Posting here

[Jeffro.]

There are better online retailers than comicshop regardless of whether they deal in "endless pages of $1.10 comics", or not.

 

Its not fair to say regardless of whether they deal in endless pages of $1.10 comics or not, because this is a problem that could not have happened to a seller who deals in say 2 $1000+ books a day.

 

There is of course a different care, anything less than 100% satisfaction in transaction should be met might with a totally different response. Now a seller who sells thousands and thousands of books every single day, many from endless pages of $1.10 to under $10 comics, will without doubt have a ton more errors (99.5% error free, would still be a hunk of a ton of errors), and dealing with the errors will not have the margin to deal with problem the same way that the $1000+ 2 book a day seller.

 

 

I don't think anyone is suggesting that Lonestar be perfect. How could they be perfect? How could any of us? What I think is the central argument here is how they respond to that imperfection when it happens.

 

I happen to think their policy, expounded upon by Conan, and their seeming inflexibility in not wavering from that policy is not the essence of what customer service should be.

[mystrymachine]

ok, I'm tempted to go buy a book from mycomicshop now just to show my support...

[Chespirito]

ok, I'm tempted to go buy a book from mycomicshop now just to show my support...

I'm tempted to reach into my fridge for that last slice of delicious Pecan pie..

[Trev]

I but I challenge anybody to show me a better online retailer for raw and cgc books.

 

You can't be serious? Bob Storms, Flaming Telepath, and GAcollectibles are three that I can rattle off, right off the bat. There are many, many more.

 

Never heard of these 3. I will check them out. So far most other online retailers are pooly organized, hard to search, don't have a ton of selection, are priced wrong, only occasionally have scans or even stock pics of books, don't publish their buy/trade policy, don't publish their grading standards, etc. Most sites (even mile high) look like they were built in 1997 and then never revised or maintained, often have 2-5 year old messages on them. I could go on and on.

 

BUT I've never visited these sites, and I live in Texas, so would love to find someone outside of Texas as good as Lonestar just to avoid the taxes (8.25% in Austin, 8% from Lonestar).

 

And there isn't anybody else I can ship 50-100 modern books I no longer want and get some great Silver or Bronze books along with filling a few of those $1.10 holes.

 

Most of the time the dealer sites I visit are there simply for a presence and really you need to have a relationship with the dealer to understand what's really available, what the real price is, etc. The sites exist simply to catch the occasional buyer willing to pay whatever retail price they have up there and provide contact info.

 

Yes, Lonestar's selection of high quality and key books is probably not as good as others, but I don't use Lonestar to buy those books. I'll use HA or working with dealers directly at cons for those books.

 

My challenge is real -- please show me someone as good or better than lonestar from a self service perspective. I haven't seen it.

[joeypost]

ok, I'm tempted to go buy a book from mycomicshop now just to show my support...

 

Do you think they have nice copies of Man of Steel 18 5th print? If so I'm in.

[Jeffro.]

I will agree that Lonestar fills a particular niche, as does Mile High, and they seem to do quite well at what they do.

 

As far as Lonestar's CGC inventory is concered, I'll have to go back and look again. I seem to recall looking one time and finding their pricing quite high. Not Mile High "High" (no pun intended)

[DR.X]

I but I challenge anybody to show me a better online retailer for raw and cgc books.

 

You can't be serious? Bob Storms, Flaming Telepath, and GAcollectibles are three that I can rattle off, right off the bat. There are many, many more.

 

+1

 

Add Fantasy-Comics to that list. Dennis was recommended to me by Flaming Telepath. I've bought hundreds of books from Dennis and never had to send one back, period. If I order ten NM books I get ten, not six and four random picks of krap.

 

http://fantasy-comics.com/

[bababooey]

I appreciate the original post in this thread from the My Comic Shop / Lone Star guy. Seems the only way to be heard was to start a new thread, since the previous thread had turned into a tedious free-for-all (100+ pages, much of it filled with the usual Russian nesting dolls of back-and-forth responses that don't add much illumination).

 

There are a couple of distinct issues here, including a company's handling of a specific order that goes awry, consistency between a company's policy and its manifestation on eBay, and vast disparities in opinion among those who have previously transacted with this company.

