Here is my big problem with this: If MTG Fanatic had the cards listed at $40, they probably owned them for $15-$20 each. They were still going to make $100 on the OP's purchase. You are a store, you offer items at a listed price which presumably includes a reasonable mark-up. It is your responsibility to list the cards correctly. It also isn't like the OP purchased 20 of them. I could see reducing his purchase to 4, as anything above a playset could be seen as speculation.
Frankly, I think it is a BS way to do business. Now you have a card that you own for $20 (My guess) listed at $160. I guess 800% is a reasonable profit. Based on this thread, I will avoid this retailer.
Just one point in response to MTGF's reply: you DID NOT have the price listed incorrectly. You were honestly trying to sell these at $40 each. Mislisting is listing a $40 card for .40 because you forgot a decimal point. There is not way you intended to list at $159.99 and accidentally listed at $40.
My .02. If you want to buy my .02 it might cost you .16 if you don't move quickly.
In summation.....Star Trek wins a prolonged naval battle against superior, yet less technologically advanced, numbers, with Picard leading the assault, while Kirk takes your soul by laying out Solo and probably his manservant Chewy as well, before impregnating and ditching your Princess.
Whether it's in their policy or not, the issue is that they aren't honoring their posted prices. If the response is going to be "It's in the policy, if you don't like it then don't buy from us", I will happily take your advice and not buy from you.
Also if this the case, this site should be de-linked from magiccards.info and their prices should not be counted in the calculations made by that site. Factoring in prices that will not necessarily even be honored certainly doesn't make sense.
I made a recent purchase from mtgfanatic. All in all was good. Cards came as desired. Although a small annoyance was:
I made explicit comments in the "comments" box that they update me on any cards missing before shipping out since this decides the cards I will be using for decks etc by the weekend. They were out of stock of Lodestone Golems and gave me the duel deck versions. Personally I detest duel-deck version cards and was a little annoyed I got these, but they were small items so all in all I'm just going to let this pass and trade them for the original ones.
The only issue I had was them ignoring my "comments" and not having cards in stock when listing them inaccurately. They refunded me store credit, but to be honest, I rather have cash back since store credit is just all a trap to get you spending again.
My rating: 70% from my experience. First time was a 100% no errors, 2nd time was 70% satisfaction. They are not a scam site as far as I know, and it's all a business. Too bad on your recruiters. Too bad for them as well for not honoring prices. They know the risks, they know the consequences, and they're willing to take it because it's part of their business decision-making and risk management.
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I like designing decks and I am primarily a control player. Using Drain to fight Workshops is like using Exclude to fight Dark Confidant.
Because of this, the orders were set aside. The reason for the late response was because I was not the person who personally set them aside and I only found out about it later in the week at which point I sent the email to this customer.
According to records from the OP, you set them aside for NINE DAYS, SEVEN DAYS after the price spike. Most online stores (ones with a good name to them) ship within 1-2 business days. You not only didn't ship in 1-2 business days of the order, but you waited at least an entire week before even getting back to your paying customer. Price spike or not, that is HORRIBLE business practice.
"They are not honest, they don't play by the rules and just want to sell you cards if they're screwing you. " is slander and is entirely untrue. This customer is upset becuase he did not make $120 profit per item off the items he was intending to purchase from us.
You retroactively closed a loophole he exploited because you, as a poor businessperson, did not stay on top of current Magic card price increases and trends.
You were going to lose money because you failed to do the thing that is your job, then punished the customer because you failed at the one thing that is your job, and are now telling us, future potential customers, that your customer did your job better than you did and that he is the ☺☺☺☺☺☺☺ because you've failed to do your job in almost every regard. How does this make your customer want to come back? How does coming here, on a site he posts, just to tell everyone that he is "slandering you" going to drum up anything but poor publicity for you, your site, and your business? How does your post look like anything other than you pissing and moaning in the same fashion you seem be to claiming your former customer was doing?
Honestly I had forgotten this thread even existed until mtgfanatic necroed it back up. The shop defending its actions (which I disagree with btw) this long after the fact only really serves as a reminder/confermation of what the OP was complaining about in the first place.
Alright, I'll give MTGFanatic this- they have their rules and policies, and they reserve the right to change, cancel, modify, etc, orders at any time. I think their policies, as presented by Chris previously, aren't exactly great for business, but that's not my call to make.
However, this quote makes me not want to do business with them at all:
Usually, we even ship items when they go up in value a lot if only a play set is ordered because we assume somebody just needs the items for their deck. However, when people order 20 of them at a time it is obvious they are likely to sell them so we will reduce the quantity to a play set.
I fail to see how it matters to MTGFanatic what I do with the product I buy from them, or what my intent is, etc. If I order 40 Baneful Omens, are you going to wait 7-10 days to see if the price jumps up, and then send me 4? What about 100 Doom Blades, or Lightning Bolts? What I choose to do with cards, or what I intend to do with cards, or even what I want to do with cards, is of ABSOLUTELY no concern to you, regardless of their fluctuating price. I pay what you ask, you accept my payment, and then you send me the cards. End of our transaction, hopefully.
