At the night of the 20th, I hopped onto WLG and picked up 4x prismatic omens (3x NM english, 1x NM chinese) for fairly cheap. I wanted to speculate because valakut was unbanned in modern. Anywho, I received them and 1 prismatic is definitely NM-, SP+, and the other is SP-/HP+. Definitely bummed. Shot them an email and they said theyd cover shipping back and a full refund. I stated that omens had gone up and I really needed NM copies. He replied to tell me that if they shot up then I got a deal and it shouldn't be a big issue...
I'm shocked to be honest. Dealt with them MANY times before with no issues.
Wow, he must not care too much about his reputation with a reply like that.
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WoTC, thank you for finally announcing the Modern format, an eternal format where everyone can participate.
Wow, he must not care too much about his reputation with a reply like that.
I'm sorry Minhazur, I can't do anything better for you than just letting you keep what you already have. The cards may have been misgraded, but you got them at a bargain price. Even if they were both in horrible condition the price you paid for them would be reasonable since, as you pointed out, you bought them as their price was rising significantly.
The options I offered previously are still on the table. Since you are a regular customer of ours and I do sympathize with your desire to have mint cards, I am perfectly happy to let you play with the copies and send them back after your tournament for a full refund of the purchase price.
Thanks,
Geoff Caffo
Customer Service Manager
White Lion Games
There is his reply. His previous offers were to refund the cost of the cards and he'd pay for shipping back or just give me 125% credit. Granted I got the omens at 7$ a piece which is half of what the market value is now but that's still some BS....
Unfortunately Ive known more than one store to do this. They'll notice a price increase and they will send their worst conditioned copies and give a response similar to that. To me thats a bunch of crap, but I suppose to them, they figure they are pulling a fast one or something and the customer really is getting a deal regardless so they feel justified to do so.
Or, a more simple explanation. They SUCK at grading cards :p.
Its entirely possible that its a combination of the two, really sad though that they continue to have issues with buying (a ton) and selling (some at least).
Unfortunately Ive known more than one store to do this. They'll notice a price increase and they will send their worst conditioned copies and give a response similar to that. To me thats a bunch of crap, but I suppose to them, they figure they are pulling a fast one or something and the customer really is getting a deal regardless so they feel justified to do so.
Or, a more simple explanation. They SUCK at grading cards :p.
Its entirely possible that its a combination of the two, really sad though that they continue to have issues with buying (a ton) and selling (some at least).
Sent them a response and pointed that all out. They DID have some played copies in stock (I believe 2..) so I think they just sent me those as NM. It is what it is. I'm done buying from WLG whatsoever.
Sent them a response and pointed that all out. They DID have some played copies in stock (I believe 2..) so I think they just sent me those as NM. It is what it is. I'm done buying from WLG whatsoever.
They are perfectly willing to commit fraud and steal $250. It seems well within their range to send you damaged cards in place of the NM ones they sold you. They were either too lazy or too slow to keep their prices updated, so they thought they'd skim a little off the top of your order. If a company tried pulling that sort of crap with their shareholders, someone would be going to jail.
Quote from "Geoff Caffo" »
The cards may have been misgraded, but you got them at a bargain price. Even if they were both in horrible condition the price you paid for them would be reasonable...
How condescending and insulting can someone get? Customer Service Manager my ass. More like damage-control.
A customer sent me the link to this thread just today.
Witch King - I do not get the time to read MTGS as much as I should I work about 70 hours a week, most of that time is spent resolving issues the managers bring to me from day to day business along with normal database website service stock collections paying taxes and so forth that goes along with running a business.
I am going to try to address a lot of what is in this thread then ask for a suggestion at the end about one of the issues that seems to be a common thing in the thread, the buylist.
Joe - Joe asked us to send a check as payment which is something we do not do plain and simple, there is more to the issue including me trying to make Joe happy by doing something we don't do instead of just shipping the cards back or agreeing to send paypal to a friend of his which he was very not happy about that premise, I simply should not have agreed to break policy this was my fault entirely and I apologized profusely for the time, there was never an intention to steal his cards simply received a package with a payment option that wasnt an option, simply put.
Patrick - The foil engineered explosives situation was resolved ultimately and the packs sent as extras were not meant as an insult but as a sincere apology for the time delay if Patrick had called or emailed and said he wanted something else I would have obliged but he was agitated from day one and from our first conversation there wasnt much I could do to help. I feel as though this situation started with the assumption we literally just didnt care about his order and that would be wrong, If I recall including purchasing 4 more explosives at 40-50.00 plus shipping each to rectify the original lost order two packages shipping the lost cards and time we lost something on the order of 400-500.00 in cards and time to attempt to fix the situation. Patrick was rightfully angry on first contact but I would suggest anyone dealing with any store not just assume outright they dont care about you.
Stop for two seconds and look at our feedback, Ebay, TcgPlayer, Amazon, Bidwicket, Findmagiccards, our own site, we have 10's of 10's of 10's of THOUSANDS of feedbacks, do you guys REALLY think our idea of customer service is reflected perfectly here inside this thread ? Amazon TCG and Bidwicket literally will not keep you online with a running account if you do some of the things stated here or dont take care of people at the level being discussed. We want very much to take care of our customers. Maybe being yelled at by crack heads ( yes it has happened, TWICE ) causes us on days to be frustrated, keep in mind we are human beings. I simple statement of something reasonable you want as a solution if we can do it, we will, period.
We want our customers experiences to be swift and pleasant and we do a lot of things to try to make that happen.
Bacepi - You sent a package to us in an envelope and got angry with us for the time and adjustment when it showed up more than a month later...I didnt put the statement of tracking for no reason, our post IS bonkers locally and we have done what we can to not use them.
SocalPsych - LOL "These are lies. My tea company ships similar volume of packages and we only have problems with 1 in 800/1,000. Most of the time these few mistakes are simple to resolve.
Oh just don't ship to Berkeley CA, their USPS is unbelievably bad."
You straight up say you know a certain postal office is horrible but when we say exactly what you just said then its just these are lies, comon man.... This isnt even a reasonable statement. We drive 45 miles a day to the Fort Worth Hub processing center, EVERY DAY, to ship our packages because the 6 post offices locally in each city near us could not stop losing packages or damaging them, it wasnt a decision made lightly as it costs a lot of time and money for us to do this, has nobody ever wondered how they get from ship date to delivered so fast from us most of the time ? Also we have less damage and loss claims this way. Our local post which we stopped using many many years back was on the order of 10-20 out of 100 lost or damaged, YES 10-20% sounds absurd right. Regardless point is our post IS bananas which is why we ask for tracking and ship from Fort Worth Central Processing.
Bamzing - I can't really reply to you properly about speed when I don't know what country you are referring to your profile states unknown country. ( or city/state ) if you have any order numbers i would be happy to look at the speed they shipped just for my own edification. The USPS is the only "reasonable" option we have in the US for shipping outside the US and the cost and speed are horrendous, we literally charge less and lose money on EVERY single shipment outside the US to attempt to mitigate the time and cost for our international customers.
Minsarker / Minhazur - Prismatic Omen was out of stock when you bought the last ones, you werent the only one "speculating" and they were cheap no big deal there. Geoff wasn't really replying that he didnt care, I remember this situation clearly, he was reply with the options we had to take care of you. The options unfortunately did not include replacing Omens with ones we didnt have as we were out, I apologize his language was unclear or frustrating it was certainly not his intent I am certain.
Jeffbcrandall - Min bought us out and we didnt send worse ones we just sent the ones listed as NM that we had left in stock, simply possible one or two slid through a massive collection graded improperly, I never got to see them.