 

My Comic Shop's Reputation

 

If you look at My Comic Shop's eBay feedback, it tells an interesting story:

 

The first thing you'll notice is: That's a hell of a lot of transactions for a short period of time. It is orders of magnitude more transactions than other high-volume eBay comics sellers such as, for example, DTAColl or Neat-Stuff-Collectibles.

 

The second thing you notice is: What's up with the negatives and neutrals? There are two ways of looking at this. One is that the negs paint an unappealing picture of the seller, suggesting lax customer service. The other is that, as a whole, the non-positive feedbacks only represent about 0.4% of all transactions.

 

Either way, it is very easy to say that My Comic Shop should do better with their customer service. If you read through the negatives and also the neutrals , one pattern that emerges is of people who say they emailed and did not get a response. That should be easy enough to rectify from the seller's end, so why don't they? Conan -- what do you say?

 

There are also many negs/neutrals regarding incorrect orders, orders never sent, and orders with incorrect grading. (Again, for context, these represent 0.04% of transactions.) This appears to be a problem that is at least partially symptomatic of a high-volume, quantity-over-quality type of company. Still, nobody can argue with somebody who says that striving for higher standards of Quality Control is important. There may very well be issues with the way My Comic Shop / Lone Star is merging its storefront business with its online business, as well as how it trains staff to grade and to locate correct copies of variant issues that are only distinguished by small markings, and the like. Possibly their whole computer system and its database, invoicing and other elements are a few years behind the times.

 

There is also the caveat that, for reasons that are hard to pin down, comics shoppers who buy low-cost items tend to be more demanding and upset by small problems than comics shoppers who buy higher-end items. This may be partly due to the heightened scrutiny of condition for later-era comics, or simply a matter of numbers: Somebody who purchases 50 moderns will be more likely to have a concern than sombody spending the same amount of money to purchase a single golden-age book. I can easily see how, from the perspective of My Comics Shop, over-demanding customers might become tiresome -- which would explain their terse "Here's your refund, and good day!" policy.

 

That said, it really does sound like My Comics Shop could stand to re-acquaint themselves with the potential benefits of a "customer is always right" mentality. There are numerous high-volume sellers on eBay who have nearly 100% feedback and yet some of them are known to frequently suck. Clearly they've made at least some adjustments to their customer service, even while still maintaining a level of overly profit-motivated suckage in other realms.

 

By the way, here is...

 

My Own Experience With My Comics Shop

 

I don't think I've ever bought anything from them. Maybe I did, but it must have been a long time ago, and it was probably something cheap. If I were considering buying from them and saw their negative feedbacks, I would feel uncomfortable buying a high-value item from them -- or at least I would prepare for the possibility of having to return the item. But if I were in the market for low-value items, I would look at their feedback in terms of its ratio of positives to negatives, and consider the whole thing a minor gamble and take my chances. When the books are in the $1 to $20 range, unless they're all total crud, I expect a high-volume seller to make a few mistakes here and there.

 

Also, some of the feedbacks are things like: "The description said NM but there were some tiny crease lines on the spine, so no way is it NM, more like VF." If you're buying from a seller who only uses stock images, and who has dozens of negatives, you should automatically expect a "NM" to be a "VF." That's unfortunately part of the way it seems to work (I wish it weren't). (Incidentally, I can think of a seller for whom the opposite is true -- Gary Dolgoff. That guy's idea of a VG is often more in the FN range. I wish more sellers erred in that direction.)

 

Other points in My Comic Shop's favor: The Conan guy seems pretty forthright and decent. He is polite and gracious, even when people here are pooping on his head. In the Golden Age forum, when people were discussing Chuck's statements about shilling his own Mile High books in the Heritage Auctions, and the Heritage N.P. Gresham stuff, Conan wrote a cool post about his company's strict internal policies relating to shilling and such. I also noticed an old post (from 2005) about one of the My Comic Shop owners finding somebody's stolen vintage 'zines and books at the NY Comic Con (buying them when somebody approached to sell them off, knowing something was suspicious about it) and immediately returning them to the rightful owner. It sounds like My Comics Shop can be counted among the good guys.

 

And now on to...

