hello all, new member here, please excuse lower caps, collecting coins for about 8 years now.
I have a moderate collection (some 40 coins), consisting of modern (1986-up mostly) coins, lots of isle of man gold and bi-metal coins, piedforts gold and platinum, triangle coins, tri-metal coins, etc.
I found a very nice feature online that you can research your coin with NGC by merely giving the slab number. to my horror, I had only researched about 6 coins so far and found grievious, yes, grevious (ok I am a drama king) errors. 2 of the coins were completely mis-identified, including details such as completely different years in their descriptions, wrong descriptions, etc. I was shocked, yes, shocked that gambling was being done here. I also caught an error on another coin that was up for auction on
ebay on which the label itself was in error (I can provide details on this if wanted). I was also disappointed that my NGC label was woefully inadequate compared to the same kind of coin another person had NGC slab/grade (the minor details left out on my label was that it was a piedfort, the weight (which was on the other NGC label for the same kind of coin), except that the label on the other coin was in error although it had more details.
I know how and why they messed up on one part... they had confused the 450th anniversary of queen Elizabeth's accension to the 500th anniversary with henry XIII.
it was like NGC did not research the coin at all. it was like they would put on the holder's label whatever they were told that it was. these are coins btw that are in Krause... do they not even refer to it when they get a coin in for slabbing and grading (oooh, that word slabbing irritates me for some reason).
remember, I had only just begun to do the NGC online label number research, had a lot more to go. btw, I will never again buy another NGC holder coin without researching the number first... not to find fault or error with the seller, but with NGC's competence.
so I called NGC customer service and NICELY told them the issues that I was having. their response? to send me some kind of idiotic pdf file in which I had the privilege of paying some $26 or more to have the NGC's description correctly changed (not a re-grading, I was not asking for that... I was merely asking that they changed the description TO THE ACTUAL COIN INVOLVED).
it was like plucking hen's teeth. I responded with why should I have to pay to fix NGC's error? on the other coin in which the description was completely wrong (describing a completely different coin in both year and everything else), I was told "to forward my email to such and such" and they would see what they could do, if anything.
ok, I officially blew up at that point. I emailed them back, saying that I was under the impression that NGC was professional, that I should not have to pay for their mistakes, that they obviously had not researched two of the same kind of coins (one I had, another person had the other one).
so, under the first NGC person I had been in contact with, I had to send in the pdf form with money to fix one problem, I had to forward our emails to such-and-such in another department to fix the other problem, etc.
I wrote her back, saying that I was not going to do JACK about any pdf file, forwarding this or that, etc. I was firm but polite, and asked her to forward my issues to her supervisor (as I had no confidence in her compentency... she was just trying to sluff off her duties onto me, INSTEAD OF DOING HER JOB! I told her that I was done with jumping through hoops in order to get NGC to do their jobs.
I have always said... it depends on who you get on the other line.
so I got a message from her supervisor. everything had been fixed. I did not have to send in a pdf file with money. I did not have to forward any emails to another person. it was handled, correctly and quickly.
so, am I the bad person here or what? is this normal behavior for NGC or other grading companies? I will not use them again, even tho they did eventually and quickly fixed the problems once the matter got kicked upstairs.
ok, I am done with my rant... sorry folks. I do have one more unrelated NGC rant that I will save for the next message.
oh, and nice to be here. I love this site and all the info in it, seems like THE place to be when discussing anything about coins...
mike
Posted 08/08/2016 9:33 pm