If you were selling weapons or chemicals, then what I intend on doing with that product is absolutely your business, as well as the governments. You're selling me, at best, a paper cut. THIS information, about your speculation of the intent of an order deciding on whether you ship it as is, whether it be high value or not, is extremely shady, IMO.
Say I post a stock tip online and 20 people jump to it, you sell your shares, they buy them up. The next week, the price triples, do you get to retroactively 'unsell' your shares?
Your posted rules page is there to protect your laziness and reflects on your greed. Be realistic and say, yup, we're sorry, we just jacked you because we're greedy. We already had a 400% profit margin on a card, but we want our 4000%.
I'm certainly glad that this forum and threads like these exist. As a relatively new player, there are an awful lot of stores out there, and it's tough to tell which ones are good and which ones are... less good. While I appreciate it when store reps come on the boards and explain their point of view, it's also pretty telling when they launch into something as asinine as "but what *is* deceit, really? Miriam-Webster defines deceit as blahblahblah..."
When has MTGfanatic ever had customer service? I bought some cards in 2008. It was more than 1 order because the store updated more cards after I ordered. Cards never came, refund only given for 1 order and not for the rest. No emails. 1 order was even deleted from their system and not given a refund (I kept the records and I realised that). The cards went back into their stock, at much higher prices.
I did a paypal dispute for the orders not refunded and won. I'm quite sure the dispute records will be still in my Paypal account.
I got this email from them too:
The orders were not shipped because the items were all significantly under valued. It is different if a bunch of items are ordered and happen to contain an underpriced item. But when the only cards ever ordered are under-priced, it is cherry picking, and we reserve the right to cancel the order. I understand that you do not like this answer, and that it is unlikely for you or your friends to do business with us, but for all of the 21 orders you placed, you never once ordered an item that was at the correct value – only items that were quite under priced.
I find it ridiculous and laughable that your store can give an excuse such as underpricing an item (actually more than 21 items since most of my orders included more than 1 unique item). It is your job and your employees to make sure prices are correct, if you are sloppy, that is not my fault. When I see a card at a price I feel its fine, I will buy it. Will a consumer care whether you mispriced it? Furthermore, the cards I bought were already at those prices even before you updated the inventory it. There were no spike in prices involved at the time for the cards.
Other than those overpriced cards you mentioned, a good amount of cards were bought way before their prices spiked (Garruk when Lorwyn came out, Bitterblossom just after Morningtide was released, Reveillark before the deck using came into the scene). If you did not have the foresight or knowledge to anticipate the card's value was going to rise, don't blame it on me. If you can't price your cards right, don't blame the customer for buying them.
However, this scenario was different because the value of the card did not go from $3.00 to $7.00, it went from $40.00 to $160. We can lose $20.00 on selling a few cards at a small loss, but losing $1200.00 is a big deal. For real people? Be somewhat realistic here with your complaints.
You did not lose any money. Get your facts right. The cost price of the goods you've sold was lower than the selling price. Get over it. Your store was just being greedy at the expense of customer satisfaction. I don't see stores going to a customer to tell them off for cherry picking their stuff because they can't even update their inventory well. Your store did not even refund me for orders you refused to ship and I had to go through a paypal dispute. You don't want to sell the Loyal Retainers because you want to resell them for more money, then just say it. Furthermore, the person bought the Loyal Retainers before the spike in prices. You did not ship them out because you wanted to hold them to see if the prices would spike. They did so you did not want to send them out.
They were out of stock of Lodestone Golems and gave me the duel deck versions.
You ordered x and received y. If the cards were not in stock, clearly someone did not do a good job with the inventory. They tried to cover it up by shipping you wrong versions on purpose. Another reason why MTGfanatic is so fail.
This is very uncommon scenario. However, people are more apt to make a scene and complain when they are mad, than people are to post positive feedback when they are satisfied.
If this is uncommon why are there more than a single person having issues with your store? You did not live up to the promise and did not deliver the products ordered. Obviously they are complaining. Your store is pulling out dumb stunts, and this is the internet. I wont be surprised if you get bashed over it. I wont be surprised either, if the possible profits earned from customers you lost due to this issue is higher than the extra money you would have made on the Loyal Retainers.
Usually, we even ship items when they go up in value a lot if only a play set is ordered because we assume somebody just needs the items for their deck.
Dont give us such crap. I googled around. Someone on the source bought 4 loyal retainers from your store on Jan 17, more than a week later you told the buyer you did not want to ship the cards out. Am I seeing a trend now? Funny how you said you would ship if the value goes up and only a playset is ordered. Just by searching on Google, and I can search out the same ☺☺☺☺ you did to other customers.
The only issue I had was them ignoring my "comments" and not having cards in stock when listing them inaccurately. They refunded me store credit, but to be honest, I rather have cash back since store credit is just all a trap to get you spending again.
This jumped out at me reading this thread.