 

My Comics Shop's compliance with eBay Policy

 

This whole issue seems to be a diversion or red herring or pre-emptive "You're WRONG!" cudgel from the original subject matter of the 100+ post thread. The Buyer was asking people's takes on whether he should give a negative feedback, what they thought of the specific situation, and so on. The larger question of whether a high-volume company is in violation of eBay policy when they are unable to complete a small percentage of their transactions (due to filing errors, or maybe due to selling them in their store at the same time they're listed on eBay?) does not really relate to the situation posed here. After all, it turns out My Comics Shop did have the comic in stock ultimately, but made what would appear to be an honest error in mixing it up with a similar issue. They also followed eBay policy by providing a full refund.

 

Anyway, on to...

 

This Particular Situation

 

I read through as much of the previous 100+ page thread as I could stand without losing precious IQ points. Seriously, I think if you try to read some of these ongoing threads, you will come out the other end as a dumber human being. Nonetheless, I was able to glean the following storyline:

 

-- Buyer saw a rare Man of Steel 5th printing and wanted it

-- Taking advantage of cheap, all-for-one-price shipping, he bought something like 37 other comics at the same time

-- Package arrived, and Man of Steel comic was a common 1st printing. There were a couple of other similar discrepancies that the buyer was less concerned with.

-- Buyer contacted My Comics Shop to alert them to the situation. They responded by issuing a refund for all the incorrect books, telling the buyer he could keep them.

-- This is where it gets somewhat hazy, but apparently the buyer then responded with something like, "Thanks for the refund, but what I really wanted was that rare 5th printing of the Man of Steel book."

-- Also apparently, My Comics Shop did not offer much further communication on the matter. We don't actually know what was said by either party -- or how polite they were, etc. So we'll assume it as all very cordial.

-- The buyer, lusting after this rare printing of the Man of Steel comic, went a-hunting for it on the My Comics Shop website. And found it. He placed the order and paid the automatic (?) invoice that included the shipping, which might have been $1.50.

-- The buyer then contacted My Comics Shop and said, "Hey, I just bought the comic you said you didn't have in stock. You screwed up and could have sent me the correct comic. Now I had to buy it on your site and pay the extra $1.50 for shipping, which I wouldn't have paid if you had found the comic I ordered and you had in stock. How about you spot me that $1.50 for the trouble?" We really don't know how polite or snarky this element of the communication was. Not much to go on based on the original posts.

-- My Comic Shop responded with a "No." Again, we don't know how gruff or jerky or polite they were. Only that they declined, for some reason or other.

 

That appears to be the long and short of it, but by all means, if any of the above is correct, the Buyer or Seller can set the record straight. Otherwise it seems to be a pretty standard-issue "Whoops" type of situation, with some extra spice of annoyance in terms of not getting better customer service. All in all, it doesn't seem to be a very big deal.

 

Depending on the way the communication went down, I would have probably given the buyer a $1.50 refund. Then again, we don't know how the communication went down, whether the customer service rep on the phone had his/her bran and coffee that morning, or if the buyer came across as an irrational extortionist threatening to fly around in a Cessna dropping leaflets that say "My Comics Shop Sucks!"

 

More Thoughts

 

First of all, I think this entire subject and the threads it has provoked are pretty absurd. Then again, I did read through much of them, and I am entertaining myself by sitting here typing about them, so I guess I am getting something out of it. But for the most part, it is not the best commentary on the comics-collecting community, or at least a segment of it. And again, I must be included in that judgment since I am now a participant.

 

One wonders, when Conan read the initial post, did it occur to him to just send the buyer $1.50 or $1.20 or whatever? Just out of his own pocket, as an exception to make things right? I mean, why not? Or was he worried it would open the sluice gates of other people writing posts and expecting compensation?

 

On the flipside of that, what's up with the buyer? He finds what sounds like a cherished grail -- a rare 5th printing that almost never turns up. Then he hits a slight snag in acquiring it. But with a little perseverance, he gets that rare, awesome grail comic (which costs $1.10), and it only costs him an additional $1.50 (or was it $1.20?) to do so.

