Fraternal on ebay

[flippyh4]

Just posting for any interested members.
http://cgi.ebay.com/MTG-Magic-FRATERNAL ... dZViewItem

[secretgiant]

I just want to say:

I think it is aweful that ccghouse can't even write a unique description for this card.

[dry cereal]

is this tourney legal? if so...how does one play this out.

[sk1]

It was originally tournament legal, but a group of orphans filed a class action lawsuit against Wizards of the Coast to have it banned. Therefore, it is not tournament legal.

[dry cereal]

lousy orphans, they ruin everything worth living for.

[mintcollector]

I just want to say:

I think it is aweful that ccghouse can't even write a unique description for this card.

CCGHouse has all their eBay auctions set up through automated software. This includes email alerts for buyers of when payment has been received and another when the item ships. Although seemingly faceless, their level of service is top notch as I have gotten many Unhinged foils for my set from them and they are VERY quick to ship and package well. I personally prefer to have great service other than some personal writeup on the card. For me all I want is my card(s) problem-free.

[hammr7]

There is a flip side to the automation. I recently won 20 eBay auctions from CCGHouse. I made a single Paypal payment for all.

Somehow their automated system didn't pick up my Paypal payment, so after a week or so I got 20 individual non-payment alerts. For anyone who hasn't received such an alert, these are major hassles. According to eBay, they are defined as follows:

Alerts: Only eBay can send you alerts. These contain important information about your account and require your immediate attention. Alerts can't be deleted until they've been acted upon.

The first time I encountered the alerts, I lost an opportunity to bid on an auction. I was unable to even view auctions until I viewed all twenty alerts, and by the time I got through them the auction I was interested in had ended.

Somehow eBay couldn't undue these alerts, despite having documented that these auctions were paid via Paypal before the alerts went out. And there was no way to consolidate my response showing I had paid. The only mechanisms available to me was to respond to each complaint individually through a series of eBay forms (at a cost of minutes per response), or view each alert every time I logged on to eBay, before viewing auctions.

I complained to eBay and to the seller, who, in theory, could undo the alerts. EBay was no help at all (as usual) and ccghouse didn't respond with anything relevant for over a week. It took over two weeks to finally get the problem resolved.

An irony was that I had originally paid extra to have my cards delivered by Priority Mail. Since CCGHouse's automated system didn't pick up my Paypal payment, I didn't get the cards until weeks after making payment.

I am a strong proponent of automation, and I understand that mistakes do occur. But the measure of customer service and support is to understand and control the automation in a way that allows for timely corrections when corrections are needed. By this measure ccghouse failed miserably at my expense, both in time to get my cards and in the hassle I encountered.

[ende73]

Somehow eBay couldn't undue these alerts, despite having documented that these auctions were paid via Paypal before the alerts went out. And there was no way to consolidate my response showing I had paid. The only mechanisms available to me was to respond to each complaint individually through a series of eBay forms (at a cost of minutes per response), or view each alert every time I logged on to eBay, before viewing auctions.

Ebay.......

[Tha_Gunslinga]

CCGhouse is a pain in the ass that way; I've had them file on me at least twice now.

[mintcollector]

Hank: since eBay bought PayPal, they should be effectively linked. In other words, if you made a PayPal payment for all 20 auctions, then eBay should have marked all the auctions as paid. I too have seen cases where this failed to happen, and for my personal records, manually mark them as paid. If I had to guess since eBay sends out the non-payment alerts, the bottleneck was there. Also if you sent emails to CCGHouse, it was probably buried in hundreds of emails they get. I had one case with them in where they had a bunch of cards listed as NM/M. As I often do, I called them up to validate that the cards indeed were in mint condition during their normal business hours. In addition to ones off of eBay, there was another I wanted from their site. Working with the manager on the phone, we came up with a final order and then I just did Buy-It Now on the cards that fit my needs. The card from the website also fit my needs, so all I did was to make a single payment to CCGHouse and the manager was well aware of what the extra money was for. I also called right at lunch, so I was able to get shipping out that day after my payment was confirmed. 2 days later, I sat happy with my cards! My point to all of this is that email, especially to a Power Seller, is not the way to go if problems seem to arise. A quick phone call will alleviate problems on either end much more quickly. Of course email is an option, but as you saw, takes more time. In your particular case, Hank, I think the problem was eBay/PayPal's fault, and my guess is that you sent an email which took longer to get resolved. Automation is fine as long as all points work. If something breaks along the way, relying on it to fix itself or not taking a more active approach to rectify the situation may only lead to further grief and problems.

[hammr7]

I wish the main problem had been eBay's. If so, I would have received a quicker and easier resolution to the problem. We all know that eBay has a strong preference for sellers over buyers. It turns out eBay has given power sellers like ccghouse the ability to directly issue a variety of alerts, including non-payment alerts, through the eBay system. It is apparantly a component of the power seller service. EBay allowed ccghouse to issue non-payment alerts against me without requiring (or perhaps without the capacity for) a database check on the accuracy of the claims.

Both eBay and Paypal showed that my payment had been made and had been properly recorded well before ccghouse issued their alerts against me. The problem was either some non-eBay software utilized by ccghouse, or by ccghouse's manual accounting procedures. Ccghouse's internal controls did not pick up the original payment, and they never went back to double check eBay or Paypal before issuing the alerts. Therefor the fault lies directly with ccghouse.

As far as phone calls are concerned, I didn't use one to bid on the auctions, or to make payment. Since they didn't provide a phone number on their auctions, and used electronic means for communicating their perceived problem, I don't see why I needed to use a phone to clear up the problem. If phones were preferable, then ccghouse could have called me with their concern before screwing around with my eBay account the way they did. Had they even bothered to send me a direct e-mail with their concern I could have shown them the errors of their ways.

As I said above, I am a strong proponent of automation. But I am not a proponent of reckless or incompetant use of automation tools, and I am completely opposed to anyone who can't support any level of automation with credible customer service when required. If ccghouse can't handle incoming e-mails in a timely fashion, that is their problem. Perhaps they need a seperate e-mail address for their eBay presence.

An irony is that as my winning auctions ended, ccghouse sent me a number of second chance offerings for auctions where I finished second. I was very interested, but couldn't get timely e-mail clarifications from ccghouse on these cards. So I sent payment for only those items I had won. I got a response on the second chance items weeks later.