AFAIK if a store doesn't have an item you paid for in stock, it's not legal for them to give you store credit (instead of money back) unless you specify that you are fine with it.
(I'm not american so this might not be true in the US)
Basically what they've done here is take your money and give you gift vouchers instead of the thing you wanted AND when you use those gift vouchers you didn't want we're going to charge you shipping again. If it's not illegal to do this in the states, it probably should be.
I just reread this thread and while I definitely believe in poor business ethics, I've never quite seen a company use laziness as a defense and actually give written proof of their deceit on what is basically a customer website. Scary stuff here.
AFAIK if a store doesn't have an item you paid for in stock, it's not legal for them to give you store credit (instead of money back) unless you specify that you are fine with it.
(I'm not american so this might not be true in the US)
Basically what they've done here is take your money and give you gift vouchers instead of the thing you wanted AND when you use those gift vouchers you didn't want we're going to charge you shipping again. If it's not illegal to do this in the states, it probably should be.
This is a civil case. You'd have to sue, although in this case most credit card companies will perform a chargeback on your behalf so any smart retailer would refund your money ASAP on request.
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Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
How do you use the terms 'correct value' and 'underpriced' on second hand goods? Pulling this thread up was a really bad idea.
Of course you're in business to make money, and as such, I would highly recommend getting a new domain and store name to sweep this all under the rug. Make sure you don't post the new name in this thread though.
itt: MTGfanatic owner dredges up a 10 month-old customer service nightmare to pick an internet slap fight with a displeased customer to no discernable positive effect and only a public relations trainwreck. hilarity ensues as everyone now remembers other poor service stories that were long since forgotten.
there is no "shoveling-motion.gif" smiley, but rest assured that my pantomime costs 3B and returns a creature from my grave to my hand when it's over.
How do you use the terms 'correct value' and 'underpriced' on second hand goods? Pulling this thread up was a really bad idea.
Of course you're in business to make money, and as such, I would highly recommend getting a new domain and store name to sweep this all under the rug. Make sure you don't post the new name in this thread though.
you may see a "mtgfans.com" registered by a Thris Cremblay pop up in the near-future.
This is a civil case. You'd have to sue, although in this case most credit card companies will perform a chargeback on your behalf so any smart retailer would refund your money ASAP on request.
It's a $10 +/- issue. I'm not in the mood to settle that. The service and outcome speak for itself. I rather not waste the time and effort to get ~$10 +/- back at the expense of time/shipping/effort.
However, if it were a bigger purchase, and this arise, I definitely will take action. It's a little annoying when I specifically MENTIONED to mail me about inventory mismanagement so I will receive the correct order. I hate it when I spend time/money looking on various sites 'cherry-picking' my cards, and then order them in preparation for a collective order from various sources, only to find out that one source has inaccurate inventory and affecting my entire order as a whole. Also, Magik, I agree it is hilarious that they mentioned you 'cherry-picking'. Don't ALL customers do that in any market? Everyone is price-sensitive and most people have price-awareness. Obviously I'm going to go to 5 websites and pick the best price, unless it's for convenience and trust issues (e.g. why people buy from overpriced SCG).
It is sure not my fault and their fault since errors happen, but your reputation is at stake when this happens.
I'm sure that the natural inclination is always to make more money, so for the Retainer issue, MTGF is just trying to squeeze in higher margins. However, there is nothing wrong with this, except you risk your reputation spreading like wildfire, and even if they are 'slanders' from a dumb customer, you still cannot avoid it.
Always safe to please than to displease and minimize the risk of negative feedbacks spreading like viruses on the internet. For instance, when I do trades, and have a feeling that card X will become devalue over time, I still do the trade. why? Because currently I am still making a profit based on CURRENT value of cards whe compared against past values.
You bought Retainers at $X and put them at $X+$Y for sale. You make a profit of $Y. Due to misinformation and not keeping up, Customer buys all your copies at $X+$Y at the listed price. You suspect and realize that the card is now worth $X+$Y+$Z. Despite that, you are still making $Y per card. But you missed out on the $Z potential per card. You aren't making a loss, the customer could have made $Z from his benefit of being more market-knowledgeable. There's a price to pay, lose $Z profit-margins per card or lose $X+$Y per card entirely, because even if you priced the card at less than $X+$Y+$Z, news have already spread to other people that you do not uphold your prices, and no one buys anything anymore.
Life isn't fair and it certainly isn't ideal. I would love to make personal gains all day long, but valuing trust and having some 'idealism' is still important when it comes to a long-term profit-making strategy.
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I like designing decks and I am primarily a control player. Using Drain to fight Workshops is like using Exclude to fight Dark Confidant.
Am I the only person who seems to think speculative buying should not be rewarded, the OP ordered 5 of a card thats a singleton card in 1 deck, and stood to profit $600 by taking advantage of a companies momentary mistake, to anyone saying "they were making money already and should have been happy with it" they stood to make roughly $100 of the $700 profit they should have been making, it's absolutely amazing that 50+ people think that borderlne scamming a site out of $600 and then whining when they catch you is correct.