 

I don't know about anybody else here, but if I snagged a long-sought-after comic for under $3, I'd have a kick in my step, and I'd probably go outside and re-enact the Gene Kelly umbrella-spinning scene from "Singin' in the Rain." Hell, I would probably find $1.50 in change just walking around for a while, so it would all break even.

 

What I wouldn't do is plop my butt down in front of the computer and commence writing about the injustice -- oh, the injustice! -- of the events that had unfolded, and the fact that a company's customer service department had the gall to say "No" to me. I mean, that's not what *I* would do. I can't speak for what's right and proper in anybody else's life. But this behavior just wouldn't be in line with my glee at obtaining a long-cherished, rare, obscure, super-grail variant comic book that is close to my heart and warms my cockles.

 

Not to mention the two- or three-day stretch of obsessively monitoring and responding to every post in response to my original thread, and then getting into insulting and hostile (but hey, it's all in good fun! We're all friends here) exchanges with anybody who dares to question any aspect of my discussion or hints at not taking the side of my "team," or whatever. That's just time-consuming negativity, and it would totally get in the way of my comic-book cherishing. Especially for those who presumably love comic books and want to share their enjoyment of them freely with other comic-book fans, sharing and discussing the beneficial and joyful aspects of the stories and the hobby while giving people a heartfelt, tingly feeling of camraderie and mutual aesthetic delight.

 

To think that anyone would deliberately fill up three or more days of one's life immersing one's entire being into a conflict and ensuing "debate" over a $1.50 shipping charge is really quite an interesting psychological phenomenon, on a par with those natives who elongate their necks by putting stacks of metal rings around them, or religious old dudes in Nepal who spend years of their lives tying weights to their testicles until their distendended man-bulbs can scratch pendulously along the holy earth.

 

I imagine even an Indonesian sweatshop worker, toiling 16 hours a day to meticulously build tiny microchippy widgets, would make at least $1.50 in the same amount of time it requires to pore over message-board responses waiting for the opportunity to unfurl such juicy rhetorical nuggets as the ad hominem gem of "You are a very, very small man, at your core," or the prototypically fallacy-of-ad-populum belch of "Your premises are false and everybody else here knows you are wrong." Or whatever.

 

Much could also be said of the myriad codependent-minded voices who, like a Greek chorus of Stockholm hostages hopped up on dental medication, mumble in unison that they've learned to live with others' bullying ways as a matter of course, much like the denialist wails of those misshapenly bruise-headed women defending their extra-Y-chromosomal husbands on forgotten episodes of "COPS." Say it all together now: "It's okay that we're collectively growing the world's first hive-minded comic-style va-jay-jay with our spineless stances in the face of obviously insulting and egregiously aggressive behavior in our presence, and that we're unironically exemplifying the adage about the one-eyed man in the land of the blind, because at least now we have a voice to lead us out of our mother's basements and into the warm cathode glow of a collectors' forum as its appeal to tasteful sentient beings is inexorably eroded by our zombie-witted acquiescence in the face of fevered, chest-thumping egotism, advanced-level self rationalizations, and textbook, plain-vanilla narcissistic personality disorder." Or whatever it is y'alls is mumbling through the drool of your dental medication.

 

But really, I kid! Good stuff. I totally got my $1.50 entertainment worth, so here's 2 cents back, and keep the change. And don't ever change. I mean, I know you won't. Anyway, I hope this all helped illuminate the situation with My Comics Shop, and helps people figure out whether they want to spend $4 on VF- copies of "The Punisher: Bare-Bottomed Spanking Edition" and groovy stuff like that.

 

Conclusion

 

This is all a win-win. On one side, you have the buyer, who gets to call attention to himself and engage in all sorts of ju-jitsu-like wrangling with invisible bulls and other fun exercises in funny fun-minded fun fun, all the while making a very convincing case that Companies Should Have Good Customer Service and Not Screw Up Orders. (I wholeheartedly agree!) Meanwhile, My Comic Shop has gotten all sorts of publicity from this -- since even bad publicity is a form of publicity. Then again, is this really bad publicity? I submit that it is not! By hosing up this order, they are in some ways providing a public service. People who might otherwise be out in the world, walking the streets, and (optimistically speaking) potentially reproducing are instead kept safely indoors where they can type at length about $1.50 discrepancies with all the single-mindedness of a scowling paperboy in a John Cusack movie or an autistic Dustin Hoffman nebbish whose fragile world falls to tiny, numerically precise pieces when he can't view "The People's Court" on schedule. I seriously think My Comic Shop comes out of this looking sparkly, squeaky clean and I hereby pledge to buy something from them, someday. And I'll tell you what: I won't even complain when the item never arrives.

