Anyone Else Noticing A Significant Delay With PCGS

Once they get entered into the system you will get express service. If you paid for economy service they take a lot longer once they got in the system (because people who paid for express service would be pushed ahead of yours). Is this your first time submitting? Because if you been at it for a while you would know the they have delays after the ANA, other major shows, or major mint releases. As you say it happens every year. In sending the submission to NGC probably wouldn't of helped either, because they are probably being slammed as well.

Condors right NGC wasn't exactly quick either. He's right about the rest of it too

The thought process of, "it always has taken this long after .... so you should know this without being told so" is mind boggling.

Their website currently say a TURNAROUND time of 6 days (was 5 when my coins arrived.) So to propose that anyone should just expect and accept that an additional 10 day delay is perfectly fine SOP, just does not compute to me.

Also a bit of a bright spot after 11 days (8 business) my coins are now "Accepted" and will fall into the estimated turnaround time of 6 days. So if they actually manage to keep on the average of the 6 days my coins will be graded by next Tuesday.
So to recap, they will have had my EXPRESS order since 3/9/18 and will probably ship them out on the 29th.
Cheers

The entire TPG grading game is time consuming, expensive and frustrating.

Accept that fact up front and decide for yourself ... do you continue to go through this or do you move on to raw coins?

I've mostly used the 'economy' rate submission with PCGS ... and have experienced grading delays up to 50 business days after acceptance.

Just saying ... if you want your coins in a TPG slab then you are dealing with their inefficiencies.

That's a new change they've made, it used to be they entered your coins into the system as soon as they receive them, but everyone kept complaining when their express five day turnaround turned into 16. They didn't want to look bad for missing their estimated turnaround and they didn't want to list expresses as 16 days, so they simply stopped entering the coins until they were ready to actually go into the system. Would you have been happier if they told you express was going to be 16 business days, or more?




I thought maybe you might not be aware that there are certain times you don't want to send coins, in because they will get caught up in a backlog after large shows or new releases.




And I'm sure once your coins got into the system you got the express service you paid for. I will agree there should be a warning on the website telling you your coins will not be immediately entered into the system as soon as they are received, but as I said that's a new policy. Will probably see that message posted before too long. Especially after complaints such as yours.




What sort of adjustments would you suggest? Most people with similar complaints say "hire more graders". The problem is there are only a certain number of "world-class graders" and the ones not employed by PCGS are either already employed by one of the other grading services or making more money in their own private coin businesses. You can't just call up a temp company and say send me 10 more world-class graders. And I'm sure you don't want PCGS to hire lesser qualified graders to grade your coins. I will agree not informing you on the website that there would be a delay between receivable and entering into the system is bad business, but since you say this is your 30th time submitting and seven years you're probably familiar with the procedure, would you have read the website, or just glanced at the turnaround time? Most people will just pack up the shipment and send it because they "know how it's done".

Condor,
First I would like to thank you for you contribution to this thread not to mention the wealth of information I have gained from you and so many members here.
1. Yes I would have been perfectly fine with knowing it would have been 16 days for express level. In fact I would still be happy if my issue being reported to them helped lead them to make that clear on their website.
2. I am not exactly sure how I would handle the "seasonal" expansion. I do agree that I don't want incompetent graders. However I have owned my own businesses for 13 years now and I have one in particular that grows by 500% for Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. All of the positions needed to fill that rapid expansion to contraction back to expansion is something we had to work at year round. Most of this was done by hiring more staff year round (with a reduction in days/per week worked during the rest of the year. I know this is not apples to apples but I do feel there is a correlation.
By having more staff year round we could ramp up anytime business dictated it. Which led to growth of overall business every year. Also we expected these times to have additional overtime and build that into out yearly budgets. So that I guess is how I would start to address the physical problem of not enough graders. 🤷 #127996;#8205;#9794;#65039;
But quite simply telling me up front clearly a true estimate of how long the order will be in their possession would have avoided any and all frustration from my experience.

Last note, while I might not be happy that an express service may take 16 days a month two months, at least then I can make an informed decision if that is clear from the beginning.

Thanks again for your well thought out response and follow up questions.
Jay

You'll be fine since they will see when they got it and when you had shipped it.




Yea they do, you're getting different ones for different things. The senior guys aren't doing monster boxes just like the new guys aren't doing a Pogue collection ect.