Dzra - I really do not want to address this but in the interest of clarity and honesty I will. You posted half the conversation and YOU KNOW IT, you stole from us THEN you sent me the first message stating; oh well dude too late now sorry about your junk TOO BAD SO SAD, have to find the email to Quote you but you straight out flat out said you KNEW you jacked us and you didnt care so why dont you come clean and tell everyone here the credit card chargeback was filed after that because you REFUSED to do anything, period. Then tell everyone EVERYTHING you sent that you said was mint was beat including the foils, THEN tell everyone you got paid even though you jacked us around. You took an opportunity here to defame our character on a bandwagon of people that had legitimate complaints and while we could have handled the resolution of this TOGETHER better don't put this all on us, you sent beat cards you said too bad and when I asked and asked and asked to help me resolve it nicely you refused and didnt answer 3 emails and ebay messages, do not put this all on us you know thats not right.
Jack - I don't have a good reply for second-hand or third-hand information from other people, we are a store front in Hurst/Richland Hills and including Shotokan we have been a store continuously nearly, with a few moves here and there, for 15+ years. If someone setup a meet somewhere that wasn't at the store, which I do know has happened a couple times like buying collections at a starbucks or something for directions ease or comfort ( many people have asked to meet somewhere the know how to get to etc ), then it was just to help different situations out.
Midori - Love the liquor, melon liquor is good, thanks for the compliments and others that compliment us in here and in our various feedback mechanisms thanks, hopefully if you ever have / had a problem we can rise to the occasion and repair it.
Now to the Meat of it;
Our feedback on Tcg, Amazon, eBay, Bidwicket, FindMagicCards and more, is very very important to us not because its a number or a situation of "measurement" its a measure of pride to us, you have to understand where this business came from. We / I was a major wholesaler for a LONG long time in this business before we opened the online portion and the policies and procedures we setup for how White Lion Games are a direct result of situations just like some of these that went wrong for us and how stores treated us as customers and we are still customers today.
As an example for you guys, we ordered Amulet of Vigors, ok I ordered amulet of vigors when I started to hear a little about the amulet/spring/titan deck doing something you may call that speculating etc, I bought foils and regulars at full price from 10 or 11 stores only 4 copies or 8 depending on what their policies were I was not trying to "get" any store and I flat out tried not to buy anyone out even though there is 100's of this card in stock all over the place. I do not speculate often anymore as a business owner I dont have the time to make "bets" any more, I used to be 100% and now without time to watch and play professionally any more I can't really be right much any longer ( last before this was Vorapede I still like this card though ).
Here is the punch line, a full 5 stores, which I am NOT going to mention because thats not how I think things should be dealt with, I think we as customers should approach our buying/selling with the stores, if we get bad food talk to the manager or owner go all the way up to find resolution, thats just my opinion then if nothing its your choice to talk about it online etc, which honestly I dont do much even when things are done badly to me I guess because I know just how hard it is, especially in a faily economy, to run a good business, I digress. FIVE stores flat out cancelled our orders here is the list of reasons:
1. out of stock ( showed like 60+ in stock ) still shows in stock
2. not allowed to order regulars and foils, ok ?
3. no answer no reply no email no response at all
4. no answer no reply no email no response at all
5. refund in notes of refund call us with any problems.
I sent an email to each store and literally no reply from any, several stores mentioned in this thread as "great stores" have done this to me and people I know literally 10,20 times, literally. I don't like that it happens and I don't like when it does when I just want cards, crap guys I play the game too. I buy lots of foils for my cube and edh decks that are hard to get and these days ( i hate to endorse another stores but literally ChannelFireball has never cancelled an order on me, they have their own problems im sure like everyone else, I have had orders from them take a month but never a summary cancellation like nearly every other "good" store.
We don't cancel orders when cards are sitting in boxes like other stores we just don't period its crappy and it sucks it happens to me enough for me to know. One thing most people probably dont understand though is the SEVERAL SEVERAL SEVERAL methods in which we can OVER-sell a card very easily. E-Checks from Paypal, Amazon Delayed Inventory, TCG Delay, eBay Auction buy it now but not paid immediately, Additional out of stock holds meaning a card is out of stock but the rest of the order is allocated out of inventory and held in one of the above situations. When you are dealing with so many things in time and inventory its literally just impossible for it to be 100% perfect all the time, if any part of that doesnt make sense ask I will happily post screenshots or show what I am talking about if need be.
Buylist:
I would like anyone who wants to reply with a WELL-THOUGH OUT reply about a suggestion for the buylist to please do, but first read what I have to say about it.
Adjusting the buy price down AND up for the market is how we decided to BE HONEST with our customers i know several of you have said in this thread you question our integrity and that statement im sure makes you wonder let me explain. We don't send shipments back when they come in and aren't in our favor, if you don't think stores do this you would be wrong, I have had it done to me 100's of times, YES HUNDREDS of times as well as our own customers coming to us after that has happened to them stating NOW they understand why we do what we do. See when a card comes in, beat up or not the right version ( Planechase not from the vault or whatever ) or foil when it should not be or vice verse we have to make a decision, some stores automatically return whole packages, some stores return sections of cards that are beat, some stores SCRATCH CARDS that are mint cite them not mint because they dont want to buy them at the price they stated and on and on and on. When peak prices would come and go and stores would hold my packages then refuse them or refuse parts or modify them in such a way, these things is what led me to our current policies, I just didnt like the lies and dishonesty about the marketplace driving the prices. Computers and humans aren't perfect theres no way for everything to be right, and those of you that don't think we adjust up you would be wrong, we adjust up daily in nearly every sell to us order we accept. The market does drive the prices and competition is good, I always thought having a situation where we match most buy prices would be advantageous for our customers, say you send us X card and its 4.00 each sell to us, when it gets here and gets processed like Huntmaster of the fells for example wouldnt you want a store to say hey you get 64.00 instead of 16.00 ? Watching and matching stores higher buy prices I always thought would allow customers to send us packages and not worry. Do you know that we have customers that send us packages every week with OTHER STORES' sell to us paperwork in them ? They literally check out from our store get a sell order and from other stores but send all 7 stores "packages" to just us because we do this. Sure if you sit and criticize the method with one card, you can tear us apart I get that, but believing we are sitting around "waiting for the market to equalize" the cards and we make money thats insane, literally insane. Someone earlier in the thread said it, that just doesnt happen, honestly in Type2 its mostly a how not to lose money game, seriously. Shaving dollars so we make a little profit is not making us millions of dollars, but I bet refusing packages that we dont like the condition of wasting our customers money and refusing packages that aren't in our favor would.
Clearly you can not have every single aspect of every single thing in your favor in life so do this think about what I have said and give me a suggestion and I will take them to heart. You tell us how to make a little profit on a card we buy ( 20.00 Card we buy at 13.00-14.00 then pay 10% - 18% depending on the outlet for fees netting us 4.00 - 5.00 profit then when the card drops, which they do say to 17.49, we then make 1.50 - 2.50) Nobody can exist on margins like that, nobody if you think other stores do you would be mistaken its a business impossiblity, literally, in retail that is. So think about if you dislike straight honesty as much as you all say you do in the form of honest adjustments up and down to market ( which by the way you can check yourself when sending us sell to us orders ) or if you think sending packages back ( just because it hasn't happened to you yet, do NOT think it doesn't happen ) is a better option.