The thing that really irks me is that it's a singleton card, not even a 4-of so it's blatantly obvious you were trying to abuse thier lack of knowledge. Most sites check every order before they send them, and you did OP did roughly the same as the guy who ordered 20 renegade dopplegangers after US nationals. To anyone who agrees with OP, which is FAR too many people, wouldn't you be pretty pissed off if you bought a card for $20 sold it for $40 and then found out it was $160, I can garuntee not one of you would say "its okay profit is profit".
Am I the only person who seems to think speculative buying should not be rewarded, the OP ordered 5 of a card thats a singleton card in 1 deck, and stood to profit $600 by taking advantage of a companies momentary mistake, to anyone saying "they were making money already and should have been happy with it" they stood to make roughly $100 of the $700 profit they should have been making, it's absolutely amazing that 50+ people think that borderlne scamming a site out of $600 and then whining when they catch you is correct.
The thing that really irks me is that it's a singleton card, not even a 4-of so it's blatantly obvious you were trying to abuse thier lack of knowledge. Most sites check every order before they send them, and you did OP did roughly the same as the guy who ordered 20 renegade dopplegangers after US nationals. To anyone who agrees with OP, which is FAR too many people, wouldn't you be pretty pissed off if you bought a card for $20 sold it for $40 and then found out it was $160, I can garuntee not one of you would say "its okay profit is profit".
If all you sold was Loyal Retainers, this would really suck. However, this is a company that sells a ton of cards, and they SHOULD be happy to sell at their stated price. They probably profit almost every time they sell something and taking their medicine here could have avoided serious backlash amongst their prospective customer base. I hope they are enjoying trying to sell them for $159. I notice that after making this move they are not selling any of them and thus turned down $100 or so in profit to overprice a card and keep it in stock.
In summation.....Star Trek wins a prolonged naval battle against superior, yet less technologically advanced, numbers, with Picard leading the assault, while Kirk takes your soul by laying out Solo and probably his manservant Chewy as well, before impregnating and ditching your Princess.
Am I the only person who seems to think speculative buying should not be rewarded, the OP ordered 5 of a card thats a singleton card in 1 deck
Is ordering 5 copies of a card unusual buying habits?
I often keep 5 of each good un/common as a playset + 1 for EDH / Cube. I can easily imagine buying cards that way too.
Yes, the card is generally run as a 1 of but that doesn't mean you can't run 4. We're not talking about something banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage.
To anyone who agrees with OP, which is FAR too many people, wouldn't you be pretty pissed off if you bought a card for $20 sold it for $40 and then found out it was $160, I can garuntee not one of you would say "its okay profit is profit".
I'm pretty pissed I didn't buy a set of dual lands 10 years ago as they cost more now. Cards have value and that value fluctuates, much like the stock market. If I buy some shares and they go up, I'd be pissed if the seller could somehow re-neg on the sale.
To anyone who agrees with OP, which is FAR too many people, wouldn't you be pretty pissed off if you bought a card for $20 sold it for $40 and then found out it was $160, I can garuntee not one of you would say "its okay profit is profit".
I'd be pissed (at myself) for selling the card too cheaply, but that's assuming the card had a stable price of $160 when I sold it. Loyal Retainers was $40 before it started seeing a lot of play; it wasn't mispriced in any way, it was just on the verge of increasing.
To anyone who agrees with OP, which is FAR too many people, wouldn't you be pretty pissed off if you bought a card for $20 sold it for $40 and then found out it was $160, I can garuntee not one of you would say "its okay profit is profit".
So.. you're selling cards for a living but don't know their price? Why are you in this market, again? Funny, because not only does this response apply to the quote, but...
Am I the only person who seems to think speculative buying should not be rewarded, the OP ordered 5 of a card thats a singleton card in 1 deck, and stood to profit $600 by taking advantage of a companies momentary mistake, to anyone saying "they were making money already and should have been happy with it" they stood to make roughly $100 of the $700 profit they should have been making, it's absolutely amazing that 50+ people think that borderlne scamming a site out of $600 and then whining when they catch you is correct.
The thing that really irks me is that it's a singleton card, not even a 4-of so it's blatantly obvious you were trying to abuse thier lack of knowledge. Most sites check every order before they send them, and you did OP did roughly the same as the guy who ordered 20 renegade dopplegangers after US nationals. To anyone who agrees with OP, which is FAR too many people, wouldn't you be pretty pissed off if you bought a card for $20 sold it for $40 and then found out it was $160, I can garuntee not one of you would say "its okay profit is profit".
Of course I would be pissed! This happens all the time e.g. when Legacy exploded in popularity and I took a break and sold some staples right before the format became popular. I bought a foil entomb from Gunslinga for $8, traded it off at $20 to a friend, then a week later Entomb was unbanned from Legacy and non-foil entombs went hot at $35. Was I pissed? Yes I was. Same deal with narrow cards like Eureka and Karakas. I had all these cards and dumped them at about $10, $15 respectively but they all shot up.