Many good points made here.

 

I anticipate the response to be "Pffft"

[october]

Two threads, hours and hours of typing, and hundreds of thousands of words devoted to a $1 comic that someone didn't get. A. ONE. DOLLAR. COMIC.

 

Get a grip.

 

[Annihilus]

Conan you have done a solid job of presenting Lonestar in a good light. There is a ton to love about using your website, your intuitive trading platform that allowed me to turn 8 boxes of books I didnt want into a box of great material I am happy to have, etc.

 

You have done an amazing job in keeping a professional demeanor and your company did not at all deserve the odd bashing that it took from prior thread, and will take from future threads. To think you issued a refund, an apology for the error, had buyer keep book, and spend time posting on this board during your busy season when you have work to get done.

 

Best advice, dont get caught up in the potshots you will suffer from fringe folks who have taken up battle stations on this ship. You cant win on this board, as reason is not an effective tool in a mob setting.

 

I'm not going to get into a big debate about who was right or wrong or whether premises are 'faulty' or 'false' because, to be honest, that means nothing to me. When dealing with a company, I will certainly take into advisement the experiences that other customers have had with that company (and adjust the seriousness with which I take that advisement depending upon who it is coming from accordingly), but in the long run I will use my own experiences to evaluate whether or not that company will continue to receive my business.

 

I agree with everything you said above and have had nothing but overwhelmingly positive experiences with Lonestar in my months of dealing with them. While I haven't spent 'THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS' (™) of dollars with them in that time, I have spent a significant sum and have nothing but good things to say about both buying and selling with Lonestar/Mycomicshop.

 

Their system might not be perfect (there is no such thing) and there may be flaws, but in my experience I am happy to recommend their services to anyone. If they should fail to meet my expectations in a way that dictates to my inner self that I shout from the mountaintops how my life has been ruined, I will do so here ASAP.

 

Two threads, hours and hours of typing, and hundreds of thousands of words devoted to a $1 comic that someone didn't get. A. ONE. DOLLAR. COMIC.

 

Get a grip.

 

Plus: this.

[Senormac]

I appreciate ......

 

Wow doohick..... that was a post and a half. Nicely done I might add.

 

 

[Trev]

I but I challenge anybody to show me a better online retailer for raw and cgc books.

 

You can't be serious? Bob Storms, Flaming Telepath, and GAcollectibles are three that I can rattle off, right off the bat. There are many, many more.

 

+1

 

Add Fantasy-Comics to that list. Dennis was recommended to me by Flaming Telepath. I've bought hundreds of books from Dennis and never had to send one back, period. If I order ten NM books I get ten, not six and four random picks of krap.

 

http://fantasy-comics.com/

 

Here's what I see:

 

 

AND

 

[VintageComics]

Two threads, hours and hours of typing, and hundreds of thousands of words devoted to a $1 comic that someone didn't get. A. ONE. DOLLAR. COMIC.

 

Get a grip.

 

It's about the principle, not the dollar value.

 

 

I recognize RMA's POV. He wants the right thing done regardless of the cost.

 

I recognize Conan's POV. They strictly adhere to established policy.

 

I also recognize that MCS' policy is not in the customer's best interests.

 

We used to make lots of mistakes when I was in the automotive sector. We kept a very high level of feedback among customers surveyed (top 10 percentile of all Benz dealerships surveyed, usually top 5) because we bent over backwards to fix mistakes at our expense and minimize inconvenience to the customer.

 

Nobody is perfect, but all rules were made to be bent including customer service rules.

 

If you can't do that profitably, it's probably time to change the rules.

 

 

 

[Reno McCoy]

By Crom!

[VintageComics]

I'll just add that I wouldn't make a deal about a small loss. My time is worth more than that to my business, my kids etc but I do understand RMA's position. If you open a crack it eventually gets bigger and that is what he is trying to prevent.