You can't have a store hold to a insane price to buy not send the package back take all the not mint ones and all the things we are talking about and stay in business, be reasonable what you are all discussing is literally the worst of the worst of all possible options and how they are reacted to and worked with, I get that mistakes get made and I honestly want anyones feedback that wants to spend the time to discuss it, I would be happy to hear constructive feedback about the issue.
Keep in mind as a business, if you read through this thread or look at any business, I know you don't want to think of this but people have their own best interests in mind and because we are a business people try to take advantage of us EVERY day in any way possible. I am not saying we are out looking at everyone like that but again, as humans some days we are attacked more than others and some days we respond better than others. I am not going to sit here saying we are perfect I am just going to state that if you stop and take a minute to think that we are dealing with insane things all day long in business and that our ultimate goal IS for you to be happy then suggest something we can do, don't call us and say there's nothing you can do, nobody can help you that way and we want to help make you happy.
Also as I stated somewhere else I am always around if someone or something that you do not like or do not understand talks to you or happens in relation to our business please ask for me and I will do my best to resolve it.
I look forward to any reply from anyone about business, our policies or a situation I can do something about today to make you happy, I would like to think in 5 years the 112,000 orders we have done of which in total I know of about 30 or maybe 40 total we have made an error or had something or someone very upset with us is pretty good, but I know we can always do better, hopefully my 3 hour ten trillion whatever word email conveys that ideal. I apologize I did not know of this thread before and urge anyone EVER with a problem to talk to me.
Thanks if you read this monster and look forward to any reply.
Dzra - I really do not want to address this but in the interest of clarity and honesty I will. You posted half the conversation and YOU KNOW IT, you stole from us THEN you sent me the first message stating; oh well dude too late now sorry about your junk TOO BAD SO SAD, have to find the email to Quote you but you straight out flat out said you KNEW you jacked us and you didnt care so why dont you come clean and tell everyone here the credit card chargeback was filed after that because you REFUSED to do anything, period. Then tell everyone EVERYTHING you sent that you said was mint was beat including the foils, THEN tell everyone you got paid even though you jacked us around. You took an opportunity here to defame our character on a bandwagon of people that had legitimate complaints and while we could have handled the resolution of this TOGETHER better don't put this all on us, you sent beat cards you said too bad and when I asked and asked and asked to help me resolve it nicely you refused and didnt answer 3 emails and ebay messages, do not put this all on us you know thats not right.
Chris
WLG
First off. I never got paid. If you are just a poor guy that got jacked around and then decided to stand up for yourself by issuing a chargeback to take what was fair then why didn't I receive the rest?
Second off, the conversation is right there. I never mention the condition of the cards and because of the condition of the Polluted Delta, I offer to give you money back. I was working it out with you before you started cursing and going crazy.
Third, you lied to your credit card company. You lied to them, issued a chargeback, and took the full amount $250 for yourself. You stole it all. You didn't even take what you thought you deserved and then pay me the rest. You stole the whole thing.
If you actually want to work something out, I'm still willing to, but obviously all the cards are in your hands.
i read everything. Your response looks legit. Might I suggest next time you monitor this thread or mtgs. I'm surprised it took this long for someone to tell you about the thread.
Looks like things got out of hand very quickly.
your name sort of got dragged through the mud. I agree with you on most of the arguments.
i especially agree when you say players try to take advantage of us all the time. Sharks are sharks. what can you do?
i read everything. Your response looks legit. Might I suggest next time you monitor this thread or mtgs. I'm surprised it took this long for someone to tell you about the thread.
Looks like things got out of hand very quickly.
your name sort of got dragged through the mud. I agree with you on most of the arguments.
i especially agree when you say players try to take advantage of us all the time. Sharks are sharks. what can you do?
Thanks Kirin,
I was surprised it took that long for someone to tell us too actually when I first saw it because the customer said it I thought "2010" what the heck!
What's weird is people think because we are a company or that anyone is a company (small businesses I'm speaking of here) that we can fend off the sharks, people find new exciting ways to steal from us every day, EVERY single day. That's just part of being in business but when situations come up you always are trying to understand situations and work with people but sometimes people don't seem to want "reasonable" sometimes they want you to send their 16 ordered Huntmaster of the Fells when you sold 48 sold out AND oversold AND they broke the rules buying that many. Actually had a guy literally say to me on the phone WHILE I was apologizing for him breaking he rules that he expected us to buy 12 more Huntmasters at 18.00 or 24.00 whatever they were that day and send them to him......
I do have to say though 99.9% of people when you say your sorry we messed up and how can we make it right, they respond positively and make suggestions on how they could be happy and that's all we look for is how to correct and make people happy in good and when we mess up. No company is perfect, newegg, sears, amazon all of them have messed up things some badly it's the recovery I look for us to try to be good at and even there sometimes things happen, postal errors and the whole nine. I remember a couple years back the local post bending a guys package of 4 Mindsculptors in half IN HARD CASES ugh lol USPS paid for that one heheheheh
I messaged you my phone number and an email address you can reach me. Feel free to provide whatever evidence you think you have that you paid me, but I am telling you for a fact that after you lied to your credit card company and reversed the 250$, I haven't seen a cent of it.
The Entire conversation is not there and glossing over telling us to stuff it up our butts doesnt make the fact go away, if you want to email me so I can show you the payment sent I would be happy to.
Well I think you've lost many potential customers due to this thread. All these stories seem completely legit and it's blatantly obvious that you attempted to rip these people off. Even if you didn't rip these guys off these experiences still make you look bad. I will tell anyone looking to buy cards online to look somewhere else so they can avoid the possibility of being ripped off.
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"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not." - John Lennon
Chris, I understand coming to this thread to try to save face, and I can respect that. Star City Games, Channel Fireball, and Cape Fear Games all do the same thing and will always happily rectify the situation. HOWEVER, the WORST thing that you could do in this situation is to turn and make inflammatory remarks towards one disgruntled customer, ESPECIALLY when one of their complaints is about you or your staff becoming inflammatory towards him. Instead of taking the high road and saying that "This was a complex situation that may or may not have been handled well by either party, and future situations similar to this, if they do occur, will be handled differently," you chose to be chiding, to fling accusations, and to take no responsibility for the actions of yourself and your company. I share the same sentiment as 4thDimentionalBubble.
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MTGO: Stillenacht288
Modern:
Footsteps Hulk
Ascendency Combo
Restore Balance
Ad Nauseam
EDH:
Ghave Lands
Narset Combo
Well I think you've lost many potential customers due to this thread. All these stories seem completely legit and it's blatantly obvious that you attempted to rip these people off. Even if you didn't rip these guys off these experiences still make you look bad. I will tell anyone looking to buy cards online to look somewhere else so they can avoid the possibility of being ripped off.
I am sorry you feel all of the stories are legitimate as some are and some are not, I'm also sorry you feel whatever 10000000000th of 1 percent these issues represent, completely gives you full understanding of me personally and us as a company, I respect everyones right to make their own opinion. However I would urge you to use a little more research in your future opinions than one thread or even five threads. When I look into problems I always check and check myself with the people in control of my situation. I use USAA because of my military affiliations for insurance and they nearly lost my business this year because of an error they made which would be looked at very badly by anyone that heard the story, but instead of going bonkers on their facebook or some thread I called them and spoke to their resolution department and yes, it was a beating dealing with them it took a month and a week to resolve, but they resolved it, and I as a good customer stayed with them during the attempts to resolve it, I didnt say piss off and leave I didnt curse them up and down, was I mad ? Hell yes I was mad, been with them a LONG time and done lots of business with them as a loyal customer because of the way they have taken care of me when I could have left for cheaper rates from Toyota, Ducati, Nissan, Mazda and many many more.
