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Posted 08/27/2023 10:27 pm
I'm going to give ANACS one more chance to make this right, but I have had a group of about 40 coins that were supposed to have been conserved back in January that I still haven't received any kind of resolution on. This is a bit long, but a wild ride that might be worth the read to some of you considering using this service.
In January, I submitted a little over 100 coins for grading to ANACS. I had never used the conservation option before, so I figured trying it out on a large order of older coins would be as good an application as any. Almost all of the coins that I was interested in having conserved were pre-Barber series. I asked the show rep whether I needed to separate those out on a different form, but he told me that it didn't matter. His explanation was that each time you pay for the service, it would be good for conservation of 20 coins. So at $39 per conservation, I could submit all of my coins, pay $39, and ANACS would pick the 20 that would benefit the most from conservation. Okay, great!
My ANACS account showed that the coins were received on 1/23/23. They were broken up into 3 separate order numbers since each order has a maximum of 40 coins. On Monday 3/6/23, I received a notification that I had an order that was shipping out. I logged in to my account, and only one of the three orders had tracking. I thought that was odd, but I figured I'd give it another day to see if it updated.
The next day, the tracking info for the one order updated, but still nothing on the other two. I called in to customer service to see what was going on, and they told me that shipping must have missed that the other two were part of the same order, so the three were not all sent out together. When I checked the tracking for the one that was sent, I saw that they were using an old address that I had not lived at for two years. Apparently, since the one order had been separated from the other two, the shipping department just looked up the last address that one of my orders had shipped to and just used it. Unfortunately, I did not ship anything at all to ANACS during covid since there were no shows going on, and so there was a 2 year gap in my orders. In that time I had moved, but ANACS sent 1/3 of my current order to my old address. Even more unfortunate, my old address was in a pretty rough neighborhood, so I was pretty concerned about the prospect of sending a package worth tens of thousands of dollars to some rando in a low-income apartment complex. Since the package was being sent with signature confirmation, ANACS had to put a stop to the shipment and have it sent all the way back to them and resend it. Once ANACS got the order back, they then sent it out with the remaining 2/3 of my order on Friday 3/10/23.
Once everything arrived, I found that ANACS did not conserve 20 of my coins, they only conserved 3. Again, these were all 1794-1892, mostly Large Cents, Two Cents, Seated half dimes and Dimes, etc. About half of the coins received details grades, but that was expected. Only having 3 conserved was not. I called customer service, and they told me that each conservation fee only applies to a single submission form and that what the rep told me was incorrect. Instead, they only considered the first page of the six pages of submission forms, and so only those first 20 were considered. So 3 out of 20 were conserved. Since I was given incorrect information, they told me to send the ones I wanted conserved back in and they would redo those at no additional charge. There was a show coming up soon, so I agreed to that and this time 39 of the original coins were sent back again for conservation. I also included one coin that hadn't been graded yet but also needed conservation. So I was expecting a pretty high success rate this time around. Maybe not all of them, but certainly the majority. Since I had originally paid for one round of conservation and was now submitting two rounds, I was told I would be compensated for one charge, but would need to pay the other. Okay, no problem. Except now I was told it was $59 per submission. Of course I still had my original submission form that showed $39 which also said that price was good through the end of June. Apparently ANACS was in the middle of increasing their prices. At the show that I brought everything back for resubmission, some of the forms said $59, but some said $49. So they did two price hikes within a month and had forms with three different prices at the show. After looking at all of this, ANACS agreed to charge me the original $39 for my additional submission.
That shipment of 40 coins was sent along with another 20 that were in no need of conservation. These were all high grade, mostly Morgans. A few days later I logged into my account to see that 1 of the 2 was marked as received and opened. This was the order with high grade stuff. The other with all of the slabs needing conservation wasn't there. Here we go again. So I called in and the looked into and got it straightened out. The second order was marked opened 4/3/23.
As mentioned, the first order was all high-grade stuff, and I was supposed to have a two week turnaround. The other coins sent for conservation was going through their economy tier. When both were finally in the system, I logged in and found that the expected ship dates were swapped. All of my 2 week stuff was scheduled to ship out 5/26/23, two months after receipt. My economy submission showed an expected ship date of 4/17/23, only 2 weeks. Whatever. If they got all of the conservation done that quickly, I was fine with waiting on the others. As long as I eventually got them all back.