However, the story is: you made a loss face it. But the truth is you've not made any loss. I traded those cards away still at a profit from my initial investment (I got the cards cheaper and traded them at higher value). I was just unable to capitalize the card's value at the right time, and I have no one to blame except myself.
It's the same deal with stocks. People who think they can make easy money with stocks end up losing money because they buy/sell thinking it's an easy business. Only the knowledgeable people and the ones who put in work and always stay on top of the market make real profit, and even those people will make mistakes. It's all fair yet unfair, but if you were to go back on your words e.g. I trade my friend a Jace TMS for $30 and I tell him I have to ask him to return it to me because he's now worth $70, does that make ANY business-ethic sense to you at all? No professional company does this ever, granted that a lot of MTG retail companies are not run by super-professionals, but the same principles apply: customer service/loyalty, professionalism in inventory/price maintainance and communication.
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I like designing decks and I am primarily a control player. Using Drain to fight Workshops is like using Exclude to fight Dark Confidant.
Am I the only person who seems to think speculative buying should not be rewarded, the OP ordered 5 of a card thats a singleton card in 1 deck, and stood to profit $600 by taking advantage of a companies momentary mistake, to anyone saying "they were making money already and should have been happy with it" they stood to make roughly $100 of the $700 profit they should have been making, it's absolutely amazing that 50+ people think that borderlne scamming a site out of $600 and then whining when they catch you is correct.
Do you go to gas stations at the beginning of fall demanding all the money you spent on gas over the summer back because they started charging less at the change of season?
I'd be a lot more sympathetic if it was a legit typo like JTMS for $8 instead of $80. In most cases I'd cancel sales like that too and take the backlash because that would be a big loss (assuming I bought them at $50 or something) that would hurt my ability to continue in business. One upset customer is dangerous, but not having enough capital to continue in business is more dangerous. This Loyal Retainers issue is no such thing.
We sell plenty of cards that I feel are overpriced. I sold 16 Lodestone Golem to a "speculator" (who else buys 16 of 1 card?) when WWK first released at $4 ea. Might they still go over that? Sure. Heck for all we know Loyal Retainers gets banned or reprinted in the next set and the value goes to $10. Then what?
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Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
Having been on the wrong side in both the position of a buyer and seller in related situations, I can honestly say that businesses that do this sort of thing deserve what they get (in this case the negative PR).
As a seller, if I have a card up on ebay for one of my 1-week listings, and during that week I miss a sudden surge in demand and someone comes in and buys me out, Im not going to cancel or reduce their order in any way. Why? Because its TERRIBLE customer service to do so. In the end, I did make money on the cards that were sold, though obviously not as much as I could have, had I caught the increase in time, but thats life. Sometimes you catch stuff like that, sometimes you dont. I sell online and at the brick-and-mortar store I sell at, to sell the cards.
This situation is as bad as it is, because the order was placed 2-days before the price spike.
My view point is that customer service should always come first. Sadly Ive found that more and more people/businesses would rather push that aside in order to make some extra money, than to keep their customers happy.
That said, you should always make sure you read the fine print about the policies the websites you buy from have. When in doubt, call the place that the online-store is associated with to confirm the order and get an actual person to guarantee that there are no issues with your order. Ive learned something like that can go a long way towards making sure there are no issues with an important order.
To the sites that sell high volumes of cards and make excuses about delays and all this stuff. To those people I say that they need to improve their internal communication. If you cant keep up properly with your ordering you need to eithor hire more people, or find other ways to reduce delay-related-issues down to as close to Zero as possible.
If you do something to negatively impact a customer, blaming them is about the stupidest thing you could possibly do. You need to be prompt in your reaction to situations, you need to make sure you are constantly keeping in communication with the customer, you need to be willing to offer MORE than just cash or credit back for their purchase if it was a mistake you made to make them feel better about such a situation and to allow them to consider coming back. If you arent able to, or willing to do what it takes to make the customer happy, then you should EXPECT that those customers are going to speak out against your business, whether to people offline, or on forums like this. In the end I imagine 99% of the transactions you do are probably fine. Unfortunately the way the business world works, is that businesses are defined by how well they handle the 1% that dont.
I'd sue them for blood if they did something like that to me. If they didn't fix it, my second letter would be from my lawyer, claiming $ 1000 fee for the writing, summoning them to the court.
+10 cool for Internet eCourt threat. -10 cool for Spam.
Frankly, I think it is a BS way to do business. Now you have a card that you own for $20 (My guess) listed at $160. I guess 800% is a reasonable profit. Based on this thread, I will avoid this retailer.
Just one point in response to MTGF's reply: you DID NOT have the price listed incorrectly. You were honestly trying to sell these at $40 each. Mislisting is listing a $40 card for .40 because you forgot a decimal point. There is not way you intended to list at $159.99 and accidentally listed at $40.
My .02. If you want to buy my .02 it might cost you .16 if you don't move quickly.
Also if this the case, this site should be de-linked from magiccards.info and their prices should not be counted in the calculations made by that site. Factoring in prices that will not necessarily even be honored certainly doesn't make sense.