The point I am making is this; if you want to be reasonable and your desire,request,business IS reasonable give businesses, including us, the chance to make things right. MOST businesses and people in general if you give them a chance will try to do right by you, including us. I am not speaking of single people on craigslist, I do mean be careful, but with hundreds of thousands of orders and feedback and 15+ years in the business with insanely good reviews even FROM people with repeated problems we can't just be lying or trying to rip people off, think about it.
Stores and businesses that do that don't exist long or they have to change names, BigF**********, and then try again. Same name, same people, same desire to make situations right and as soon as Im done with this im going to again reply to Dzra in private because we DONT stop trying and thats all there is to it.
Chris, I understand coming to this thread to try to save face, and I can respect that. Star City Games, Channel Fireball, and Cape Fear Games all do the same thing and will always happily rectify the situation. HOWEVER, the WORST thing that you could do in this situation is to turn and make inflammatory remarks towards one disgruntled customer, ESPECIALLY when one of their complaints is about you or your staff becoming inflammatory towards him. Instead of taking the high road and saying that "This was a complex situation that may or may not have been handled well by either party, and future situations similar to this, if they do occur, will be handled differently," you chose to be chiding, to fling accusations, and to take no responsibility for the actions of yourself and your company. I share the same sentiment as 4thDimentionalBubble.
I am sorry you don't see the entire situation but I as I have already said will not go into this ONE situation but all of us here are human beings and at the point where cursing calling people names and threatening people comes into play, the service is done and gone, NOBODY can deal with that at that level, we want EVERY customer we have except the ones that, again as I have said over and over, don't want to try to be reasonable and are only trying to hurt us or damage a situation. Somehow in your statements you think because we are a business we aren't human beings and can't be affected or hurt or frustrated, thats just not even reasonable man.
We aren't Robots and neither is anyone you think should be ok with you screaming and cursing at them on the other end of the phone, I simply can't agree with you here.
Any chance I ever would have purchased from this store was eliminated by the manner in which trust7 has responded to his customers.
Huktonfonix - Sorry you feel that way, I attempted to address every single person with a complaint and even attempted to address one very bad situation that I feel we were treated badly in as a way to again try to repair that situation. As I said above we are human beings and desire to make our people happy as can be, things happen and if you understand that then let us try to make you happy.
Listen, the real bottom line is that mostly in life WE are our biggest critics, if you guys somehow think I don't get on all the managers and employees cases when these things happen weekly, daily, monthly, your dead wrong. We talk more about our processes than the entire combined group of people talk about our processes I promise you that. We have dynamic reports that run every week that discuss errors in shipping, inventory, damage and 10 others that we graph look at discuss and adjust to resolve, thats not the mark of a company or person, ME, that doesn't care about its customers plain and simple. Nobody can beat me up worse than I beat myself up when we make a mistake, I already feel bad the instant the phone rings, I CRINGE every time a situation is bad for a customer, this week we mispriced Geralf's Messenger at 2.59 because the person entering transposed the 2 and 5 when clearly 5.29 was the right price, guess what, shipped 38 of them, ALL of them we had in stock we didnt cancel any order that we could fill AND we oversold once in amazon and once in TCGplayer, so I went and cracked some Dark Ascension and lost more money trying to fill as many as we could. But nobody sees that, nobody cares we lost 300-400 on that deal, nobody says hey I see i "got you guys" and thanks for the cheap cards.......It was our mistake I own it so we move on.
Lets just agree the way its setup isn't exactly fair for treating people in business with the greatest of respect and that when it goes too far, we still, are human beings.
If you want Robots buy everything you buy from big companies and the attempt at real service will die, along with competition and a good economy, I hope that isn't what we all want, I know I don't. I think if I am mad and I get upset with someone I want them to know im upset, but what I want most is for them to help me fix what went wrong, but then again I am not out to scam, beat, shark or whatever else out of the places I do business with, I know they have a hard enough time without that.
All of this is perspective and regardless I appreciate every criticism and comment I truly do, thanks to the good positive and good negative comments guys, Thanks sincerely.
I messaged you my phone number and an email address you can reach me. Feel free to provide whatever evidence you think you have that you paid me, but I am telling you for a fact that after you lied to your credit card company and reversed the 250$, I haven't seen a cent of it.
I am going to read your message and get with you to show you the payment sent and resolve anything outstanding with this.
Chris
Instead of quadruple posting please feel free to use the mutli-quote function or edit your replie into a single post. Thank you. Posts merged. -Galspanic
Huktonfonix - Sorry you feel that way, I attempted to address every single person with a complaint and even attempted to address one very bad situation that I feel we were treated badly in as a way to again try to repair that situation. As I said above we are human beings and desire to make our people happy as can be, things happen and if you understand that then let us try to make you happy.
Listen, the real bottom line is that mostly in life WE are our biggest critics, if you guys somehow think I don't get on all the managers and employees cases when these things happen weekly, daily, monthly, your dead wrong. We talk more about our processes than the entire combined group of people talk about our processes I promise you that. We have dynamic reports that run every week that discuss errors in shipping, inventory, damage and 10 others that we graph look at discuss and adjust to resolve, thats not the mark of a company or person, ME, that doesn't care about its customers plain and simple. Nobody can beat me up worse than I beat myself up when we make a mistake, I already feel bad the instant the phone rings, I CRINGE every time a situation is bad for a customer, this week we mispriced Geralf's Messenger at 2.59 because the person entering transposed the 2 and 5 when clearly 5.29 was the right price, guess what, shipped 38 of them, ALL of them we had in stock we didnt cancel any order that we could fill AND we oversold once in amazon and once in TCGplayer, so I went and cracked some Dark Ascension and lost more money trying to fill as many as we could. But nobody sees that, nobody cares we lost 300-400 on that deal, nobody says hey I see i "got you guys" and thanks for the cheap cards.......It was our mistake I own it so we move on.
Lets just agree the way its setup isn't exactly fair for treating people in business with the greatest of respect and that when it goes too far, we still, are human beings.
If you want Robots buy everything you buy from big companies and the attempt at real service will die, along with competition and a good economy, I hope that isn't what we all want, I know I don't. I think if I am mad and I get upset with someone I want them to know im upset, but what I want most is for them to help me fix what went wrong, but then again I am not out to scam, beat, shark or whatever else out of the places I do business with, I know they have a hard enough time without that.
All of this is perspective and regardless I appreciate every criticism and comment I truly do, thanks to the good positive and good negative comments guys, Thanks sincerely.
Chris
If you check the other store threads on here, you'll see many many instances of people praising the service and honesty of these businesses. Simply put, you're doing it wrong.
Take a page out of the customer service port-folio of StarCityGames (Ben).
Although SCG has unbearable "cut-throat" card prices, they back it up with equivalent excellent customer service.
If the store owner says that I can't trade in the premises, I'll just go outside. If he says that I can't trade within 10m of his premises, I'll go to 11 meters. If he says that he doesn't want to see me trading, I will put a basket over his head and continue trading.
Yes, he's a local legend. He's only known to take his clothes off before he goes into the Ladies' Lockerroom. Nobody knows what he does in there because he's invisible, but it's almost certainly tons of masturbating.
Bacepi - You sent a package to us in an envelope and got angry with us for the time and adjustment when it showed up more than a month later...I didnt put the statement of tracking for no reason, our post IS bonkers locally and we have done what we can to not use them.
Unfortunately, I was done talking about this but since you mentioned me I might as well point out something on your statement since it is false.