 

(thumbs u

[BrianR]

I'll just add that I wouldn't make a deal about a small loss. My time is worth more than that to my business, my kids etc but I do understand RMA's position. If you open a crack it eventually gets bigger and that is what he is trying to prevent.

 

(thumbs u

 

And that is what their business model is based on. And probably why you don't see a higher negative count for overgraded books.

 

 

 

 

 

[Trev]

 

I recognize Conan's POV. They strictly adhere to established policy.

 

 

I like lonestar, but this is frankly BS. I run a multi-million dollar business for a major corporation and I concede dollars all the time.

 

This is not seeing the forest for the trees. Policy exists so that people don't do crazy things. Empowered people have the right to violate it if they think it is the right thing.

 

That Conan can't convince his father to spend $1.50 to make it right or frankly isn't just empowered to give the credit doesn't make a lick of sense.

 

I've also watched companies waste thousands of dollars of time over $1. Like what's happened here.

[Dr. Balls]

I had some final thoughts written up for the other thread but it was locked before I posted. I stopped posting in that thread because I felt it wasn't accomplishing anything except creating more fodder to be dissected and debated ad nauseam. That, and the whole thread went bonkers.

 

We sent RMA a wrong printing and refunded him for it. Since he naturally still wanted the issue, he later ordered the same issue through our web site and asked us to remove the shipping charge. From our staff's perspective, it was a new order, so they declined to remove the shipping charge. I agree that it would have been a nice gesture of goodwill had we done so, and would have done that if it landed in my lap--but it didn't, and we didn't. That's my understanding of the salient points. Maybe that's wrong--I'm not here to go into that piece by piece again.

 

Why didn't I just give RMA what he wanted when made aware of his complaint, either when he first contacted me a month ago, or when the thread came up? Issues go to our CS department, and if they have to be elevated they go to Buddy, not me. Once they've reviewed a customer's issue and made an informed decision, it's neither appropriate nor in my power for me to overrule them. If it was something black and white like we said we'd issue a refund but the refund never went through, that's one thing. But if the procedures specified by Buddy were properly followed and the customer just doesn't like our answer, that's not something I can change. What I can do is work to improve our systems to reduce the likelihood of something similar happening in the future; or, if I disagree with a policy, make a persuasive case internally for why and how we should change, and maybe eventually I get it changed. I do these things. Your friendly feedback helps. Comics General horrorshows do not.

 

If you think we're somehow too big to care about customer service or something like that, I wholeheartedly disagree. Why do you think I post here in the first place? We wouldn't be where we are if we didn't place a high priority on providing good customer service. Our business is growing, despite tough economic times, and it's not because we take our customers for granted. All of us here take great pride in what we do and never stop trying to get better. I stand behind both our eBay performance (99.7% positive, 4.9s for all DSRs), and the thousands of successful long-term relationships we have with our buyers and sellers, as evidenced by the feedback we receive and the volume of repeat business we get. But do we have room to improve? Absolutely!

 

I try to be honest, helpful, and reasonable when I post here, but sometimes all the junior high drama and points-scoring that takes place here overwhelms everything else. What I've learned from this experience is that if I'm not able to provide 100% satisfaction myself, it's probably better if I just don't post at all. This isn't an FDQ exit, just saying that I will be more reluctant and careful about wading in here again in the future. Thanks for reading.

 

This is an awfully long explanation for "Sorry, but you're still screwed.". From my understanding, you've spent more in time and effort trying to explain yourself than if you just reached in your pocket and refunded the money at issue here.

[october]

Two threads, hours and hours of typing, and hundreds of thousands of words devoted to a $1 comic that someone didn't get. A. ONE. DOLLAR. COMIC.

 

Get a grip.

 

not the dollar value.

 

 

Of course it is. Some things are worth the trouble, some aren't. This falls squarely in the latter category.

 

Do you call the police when a coworker takes a quarter off of your desk for the vending machine? Endlessly whine and moan when someone grabs a beer without asking at a party you are having? It's the principle of the thing after all, right? Technically right is just that, "technically". Most people have the good sense to have a "who cares" threshold....or not.

[Reno McCoy]

Oh my.