Trade Thread
Modern
RWGBurnGWR
GUInfectUG
GRTronRG
UWGifts TronWU
URBGrixis DelverBRU
RGWZooWGR
Legacy
BUWTinFinsWUB
UROmniTellRU
BURTESRUB
GElves!G
GBPSIBG
RGBelcherGR
UBRGWDredgeWGRBU
UBAffinityBU
RBurnR
Vintage
UBGDoomsdayGBU
0Martello Shops0
GElves!G
UBTPSBU
UBelcherU
0Dredge0
I made explicit comments in the "comments" box that they update me on any cards missing before shipping out since this decides the cards I will be using for decks etc by the weekend. They were out of stock of Lodestone Golems and gave me the duel deck versions. Personally I detest duel-deck version cards and was a little annoyed I got these, but they were small items so all in all I'm just going to let this pass and trade them for the original ones.
The only issue I had was them ignoring my "comments" and not having cards in stock when listing them inaccurately. They refunded me store credit, but to be honest, I rather have cash back since store credit is just all a trap to get you spending again.
My rating: 70% from my experience. First time was a 100% no errors, 2nd time was 70% satisfaction. They are not a scam site as far as I know, and it's all a business. Too bad on your recruiters. Too bad for them as well for not honoring prices. They know the risks, they know the consequences, and they're willing to take it because it's part of their business decision-making and risk management.
Using Drain to fight Workshops is like using Exclude to fight Dark Confidant.
VERY CHEAP LEGACY SALE (priced to move before April 09!)
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=8172551#post8172551
According to records from the OP, this all happened a full TWO DAYS BEFORE there was any price increase.
According to records from the OP, you set them aside for NINE DAYS, SEVEN DAYS after the price spike. Most online stores (ones with a good name to them) ship within 1-2 business days. You not only didn't ship in 1-2 business days of the order, but you waited at least an entire week before even getting back to your paying customer. Price spike or not, that is HORRIBLE business practice.
You retroactively closed a loophole he exploited because you, as a poor businessperson, did not stay on top of current Magic card price increases and trends.
You were going to lose money because you failed to do the thing that is your job, then punished the customer because you failed at the one thing that is your job, and are now telling us, future potential customers, that your customer did your job better than you did and that he is the ☺☺☺☺☺☺☺ because you've failed to do your job in almost every regard. How does this make your customer want to come back? How does coming here, on a site he posts, just to tell everyone that he is "slandering you" going to drum up anything but poor publicity for you, your site, and your business? How does your post look like anything other than you pissing and moaning in the same fashion you seem be to claiming your former customer was doing?
Customer service -- do you speak it?
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Currently looking to buy miscut Homelands, (my wife thinks I'm crazy too).
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However, this quote makes me not want to do business with them at all:
I fail to see how it matters to MTGFanatic what I do with the product I buy from them, or what my intent is, etc. If I order 40 Baneful Omens, are you going to wait 7-10 days to see if the price jumps up, and then send me 4? What about 100 Doom Blades, or Lightning Bolts? What I choose to do with cards, or what I intend to do with cards, or even what I want to do with cards, is of ABSOLUTELY no concern to you, regardless of their fluctuating price. I pay what you ask, you accept my payment, and then you send me the cards. End of our transaction, hopefully.
If you were selling weapons or chemicals, then what I intend on doing with that product is absolutely your business, as well as the governments. You're selling me, at best, a paper cut. THIS information, about your speculation of the intent of an order deciding on whether you ship it as is, whether it be high value or not, is extremely shady, IMO.
Your posted rules page is there to protect your laziness and reflects on your greed. Be realistic and say, yup, we're sorry, we just jacked you because we're greedy. We already had a 400% profit margin on a card, but we want our 4000%.
I did a paypal dispute for the orders not refunded and won. I'm quite sure the dispute records will be still in my Paypal account.
I got this email from them too:
I find it ridiculous and laughable that your store can give an excuse such as underpricing an item (actually more than 21 items since most of my orders included more than 1 unique item). It is your job and your employees to make sure prices are correct, if you are sloppy, that is not my fault. When I see a card at a price I feel its fine, I will buy it. Will a consumer care whether you mispriced it? Furthermore, the cards I bought were already at those prices even before you updated the inventory it. There were no spike in prices involved at the time for the cards.
Other than those overpriced cards you mentioned, a good amount of cards were bought way before their prices spiked (Garruk when Lorwyn came out, Bitterblossom just after Morningtide was released, Reveillark before the deck using came into the scene). If you did not have the foresight or knowledge to anticipate the card's value was going to rise, don't blame it on me. If you can't price your cards right, don't blame the customer for buying them.
You did not lose any money. Get your facts right. The cost price of the goods you've sold was lower than the selling price. Get over it. Your store was just being greedy at the expense of customer satisfaction. I don't see stores going to a customer to tell them off for cherry picking their stuff because they can't even update their inventory well. Your store did not even refund me for orders you refused to ship and I had to go through a paypal dispute. You don't want to sell the Loyal Retainers because you want to resell them for more money, then just say it. Furthermore, the person bought the Loyal Retainers before the spike in prices. You did not ship them out because you wanted to hold them to see if the prices would spike. They did so you did not want to send them out.