So I waited. And waited. And waited. April came and went and nothing was showing as even being processed. I was supposed to at least receive something after two weeks, but nothing. I called several times throughout May and every time I got some excuses and that they were backed up and would get to mine soon. June came and I kept calling once every couple of weeks, still with no success. Supposedly the Morgans were held up because they needed to have some consultant review them, but no word on the ones being conserved. Finally the high grade coins were shipped on 6/26/23, three months after submission. Still nothing on the coins being conserved.
July rolls around and I keep calling and getting no real answers. One day out of the blue I get a call from Paul DeFelice who apologizes for the mix up and assures me that they will be sent out soon. Within days of that conversation, I log in to my account see that the order is being finalized. I check the results and it says that none were selected for conservation.
At this point I'm just stunned. I call customer service and they tell me the same thing but that they would have the graders double check. That conversation happened on Friday 7/14/23. Instead, they just shipped out anyway following Monday on 7/17. A few days later the coins finally arrive, and sure enough none were conserved. The one coin included in that batch that wasn't already in a slab was an 1872 Indian cent. They slabbed it upside down. I've used ANACS for years, and some of their coins have play in their slabs, some don't. This Indian is stuck in there upside down and not moving at all. Awesome.
If 3 out of 20 coins in the original submission were worthy of conservation despite those 20 not being chosen specifically because they were in the most need, I find it extremely unlikely that a batch of 40 hand picked specifically because they looked like the most likely candidates would yield zero results.
It has now been 8 months since the original submission and I've spent $80 on conservation with nothing to show for it. I'm just about done with ANACS.
If their excuse is that somehow all of the 40 I submitted the second time defied the odds and didn't need conservation on any, I would like to know what does qualify? Most likely, they didn't want to go to the trouble of cracking them back out for conservation and just chose to ignore the order. I would bet money that if I cracked them out and submitted them for conservation, almost all would qualify.
I don't know what to do at this point. I've spent thousands of dollars with ANACS over the years, but this is just beyond the pale. The issues I've recounted here were just the worst problems, there have been other minor issues the whole way I haven't even mentioned that have made the whole experience just bad. I doubt I will ever send anything to them for conservation in the future and I may just wash my hands of using their service altogether.
I'm going to try to reach out to Paul one last time and see if anything will come of it. I need to photograph all of these anyway, so perhaps I'll give some updates when I can.
In January, I submitted a little over 100 coins for grading to ANACS. I had never used the conservation option before, so I figured trying it out on a large order of older coins would be as good an application as any. Almost all of the coins that I was interested in having conserved were pre-Barber series. I asked the show rep whether I needed to separate those out on a different form, but he told me that it didn't matter. His explanation was that each time you pay for the service, it would be good for conservation of 20 coins. So at $39 per conservation, I could submit all of my coins, pay $39, and ANACS would pick the 20 that would benefit the most from conservation. Okay, great!
My ANACS account showed that the coins were received on 1/23/23. They were broken up into 3 separate order numbers since each order has a maximum of 40 coins. On Monday 3/6/23, I received a notification that I had an order that was shipping out. I logged in to my account, and only one of the three orders had tracking. I thought that was odd, but I figured I'd give it another day to see if it updated.
The next day, the tracking info for the one order updated, but still nothing on the other two. I called in to customer service to see what was going on, and they told me that shipping must have missed that the other two were part of the same order, so the three were not all sent out together. When I checked the tracking for the one that was sent, I saw that they were using an old address that I had not lived at for two years. Apparently, since the one order had been separated from the other two, the shipping department just looked up the last address that one of my orders had shipped to and just used it. Unfortunately, I did not ship anything at all to ANACS during covid since there were no shows going on, and so there was a 2 year gap in my orders. In that time I had moved, but ANACS sent 1/3 of my current order to my old address. Even more unfortunate, my old address was in a pretty rough neighborhood, so I was pretty concerned about the prospect of sending a package worth tens of thousands of dollars to some rando in a low-income apartment complex. Since the package was being sent with signature confirmation, ANACS had to put a stop to the shipment and have it sent all the way back to them and resend it. Once ANACS got the order back, they then sent it out with the remaining 2/3 of my order on Friday 3/10/23.