It wasn't a month. I've timelined and outlined everything for anyone to read.
I was angry and justifiably so because it wasn't the first time it happened with your company. It was the fact that every time I sold MTG cards to your business, every time you got it after an abnormal time period and every time there was a price markdown on the total.
To blame the post office on the constant markdowns for the buylist "en-route" and horrible customer service is ridiculous to be honest.
Yeah, not only is there a lot of evidence, but the manner is which this employee has responded is embarrassing. Heck, even if the customer is wrong, you don't talk to them like that.
Plus, minsarkers experience is terrible. I don't care if he got a deal, if he paid 7 a pop, and your played copies were 6 each at least give him that couple of bucks. You should technically be required to give him the new mint copies, whether or not you have them. You can't blame a repeat customer for being smart, understanding a cards interaction with another's, and knowing the market. Have your guys pay more attention to the game and maybe they'll understand what a card is worth, and what it will be worth. Instead they're to far up their butts trying to make the most profit.
I don't understand, Chris, why you came out and defended yourself. You can't win. It doesn't matter what the truth is behind any of the stories here. You could be the nicest guy in the world just trying to make a buck, and you would still lose here because the customer is always right, even when they're not. Already you have users posting that because of your response, they won't ever buy from you and they will tell their friends. If 10 people read this and made that decision, and each told one draft pod alone about it, then that's 80 people that aren't even going to bother visiting your website, let alone buy your cards.
If you wanted to improve your image and/or community relations, why not come out here and take the high road? Imagine the following situation, instead of your response here:
You tell us you're turning over a new leaf. You see there's a problem with your extremely important relationship with your customers, and our business is important to you. You commit to double down on customer satisfaction. You promise to make things right as best you can with those who have complained here. You explain that we know we have choices and you want to do whatever you can to make WLG the choice for us. You offer a 5% off coupon code to forum users, or free shipping or something, even just some single-use promo codes MTGS1-MTGS15.
Can you imagine how much better that would have gone over? Hell, I'd have at least visited your website to see what I was missing.
Fighting with your customers is like fighting with your wife. You can't win, you can only lose less. They don't care about your margins. They don't care about your long hours, your pricing policies, etc. None of that matters. If you had just taken the high road and tried to start over, instead of continuing this madness, maybe even I would have given you a shot. The fact is, I deal with another store that doesn't ask me how to treat the help, they simply get me my cards fast and for a reasonable price. No drama, no problems, and I go play Magic. If your store is capable of producing similar results, now is the best time to pledge to do that.
I ask this because I genuinely wonder what your perspective is as a business owner trying to salvage a customer/business relationship with the MTGS Market Street community. Was it really worth coming back here and arguing with customers? Was it a pride thing? Maybe you just wanted your voice heard? You must know that whether you are right or not, nothing good could have come from it. At least, not in a monetary sense.
Unfortunately, I was done talking about this but since you mentioned me I might as well point out something on your statement since it is false.
It wasn't a month. I've timelined and outlined everything for anyone to read.
I was angry and justifiably so because it wasn't the first time it happened with your company. It was the fact that every time I sold MTG cards to your business, every time you got it after an abnormal time period and every time there was a price markdown on the total.
To blame the post office on the constant markdowns for the buylist "en-route" and horrible customer service is ridiculous to be honest.
Ok Brian pulled both your orders up so we can discuss it and I have the facts in front of me.
3 Orders you sold to us ?:
a. 11 March - 19 March, 8 days to us, 40.31 Original STU Total, 39.00? offered, paid next day.
b. 31 March - April 10, 11 days to us, 15.35 Original STU Total, $1.52 in damaged cards 13.82 and $1.00 adjusted, if I remember right we offered 13.00 11 days later, you accepted we paid a few days after.
c. April 1 - April 18, 17 days to us, 45.32 Original STU Total, 11.33 Each adjusted less than 1.00 each offer 42.00 even though we were losing money after this long.
If I have most of this right other than skipping the part about assumptions and tracking and such can you tell me what we did wrong here ?
In checking out it says 5 days to us so we can keep prices steady no package came in that time and we barely touched them still, willing to listen to where we failed but need some kind of explanation as to how you feel we did.
This thread has pretty much convinced me to never purchase from white lion games and to notify my friends to avoid their business as well. I know I've purchased from them at least once, and I'm pretty sure it was the only batch of cards I ever received late. But even if I had only ever had perfect transactions with them (which is possible), after this thread they will no longer get my business solely on principle.
Mastergee, interested to see what our speed was to Seattle would you mind seeing if you do indeed have a past order with us so I can look it up, would be helpful to me/us. As I stated previously we go directly to our Dallas/Ft.Worth postal hub to cut shipping time to an absolute minimum, im sure packages randomly take longer depending on USPS' feelings that day but would like to see if we were late on yours.
Yeah, not only is there a lot of evidence, but the manner is which this employee has responded is embarrassing. Heck, even if the customer is wrong, you don't talk to them like that.
Plus, minsarkers experience is terrible. I don't care if he got a deal, if he paid 7 a pop, and your played copies were 6 each at least give him that couple of bucks. You should technically be required to give him the new mint copies, whether or not you have them. You can't blame a repeat customer for being smart, understanding a cards interaction with another's, and knowing the market. Have your guys pay more attention to the game and maybe they'll understand what a card is worth, and what it will be worth. Instead they're to far up their butts trying to make the most profit.
Not sure what I said that is "talking to them like that" what are you referencing ? If you mean the CSM's original response I can assure you he was spoken to about it, but I can't come in here and discuss our reprimanding and training policies and be fair to everyone, I can assure you however it was discussed and is being discussed in an ongoing manner.
I had no problem offering something as compensation or credit for a situation where a customer isnt happy unfortunately I did not know anything about it at the time, nobody asked to speak to me and until I read this thread I did not know that this happened ( the response ) I always want someone to end up happy if we have a way to make that happen.
If doing something for minsarker now would help I would offer it, if he wanted something, but I dont want to be accused again of being short or facetious. Min happy to rectify and offer you something if you don't feel its too late if so, my apologies as I said already and I assure you I addressed it internally.
I don't understand, Chris, why you came out and defended yourself. You can't win. It doesn't matter what the truth is behind any of the stories here. You could be the nicest guy in the world just trying to make a buck, and you would still lose here because the customer is always right, even when they're not. Already you have users posting that because of your response, they won't ever buy from you and they will tell their friends. If 10 people read this and made that decision, and each told one draft pod alone about it, then that's 80 people that aren't even going to bother visiting your website, let alone buy your cards.
If you wanted to improve your image and/or community relations, why not come out here and take the high road? Imagine the following situation, instead of your response here:
Can you imagine how much better that would have gone over? Hell, I'd have at least visited your website to see what I was missing.
Fighting with your customers is like fighting with your wife. You can't win, you can only lose less. They don't care about your margins. They don't care about your long hours, your pricing policies, etc. None of that matters. If you had just taken the high road and tried to start over, instead of continuing this madness, maybe even I would have given you a shot. The fact is, I deal with another store that doesn't ask me how to treat the help, they simply get me my cards fast and for a reasonable price. No drama, no problems, and I go play Magic. If your store is capable of producing similar results, now is the best time to pledge to do that.
I ask this because I genuinely wonder what your perspective is as a business owner trying to salvage a customer/business relationship with the MTGS Market Street community. Was it really worth coming back here and arguing with customers? Was it a pride thing? Maybe you just wanted your voice heard? You must know that whether you are right or not, nothing good could have come from it. At least, not in a monetary sense.