You ordered x and received y. If the cards were not in stock, clearly someone did not do a good job with the inventory. They tried to cover it up by shipping you wrong versions on purpose. Another reason why MTGfanatic is so fail.
If this is uncommon why are there more than a single person having issues with your store? You did not live up to the promise and did not deliver the products ordered. Obviously they are complaining. Your store is pulling out dumb stunts, and this is the internet. I wont be surprised if you get bashed over it. I wont be surprised either, if the possible profits earned from customers you lost due to this issue is higher than the extra money you would have made on the Loyal Retainers.
Dont give us such crap. I googled around. Someone on the source bought 4 loyal retainers from your store on Jan 17, more than a week later you told the buyer you did not want to ship the cards out. Am I seeing a trend now? Funny how you said you would ship if the value goes up and only a playset is ordered. Just by searching on Google, and I can search out the same ☺☺☺☺ you did to other customers.
This jumped out at me reading this thread.
AFAIK if a store doesn't have an item you paid for in stock, it's not legal for them to give you store credit (instead of money back) unless you specify that you are fine with it.
(I'm not american so this might not be true in the US)
Basically what they've done here is take your money and give you gift vouchers instead of the thing you wanted AND when you use those gift vouchers you didn't want we're going to charge you shipping again. If it's not illegal to do this in the states, it probably should be.
This is a civil case. You'd have to sue, although in this case most credit card companies will perform a chargeback on your behalf so any smart retailer would refund your money ASAP on request.
Of course you're in business to make money, and as such, I would highly recommend getting a new domain and store name to sweep this all under the rug. Make sure you don't post the new name in this thread though.
there is no "shoveling-motion.gif" smiley, but rest assured that my pantomime costs 3B and returns a creature from my grave to my hand when it's over.
you may see a "mtgfans.com" registered by a Thris Cremblay pop up in the near-future.
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It's a $10 +/- issue. I'm not in the mood to settle that. The service and outcome speak for itself. I rather not waste the time and effort to get ~$10 +/- back at the expense of time/shipping/effort.
However, if it were a bigger purchase, and this arise, I definitely will take action. It's a little annoying when I specifically MENTIONED to mail me about inventory mismanagement so I will receive the correct order. I hate it when I spend time/money looking on various sites 'cherry-picking' my cards, and then order them in preparation for a collective order from various sources, only to find out that one source has inaccurate inventory and affecting my entire order as a whole. Also, Magik, I agree it is hilarious that they mentioned you 'cherry-picking'. Don't ALL customers do that in any market? Everyone is price-sensitive and most people have price-awareness. Obviously I'm going to go to 5 websites and pick the best price, unless it's for convenience and trust issues (e.g. why people buy from overpriced SCG).
It is sure not my fault and their fault since errors happen, but your reputation is at stake when this happens.
I'm sure that the natural inclination is always to make more money, so for the Retainer issue, MTGF is just trying to squeeze in higher margins. However, there is nothing wrong with this, except you risk your reputation spreading like wildfire, and even if they are 'slanders' from a dumb customer, you still cannot avoid it.
Always safe to please than to displease and minimize the risk of negative feedbacks spreading like viruses on the internet. For instance, when I do trades, and have a feeling that card X will become devalue over time, I still do the trade. why? Because currently I am still making a profit based on CURRENT value of cards whe compared against past values.
You bought Retainers at $X and put them at $X+$Y for sale. You make a profit of $Y. Due to misinformation and not keeping up, Customer buys all your copies at $X+$Y at the listed price. You suspect and realize that the card is now worth $X+$Y+$Z. Despite that, you are still making $Y per card. But you missed out on the $Z potential per card. You aren't making a loss, the customer could have made $Z from his benefit of being more market-knowledgeable. There's a price to pay, lose $Z profit-margins per card or lose $X+$Y per card entirely, because even if you priced the card at less than $X+$Y+$Z, news have already spread to other people that you do not uphold your prices, and no one buys anything anymore.
Life isn't fair and it certainly isn't ideal. I would love to make personal gains all day long, but valuing trust and having some 'idealism' is still important when it comes to a long-term profit-making strategy.
Using Drain to fight Workshops is like using Exclude to fight Dark Confidant.
VERY CHEAP LEGACY SALE (priced to move before April 09!)
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=8172551#post8172551
The thing that really irks me is that it's a singleton card, not even a 4-of so it's blatantly obvious you were trying to abuse thier lack of knowledge. Most sites check every order before they send them, and you did OP did roughly the same as the guy who ordered 20 renegade dopplegangers after US nationals. To anyone who agrees with OP, which is FAR too many people, wouldn't you be pretty pissed off if you bought a card for $20 sold it for $40 and then found out it was $160, I can garuntee not one of you would say "its okay profit is profit".
