Hey everybody. Apologies for my absence on the blog, I realize it's been awhile. But recently I've had something weighing on my mind and while I try to be positive I need to get this off my chest.
Back in June I noticed a thread show up in the forums on Trading Card Database. It was called COMC shipping costs way up. At first I was like, maybe it was the posters user error when they were requesting shipping from the website, but as I read others were sharing the same story. I'll be honest I only ship my COMC port maybe once or twice a year, it was one of the benefits of the site. But I decided to see for myself and sure enough $19.99 was the cheapest shipping option and a shipping date months and months out. This was and still is quite a shock seeing this huge increase is shipping from the normal $5 or so.
Reading through more of the forum post a lot of people were complaining. Some had sent emails to COMC expressing their displeasure at this seemingly out of the blue shipping cost increase. Some pointed out that it was vaguely mentioned in blog posts or interviews, but it certainly wasn't widely broadcast to the users.
Before I really get into bashing COMC, lets first take a little history trip and explore the website and the service and how it's evolved over the years. According to the company website COMC was founded just before Christmas in 2005. I can vaguely remember hearing about this new company and their service, which at the time was unique in that it really filled a void in the hobby. You could consign your cards to COMC, set your price, and they would do the rest. On the buyers side you could buy cards and hold them in your portfolio until you wanted to have them shipped to you or you could relist and resell the cards. I bought my first card on COMC in 2010. At the time there was no add ons and the price was the price. When you went to ship the card you got little surprise as the handling charge was added. Eventually COMC hide the 25 cent handling fee in the price of the cards so it was paid for when you bought something. Another perk of early COMC was that they partnered with Beckett for pricing information. I think the idea was you could see how good of deal you were getting, but in reality a lot of us used it to get from Beckett pricing. That relationship ended quite a while ago. COMC has also gone through some growing pains as they got more popular the quickly outgrew their facilities, at least twice. This lead to long processing and shipping times as they moved. Then of course COVID hit and Washington State (where they are based) had some pretty strict quarantine protocols. So that also exacerbated their processing and shipping times from weeks to months, like 6 months or longer for their base services. And they also restructured their intake processing pricing. Everything got more expensive.
First let me say that COMC has always packaged and shipped your cards like a tank. Seriously I have no problems on that front I've never had a card damaged, the package extremely well. As they should as if you ship 100 cards you've already paid at least $25 dollars in handling fees. You can check out one of my unboxing videos to see for yourself HERE.
My ire comes as they very quietly, exponentially increased their shipping costs. COMC has a fee when you submit your cards to the site. That can vary depending on the service but as of right now that's 50 cents with a $10 minimum and a processing time of about 4 months!! So already as a seller you are into the sale of that card for 50 cents minimum. Next COMC tacks on minimum of 25 cents to the price of each card for handling (larger cards, graded cards, etc have a higher fee). They also take 5% of the sales price as their fee. Now you'll probably ask how some cards are cheaper than 75 cents? Well those are usually legacy cards that have been on the site and likely sold through a port sale or have just been on the site a really long time. So when you looking at a for sale price of a card on the website (looking at the card on ebay also adds fees and a higher price) if the card is newly listed theirs already 75 cents. And now you are going to pay a very expensive shipping cost to get those cards to you.
What bother's me the most is that through the years and growing pains as collectors and sellers have put up with the increased processing and shipping times and fees, COMC has decided that the best way to increase their profits in not to look at reducing their costs through better automation and innovation but that it's just better to nickel and dime their customers. To the point that COMC is not the same experience or bargain it once was. It also seems they are catering more toward the breakers and flippers than the average collector looking for cards for their collection. I've also noticed the pricing on COMC has become ridiculous, and that the company should have better pricing tools to help sellers set more realistic prices (or maybe sellers now just greedier) and it would be great if COMC would improve their bulk or port selling feature. Right now it's a joke to try and sell off you port or a piece of it. Would be nice if there was an easy way to pick the card you want to bundle to get rid of.
Ok that's it (I think) Let me know what you think I'd love to hear your positives and negatives of your experience through the years with COMC.
CB out
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