I am glad you said this so I can clarify. I want to say up front that I wholeheartedly agree with you, arguing with your wife/my wife, is a dead end road lol. The only thing to be gained is more frustration and less non-stress time together honestly.
A few of the situations I wanted to explain my perception of how things occured and get the other persons thoughts on how they saw/felt the situations. In my personal life there is a measure of pride that I carry in some things but honestly pride is an overrated commodity, I have no problem apologizing when we are wrong and even when we aren't wrong honestly. I don't want to just come here say things without understanding perspectives, I wanted to explain how we saw a few things and get the other side of the stories then see what I can do about it.
One thing I want to note to everyone here, during my looking at Brian, Patrick and several of the issues here I noticed something. Literally most of these issues occurred at the first month of our new CSM starting. We had a CSM leave us with 2 days notice to move to Oklahoma ( following his girl ) and had to hire/train/bring up to speed someone very quickly and that was exactly during this time. I am not offering an excuse but a possible partial explanation, there is no pride in the way, no caring for my "voice" to be heard other than the aspect of people understanding we need reasonable solutions to problems.
I Had a guy ask me today to send a .33cent card same day express........
Do you know what that bill looks like ? $235.00, how do I fix that I can't I explained I could priority it give him more ship another free do lots of things, even if I wanted to I couldnt have gotten a same day out the door at 4:40CST. My point was only that we need reasonable options when things fail. My perspective is simply to look at and address each time we fail, myself included. We are a small business compared to most large online retailers Best Buy, Newegg etc and we do care about each and every one of our customers. Was it worth it, yes any information I get even from people still angry or angry again with us or me is worthwhile, you can't just stop learning or trying to grow.
We talk internally every day about customer service and how to make it better, anyone in this thread or forum that has had a negative experience I am sorry it happened no matter the circumstance we aren't sitting around chuckling about these things I take them to heart and we try to grow from them and get better every single time. No excuses but for those that experienced problems in the earlier parts of 2012 while bringing a CSM and the rest of a CS department up to speed I truly apologize and if I can do something to make it right let me know.
We talk internally every day about customer service and how to make it better, anyone in this thread or forum that has had a negative experience I am sorry it happened no matter the circumstance we aren't sitting around chuckling about these things I take them to heart and we try to grow from them and get better every single time. No excuses but for those that experienced problems in the earlier parts of 2012 while bringing a CSM and the rest of a CS department up to speed I truly apologize and if I can do something to make it right let me know.
This was a good first step and I believe your intentions. Also very nice of you to offer a coupon code. I hope a few of us drop by. I've got a WLG brower tab open right now.
If you want to go one further, the only other thing I can encourage you to do (beyond the previous hypothetical improved response) is to try to handle the rest of your customer service inquiries in private. I mean, think about it. If someone in your store starts to make a big fuss and gets loud because they are upset with an aspect of your service, you wouldn't get into a shouting match there, right? That would scare off all your other customers. You would gently and discreetly pull that person aside and deal with the issue privately, to avoid embarrassment for all parties and to keep the rest of your customers happy. The same logic applies here on the forums. As an example, I know you're not a big fan of the big stores you're competing with but SCG's Ben Bleiweiss, known for exemplary customer service, encourages his customers to send emails when they have issues so his staff can deal with them swiftly and discreetly.
I wish you luck in your business and I hope to see some positive experiences reported here in the future. Maybe we can even get this thread unstickied...
(This thread really should be unstickied as an MTGS gesture of good will to respond in kind. We can always re-sticky it if problems persist.) Agree that perhaps we should wait on this
Don't unsticky this thread. Multiple stores offer similar discounts all the time, and previous poster have shown WLG to give cheap offers for redemption. Folks got on here to complain and reccomend that we avoid WLG business cause they found it was their only option. Some of these stories seem exaggerated (little to tiny), and others appear spot on. I have bought a few orders of cards from WLG and they took some time to arrive (2 weeks). I know USPS sucks, but am glad at least for receiving them. Commenters, complaintents, and folks who just got hozed; thank you for taking the time to warn us.
One fact that cannot be ignored about WLG that all the folks on here claim: bullying.
The WLG representative first appeared with a book of abusive counter claims that ment nothing, cause no one on here has returned with a positive answer to there claims after trust7 got on here. Also, "trust7"? this user name is a mental trick to scam you again. He jumped on her fast and furious to quite down the claims to run out everyone with a real issue. This is a typical tactic of con-artists. They use a "comfort tone name" and quickly take over a conversation to attain a few goals: 1st- use soft attack speach to upset folks with claims to fall into being the attacker, 2nd shift arguement so that WLG is the victim, 3rd respond to everyone in the future of thread like its an illegit attack platform. Lastly, start selling the business again on the thread to remove doubts of claims. It's a double counter con folks, cause they can't survive if they don't sell it harder.
I have watched this thread for a while and its looking like an episode of American Greed.
Wow, he must not care too much about his reputation with a reply like that.
There is his reply. His previous offers were to refund the cost of the cards and he'd pay for shipping back or just give me 125% credit. Granted I got the omens at 7$ a piece which is half of what the market value is now but that's still some BS....
Wanted Card List: (PM me)
1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
1 Ravages of War
1 Swords to Plowshares (Judge)
1 Land Tax (Judge)
U
1 Mana Vortex
B
1 Desolation Angel (Foil)
1 Guardian Beast
1 Contamination
R
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
G
1 Food Chain
WUBRG
1 Rohgahh of Kher Keep
X
1 Charcoal Diamond (Foil)
1 Fellwar Stone (Foil)
T
1 Temple Garden (Foil)
3 Mutavault
1 Kor Haven
Or, a more simple explanation. They SUCK at grading cards :p.
Its entirely possible that its a combination of the two, really sad though that they continue to have issues with buying (a ton) and selling (some at least).
Sent them a response and pointed that all out. They DID have some played copies in stock (I believe 2..) so I think they just sent me those as NM. It is what it is. I'm done buying from WLG whatsoever.
Wanted Card List: (PM me)
1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
1 Ravages of War
1 Swords to Plowshares (Judge)
1 Land Tax (Judge)
U
1 Mana Vortex
B
1 Desolation Angel (Foil)
1 Guardian Beast
1 Contamination
R
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
G
1 Food Chain
WUBRG
1 Rohgahh of Kher Keep
X
1 Charcoal Diamond (Foil)
1 Fellwar Stone (Foil)
T
1 Temple Garden (Foil)
3 Mutavault
1 Kor Haven
They are perfectly willing to commit fraud and steal $250. It seems well within their range to send you damaged cards in place of the NM ones they sold you. They were either too lazy or too slow to keep their prices updated, so they thought they'd skim a little off the top of your order. If a company tried pulling that sort of crap with their shareholders, someone would be going to jail.
How condescending and insulting can someone get? Customer Service Manager my ass. More like damage-control.
Witch King - I do not get the time to read MTGS as much as I should I work about 70 hours a week, most of that time is spent resolving issues the managers bring to me from day to day business along with normal database website service stock collections paying taxes and so forth that goes along with running a business.
I am going to try to address a lot of what is in this thread then ask for a suggestion at the end about one of the issues that seems to be a common thing in the thread, the buylist.
Joe - Joe asked us to send a check as payment which is something we do not do plain and simple, there is more to the issue including me trying to make Joe happy by doing something we don't do instead of just shipping the cards back or agreeing to send paypal to a friend of his which he was very not happy about that premise, I simply should not have agreed to break policy this was my fault entirely and I apologized profusely for the time, there was never an intention to steal his cards simply received a package with a payment option that wasnt an option, simply put.