If all you sold was Loyal Retainers, this would really suck. However, this is a company that sells a ton of cards, and they SHOULD be happy to sell at their stated price. They probably profit almost every time they sell something and taking their medicine here could have avoided serious backlash amongst their prospective customer base. I hope they are enjoying trying to sell them for $159. I notice that after making this move they are not selling any of them and thus turned down $100 or so in profit to overprice a card and keep it in stock.
Is ordering 5 copies of a card unusual buying habits?
I often keep 5 of each good un/common as a playset + 1 for EDH / Cube. I can easily imagine buying cards that way too.
Yes, the card is generally run as a 1 of but that doesn't mean you can't run 4. We're not talking about something banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage.
I'm pretty pissed I didn't buy a set of dual lands 10 years ago as they cost more now. Cards have value and that value fluctuates, much like the stock market. If I buy some shares and they go up, I'd be pissed if the seller could somehow re-neg on the sale.
I'd be pissed (at myself) for selling the card too cheaply, but that's assuming the card had a stable price of $160 when I sold it. Loyal Retainers was $40 before it started seeing a lot of play; it wasn't mispriced in any way, it was just on the verge of increasing.
So.. you're selling cards for a living but don't know their price? Why are you in this market, again? Funny, because not only does this response apply to the quote, but...
Of course I would be pissed! This happens all the time e.g. when Legacy exploded in popularity and I took a break and sold some staples right before the format became popular. I bought a foil entomb from Gunslinga for $8, traded it off at $20 to a friend, then a week later Entomb was unbanned from Legacy and non-foil entombs went hot at $35. Was I pissed? Yes I was. Same deal with narrow cards like Eureka and Karakas. I had all these cards and dumped them at about $10, $15 respectively but they all shot up.
However, the story is: you made a loss face it. But the truth is you've not made any loss. I traded those cards away still at a profit from my initial investment (I got the cards cheaper and traded them at higher value). I was just unable to capitalize the card's value at the right time, and I have no one to blame except myself.
It's the same deal with stocks. People who think they can make easy money with stocks end up losing money because they buy/sell thinking it's an easy business. Only the knowledgeable people and the ones who put in work and always stay on top of the market make real profit, and even those people will make mistakes. It's all fair yet unfair, but if you were to go back on your words e.g. I trade my friend a Jace TMS for $30 and I tell him I have to ask him to return it to me because he's now worth $70, does that make ANY business-ethic sense to you at all? No professional company does this ever, granted that a lot of MTG retail companies are not run by super-professionals, but the same principles apply: customer service/loyalty, professionalism in inventory/price maintainance and communication.
Using Drain to fight Workshops is like using Exclude to fight Dark Confidant.
VERY CHEAP LEGACY SALE (priced to move before April 09!)
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=8172551#post8172551
Do you go to gas stations at the beginning of fall demanding all the money you spent on gas over the summer back because they started charging less at the change of season?
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We sell plenty of cards that I feel are overpriced. I sold 16 Lodestone Golem to a "speculator" (who else buys 16 of 1 card?) when WWK first released at $4 ea. Might they still go over that? Sure. Heck for all we know Loyal Retainers gets banned or reprinted in the next set and the value goes to $10. Then what?
As a seller, if I have a card up on ebay for one of my 1-week listings, and during that week I miss a sudden surge in demand and someone comes in and buys me out, Im not going to cancel or reduce their order in any way. Why? Because its TERRIBLE customer service to do so. In the end, I did make money on the cards that were sold, though obviously not as much as I could have, had I caught the increase in time, but thats life. Sometimes you catch stuff like that, sometimes you dont. I sell online and at the brick-and-mortar store I sell at, to sell the cards.
This situation is as bad as it is, because the order was placed 2-days before the price spike.
My view point is that customer service should always come first. Sadly Ive found that more and more people/businesses would rather push that aside in order to make some extra money, than to keep their customers happy.
That said, you should always make sure you read the fine print about the policies the websites you buy from have. When in doubt, call the place that the online-store is associated with to confirm the order and get an actual person to guarantee that there are no issues with your order. Ive learned something like that can go a long way towards making sure there are no issues with an important order.
To the sites that sell high volumes of cards and make excuses about delays and all this stuff. To those people I say that they need to improve their internal communication. If you cant keep up properly with your ordering you need to eithor hire more people, or find other ways to reduce delay-related-issues down to as close to Zero as possible.
If you do something to negatively impact a customer, blaming them is about the stupidest thing you could possibly do. You need to be prompt in your reaction to situations, you need to make sure you are constantly keeping in communication with the customer, you need to be willing to offer MORE than just cash or credit back for their purchase if it was a mistake you made to make them feel better about such a situation and to allow them to consider coming back. If you arent able to, or willing to do what it takes to make the customer happy, then you should EXPECT that those customers are going to speak out against your business, whether to people offline, or on forums like this. In the end I imagine 99% of the transactions you do are probably fine. Unfortunately the way the business world works, is that businesses are defined by how well they handle the 1% that dont.
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