Once everything arrived, I found that ANACS did not conserve 20 of my coins, they only conserved 3. Again, these were all 1794-1892, mostly Large Cents, Two Cents, Seated half dimes and Dimes, etc. About half of the coins received details grades, but that was expected. Only having 3 conserved was not. I called customer service, and they told me that each conservation fee only applies to a single submission form and that what the rep told me was incorrect. Instead, they only considered the first page of the six pages of submission forms, and so only those first 20 were considered. So 3 out of 20 were conserved. Since I was given incorrect information, they told me to send the ones I wanted conserved back in and they would redo those at no additional charge. There was a show coming up soon, so I agreed to that and this time 39 of the original coins were sent back again for conservation. I also included one coin that hadn't been graded yet but also needed conservation. So I was expecting a pretty high success rate this time around. Maybe not all of them, but certainly the majority. Since I had originally paid for one round of conservation and was now submitting two rounds, I was told I would be compensated for one charge, but would need to pay the other. Okay, no problem. Except now I was told it was $59 per submission. Of course I still had my original submission form that showed $39 which also said that price was good through the end of June. Apparently ANACS was in the middle of increasing their prices. At the show that I brought everything back for resubmission, some of the forms said $59, but some said $49. So they did two price hikes within a month and had forms with three different prices at the show. After looking at all of this, ANACS agreed to charge me the original $39 for my additional submission.
That shipment of 40 coins was sent along with another 20 that were in no need of conservation. These were all high grade, mostly Morgans. A few days later I logged into my account to see that 1 of the 2 was marked as received and opened. This was the order with high grade stuff. The other with all of the slabs needing conservation wasn't there. Here we go again. So I called in and the looked into and got it straightened out. The second order was marked opened 4/3/23.
As mentioned, the first order was all high-grade stuff, and I was supposed to have a two week turnaround. The other coins sent for conservation was going through their economy tier. When both were finally in the system, I logged in and found that the expected ship dates were swapped. All of my 2 week stuff was scheduled to ship out 5/26/23, two months after receipt. My economy submission showed an expected ship date of 4/17/23, only 2 weeks. Whatever. If they got all of the conservation done that quickly, I was fine with waiting on the others. As long as I eventually got them all back.
So I waited. And waited. And waited. April came and went and nothing was showing as even being processed. I was supposed to at least receive something after two weeks, but nothing. I called several times throughout May and every time I got some excuses and that they were backed up and would get to mine soon. June came and I kept calling once every couple of weeks, still with no success. Supposedly the Morgans were held up because they needed to have some consultant review them, but no word on the ones being conserved. Finally the high grade coins were shipped on 6/26/23, three months after submission. Still nothing on the coins being conserved.
July rolls around and I keep calling and getting no real answers. One day out of the blue I get a call from Paul DeFelice who apologizes for the mix up and assures me that they will be sent out soon. Within days of that conversation, I log in to my account see that the order is being finalized. I check the results and it says that none were selected for conservation.
At this point I'm just stunned. I call customer service and they tell me the same thing but that they would have the graders double check. That conversation happened on Friday 7/14/23. Instead, they just shipped out anyway following Monday on 7/17. A few days later the coins finally arrive, and sure enough none were conserved. The one coin included in that batch that wasn't already in a slab was an 1872 Indian cent. They slabbed it upside down. I've used ANACS for years, and some of their coins have play in their slabs, some don't. This Indian is stuck in there upside down and not moving at all. Awesome.
If 3 out of 20 coins in the original submission were worthy of conservation despite those 20 not being chosen specifically because they were in the most need, I find it extremely unlikely that a batch of 40 hand picked specifically because they looked like the most likely candidates would yield zero results.
It has now been 8 months since the original submission and I've spent $80 on conservation with nothing to show for it. I'm just about done with ANACS.
If their excuse is that somehow all of the 40 I submitted the second time defied the odds and didn't need conservation on any, I would like to know what does qualify? Most likely, they didn't want to go to the trouble of cracking them back out for conservation and just chose to ignore the order. I would bet money that if I cracked them out and submitted them for conservation, almost all would qualify.
I don't know what to do at this point. I've spent thousands of dollars with ANACS over the years, but this is just beyond the pale. The issues I've recounted here were just the worst problems, there have been other minor issues the whole way I haven't even mentioned that have made the whole experience just bad. I doubt I will ever send anything to them for conservation in the future and I may just wash my hands of using their service altogether.
I'm going to try to reach out to Paul one last time and see if anything will come of it. I need to photograph all of these anyway, so perhaps I'll give some updates when I can.
Edited by chirrrs
08/27/2023 10:28 pm
08/27/2023 10:28 pm