Patrick - The foil engineered explosives situation was resolved ultimately and the packs sent as extras were not meant as an insult but as a sincere apology for the time delay if Patrick had called or emailed and said he wanted something else I would have obliged but he was agitated from day one and from our first conversation there wasnt much I could do to help. I feel as though this situation started with the assumption we literally just didnt care about his order and that would be wrong, If I recall including purchasing 4 more explosives at 40-50.00 plus shipping each to rectify the original lost order two packages shipping the lost cards and time we lost something on the order of 400-500.00 in cards and time to attempt to fix the situation. Patrick was rightfully angry on first contact but I would suggest anyone dealing with any store not just assume outright they dont care about you.
Stop for two seconds and look at our feedback, Ebay, TcgPlayer, Amazon, Bidwicket, Findmagiccards, our own site, we have 10's of 10's of 10's of THOUSANDS of feedbacks, do you guys REALLY think our idea of customer service is reflected perfectly here inside this thread ? Amazon TCG and Bidwicket literally will not keep you online with a running account if you do some of the things stated here or dont take care of people at the level being discussed. We want very much to take care of our customers. Maybe being yelled at by crack heads ( yes it has happened, TWICE ) causes us on days to be frustrated, keep in mind we are human beings. I simple statement of something reasonable you want as a solution if we can do it, we will, period.
We want our customers experiences to be swift and pleasant and we do a lot of things to try to make that happen.
Bacepi - You sent a package to us in an envelope and got angry with us for the time and adjustment when it showed up more than a month later...I didnt put the statement of tracking for no reason, our post IS bonkers locally and we have done what we can to not use them.
SocalPsych - LOL "These are lies. My tea company ships similar volume of packages and we only have problems with 1 in 800/1,000. Most of the time these few mistakes are simple to resolve.
Oh just don't ship to Berkeley CA, their USPS is unbelievably bad."
You straight up say you know a certain postal office is horrible but when we say exactly what you just said then its just these are lies, comon man.... This isnt even a reasonable statement. We drive 45 miles a day to the Fort Worth Hub processing center, EVERY DAY, to ship our packages because the 6 post offices locally in each city near us could not stop losing packages or damaging them, it wasnt a decision made lightly as it costs a lot of time and money for us to do this, has nobody ever wondered how they get from ship date to delivered so fast from us most of the time ? Also we have less damage and loss claims this way. Our local post which we stopped using many many years back was on the order of 10-20 out of 100 lost or damaged, YES 10-20% sounds absurd right. Regardless point is our post IS bananas which is why we ask for tracking and ship from Fort Worth Central Processing.
Bamzing - I can't really reply to you properly about speed when I don't know what country you are referring to your profile states unknown country. ( or city/state ) if you have any order numbers i would be happy to look at the speed they shipped just for my own edification. The USPS is the only "reasonable" option we have in the US for shipping outside the US and the cost and speed are horrendous, we literally charge less and lose money on EVERY single shipment outside the US to attempt to mitigate the time and cost for our international customers.
Minsarker / Minhazur - Prismatic Omen was out of stock when you bought the last ones, you werent the only one "speculating" and they were cheap no big deal there. Geoff wasn't really replying that he didnt care, I remember this situation clearly, he was reply with the options we had to take care of you. The options unfortunately did not include replacing Omens with ones we didnt have as we were out, I apologize his language was unclear or frustrating it was certainly not his intent I am certain.
Jeffbcrandall - Min bought us out and we didnt send worse ones we just sent the ones listed as NM that we had left in stock, simply possible one or two slid through a massive collection graded improperly, I never got to see them.
Dzra - I really do not want to address this but in the interest of clarity and honesty I will. You posted half the conversation and YOU KNOW IT, you stole from us THEN you sent me the first message stating; oh well dude too late now sorry about your junk TOO BAD SO SAD, have to find the email to Quote you but you straight out flat out said you KNEW you jacked us and you didnt care so why dont you come clean and tell everyone here the credit card chargeback was filed after that because you REFUSED to do anything, period. Then tell everyone EVERYTHING you sent that you said was mint was beat including the foils, THEN tell everyone you got paid even though you jacked us around. You took an opportunity here to defame our character on a bandwagon of people that had legitimate complaints and while we could have handled the resolution of this TOGETHER better don't put this all on us, you sent beat cards you said too bad and when I asked and asked and asked to help me resolve it nicely you refused and didnt answer 3 emails and ebay messages, do not put this all on us you know thats not right.
Jack - I don't have a good reply for second-hand or third-hand information from other people, we are a store front in Hurst/Richland Hills and including Shotokan we have been a store continuously nearly, with a few moves here and there, for 15+ years. If someone setup a meet somewhere that wasn't at the store, which I do know has happened a couple times like buying collections at a starbucks or something for directions ease or comfort ( many people have asked to meet somewhere the know how to get to etc ), then it was just to help different situations out.
Midori - Love the liquor, melon liquor is good, thanks for the compliments and others that compliment us in here and in our various feedback mechanisms thanks, hopefully if you ever have / had a problem we can rise to the occasion and repair it.
Now to the Meat of it;
Our feedback on Tcg, Amazon, eBay, Bidwicket, FindMagicCards and more, is very very important to us not because its a number or a situation of "measurement" its a measure of pride to us, you have to understand where this business came from. We / I was a major wholesaler for a LONG long time in this business before we opened the online portion and the policies and procedures we setup for how White Lion Games are a direct result of situations just like some of these that went wrong for us and how stores treated us as customers and we are still customers today.
As an example for you guys, we ordered Amulet of Vigors, ok I ordered amulet of vigors when I started to hear a little about the amulet/spring/titan deck doing something you may call that speculating etc, I bought foils and regulars at full price from 10 or 11 stores only 4 copies or 8 depending on what their policies were I was not trying to "get" any store and I flat out tried not to buy anyone out even though there is 100's of this card in stock all over the place. I do not speculate often anymore as a business owner I dont have the time to make "bets" any more, I used to be 100% and now without time to watch and play professionally any more I can't really be right much any longer ( last before this was Vorapede I still like this card though ).
Here is the punch line, a full 5 stores, which I am NOT going to mention because thats not how I think things should be dealt with, I think we as customers should approach our buying/selling with the stores, if we get bad food talk to the manager or owner go all the way up to find resolution, thats just my opinion then if nothing its your choice to talk about it online etc, which honestly I dont do much even when things are done badly to me I guess because I know just how hard it is, especially in a faily economy, to run a good business, I digress. FIVE stores flat out cancelled our orders here is the list of reasons:
1. out of stock ( showed like 60+ in stock ) still shows in stock
2. not allowed to order regulars and foils, ok ?
3. no answer no reply no email no response at all
4. no answer no reply no email no response at all
5. refund in notes of refund call us with any problems.
I sent an email to each store and literally no reply from any, several stores mentioned in this thread as "great stores" have done this to me and people I know literally 10,20 times, literally. I don't like that it happens and I don't like when it does when I just want cards, crap guys I play the game too. I buy lots of foils for my cube and edh decks that are hard to get and these days ( i hate to endorse another stores but literally ChannelFireball has never cancelled an order on me, they have their own problems im sure like everyone else, I have had orders from them take a month but never a summary cancellation like nearly every other "good" store.
