You both would see the same retail price, but if you had trade credit in your account, and the item you were looking at had a retail price of $40 or more, you'd also see a trade credit price that was 25% higher than the regular price.

 

The trade credit price only shows up if you're logged in with an account that has trade credit available, because we don't want to clutter up the listings with additional price info that isn't relevant if you don't have trade credit.

 

I want to start by saying that I have ordered from your site multiple times and have always been happy with grading and pricing.

 

Now the backhand, when certain retail establishments offer credit for trade in at a higher rate than for cash, it almost always is because the credit is only good at their establishment, and know that money will be coming right back to them. The 120% sounds good because the higher trade in price will give you more to spend.

 

The reality though, is that you are actually losing money by accepting credit, i.e.

 

You have 100 cash trade in or 120 trade credit.

The book you want is 100 retail or 125 credit price.

 

Where is the benefit? In what scenario would receiving credit be more advantageous?

 

In actuality it seems that you are encouraging customers to take credit by having them believe they are getting more value in trade in, which can only be used in your stores, then you give them a different pricing structure, which negates the benefit of a trade in.

 

The fact that you now are actually informing customers, in a sensible manner, is a good first step, the fact that the system is so convoluted that you need a detailed explanation may lie closer to the heart of the problem.

 

 

 

[P Keel]

:juggle:

[mycomicshop]

You have 100 cash trade in or 120 trade credit.

The book you want is 100 retail or 125 credit price.

 

Where is the benefit? In what scenario would receiving credit be more advantageous?

 

For some comics it's 1.2x trade. For others it's 1.33x, 1.5x, or 2.0x.

 

And the 25% higher trade credit price only applies to comics $40 and up.

 

 

Your point is valid though, that if you were only selling us comics where our trade credit price is 1.2x the cash amount, and you knew you were only going to be buying comics $40 and up, then you might decide not to take trade credit.

[synch]

i am interested in how this works do you guys buy any books ?.. How much in trade/cash would you guys give for say a jim lee x-men #1 ?..