We don't cancel orders when cards are sitting in boxes like other stores we just don't period its crappy and it sucks it happens to me enough for me to know. One thing most people probably dont understand though is the SEVERAL SEVERAL SEVERAL methods in which we can OVER-sell a card very easily. E-Checks from Paypal, Amazon Delayed Inventory, TCG Delay, eBay Auction buy it now but not paid immediately, Additional out of stock holds meaning a card is out of stock but the rest of the order is allocated out of inventory and held in one of the above situations. When you are dealing with so many things in time and inventory its literally just impossible for it to be 100% perfect all the time, if any part of that doesnt make sense ask I will happily post screenshots or show what I am talking about if need be.
Buylist:
I would like anyone who wants to reply with a WELL-THOUGH OUT reply about a suggestion for the buylist to please do, but first read what I have to say about it.
Adjusting the buy price down AND up for the market is how we decided to BE HONEST with our customers i know several of you have said in this thread you question our integrity and that statement im sure makes you wonder let me explain. We don't send shipments back when they come in and aren't in our favor, if you don't think stores do this you would be wrong, I have had it done to me 100's of times, YES HUNDREDS of times as well as our own customers coming to us after that has happened to them stating NOW they understand why we do what we do. See when a card comes in, beat up or not the right version ( Planechase not from the vault or whatever ) or foil when it should not be or vice verse we have to make a decision, some stores automatically return whole packages, some stores return sections of cards that are beat, some stores SCRATCH CARDS that are mint cite them not mint because they dont want to buy them at the price they stated and on and on and on. When peak prices would come and go and stores would hold my packages then refuse them or refuse parts or modify them in such a way, these things is what led me to our current policies, I just didnt like the lies and dishonesty about the marketplace driving the prices. Computers and humans aren't perfect theres no way for everything to be right, and those of you that don't think we adjust up you would be wrong, we adjust up daily in nearly every sell to us order we accept. The market does drive the prices and competition is good, I always thought having a situation where we match most buy prices would be advantageous for our customers, say you send us X card and its 4.00 each sell to us, when it gets here and gets processed like Huntmaster of the fells for example wouldnt you want a store to say hey you get 64.00 instead of 16.00 ? Watching and matching stores higher buy prices I always thought would allow customers to send us packages and not worry. Do you know that we have customers that send us packages every week with OTHER STORES' sell to us paperwork in them ? They literally check out from our store get a sell order and from other stores but send all 7 stores "packages" to just us because we do this. Sure if you sit and criticize the method with one card, you can tear us apart I get that, but believing we are sitting around "waiting for the market to equalize" the cards and we make money thats insane, literally insane. Someone earlier in the thread said it, that just doesnt happen, honestly in Type2 its mostly a how not to lose money game, seriously. Shaving dollars so we make a little profit is not making us millions of dollars, but I bet refusing packages that we dont like the condition of wasting our customers money and refusing packages that aren't in our favor would.
Clearly you can not have every single aspect of every single thing in your favor in life so do this think about what I have said and give me a suggestion and I will take them to heart. You tell us how to make a little profit on a card we buy ( 20.00 Card we buy at 13.00-14.00 then pay 10% - 18% depending on the outlet for fees netting us 4.00 - 5.00 profit then when the card drops, which they do say to 17.49, we then make 1.50 - 2.50) Nobody can exist on margins like that, nobody if you think other stores do you would be mistaken its a business impossiblity, literally, in retail that is. So think about if you dislike straight honesty as much as you all say you do in the form of honest adjustments up and down to market ( which by the way you can check yourself when sending us sell to us orders ) or if you think sending packages back ( just because it hasn't happened to you yet, do NOT think it doesn't happen ) is a better option.
You can't have a store hold to a insane price to buy not send the package back take all the not mint ones and all the things we are talking about and stay in business, be reasonable what you are all discussing is literally the worst of the worst of all possible options and how they are reacted to and worked with, I get that mistakes get made and I honestly want anyones feedback that wants to spend the time to discuss it, I would be happy to hear constructive feedback about the issue.
Keep in mind as a business, if you read through this thread or look at any business, I know you don't want to think of this but people have their own best interests in mind and because we are a business people try to take advantage of us EVERY day in any way possible. I am not saying we are out looking at everyone like that but again, as humans some days we are attacked more than others and some days we respond better than others. I am not going to sit here saying we are perfect I am just going to state that if you stop and take a minute to think that we are dealing with insane things all day long in business and that our ultimate goal IS for you to be happy then suggest something we can do, don't call us and say there's nothing you can do, nobody can help you that way and we want to help make you happy.
Also as I stated somewhere else I am always around if someone or something that you do not like or do not understand talks to you or happens in relation to our business please ask for me and I will do my best to resolve it.
I look forward to any reply from anyone about business, our policies or a situation I can do something about today to make you happy, I would like to think in 5 years the 112,000 orders we have done of which in total I know of about 30 or maybe 40 total we have made an error or had something or someone very upset with us is pretty good, but I know we can always do better, hopefully my 3 hour ten trillion whatever word email conveys that ideal. I apologize I did not know of this thread before and urge anyone EVER with a problem to talk to me.
Thanks if you read this monster and look forward to any reply.
Chris
WLG
First off. I never got paid. If you are just a poor guy that got jacked around and then decided to stand up for yourself by issuing a chargeback to take what was fair then why didn't I receive the rest?
Second off, the conversation is right there. I never mention the condition of the cards and because of the condition of the Polluted Delta, I offer to give you money back. I was working it out with you before you started cursing and going crazy.
Third, you lied to your credit card company. You lied to them, issued a chargeback, and took the full amount $250 for yourself. You stole it all. You didn't even take what you thought you deserved and then pay me the rest. You stole the whole thing.
If you actually want to work something out, I'm still willing to, but obviously all the cards are in your hands.
Looks like things got out of hand very quickly.
your name sort of got dragged through the mud. I agree with you on most of the arguments.
i especially agree when you say players try to take advantage of us all the time. Sharks are sharks. what can you do?
Kirin's Skyfire Help Desk
Trading Post
Thanks Kirin,
I was surprised it took that long for someone to tell us too actually when I first saw it because the customer said it I thought "2010" what the heck!
What's weird is people think because we are a company or that anyone is a company (small businesses I'm speaking of here) that we can fend off the sharks, people find new exciting ways to steal from us every day, EVERY single day. That's just part of being in business but when situations come up you always are trying to understand situations and work with people but sometimes people don't seem to want "reasonable" sometimes they want you to send their 16 ordered Huntmaster of the Fells when you sold 48 sold out AND oversold AND they broke the rules buying that many. Actually had a guy literally say to me on the phone WHILE I was apologizing for him breaking he rules that he expected us to buy 12 more Huntmasters at 18.00 or 24.00 whatever they were that day and send them to him......
I do have to say though 99.9% of people when you say your sorry we messed up and how can we make it right, they respond positively and make suggestions on how they could be happy and that's all we look for is how to correct and make people happy in good and when we mess up. No company is perfect, newegg, sears, amazon all of them have messed up things some badly it's the recovery I look for us to try to be good at and even there sometimes things happen, postal errors and the whole nine. I remember a couple years back the local post bending a guys package of 4 Mindsculptors in half IN HARD CASES ugh lol USPS paid for that one heheheheh
Well I think you've lost many potential customers due to this thread. All these stories seem completely legit and it's blatantly obvious that you attempted to rip these people off. Even if you didn't rip these guys off these experiences still make you look bad. I will tell anyone looking to buy cards online to look somewhere else so they can avoid the possibility of being ripped off.
Footsteps Hulk
Ascendency Combo
Restore Balance
Ad Nauseam
EDH:
Ghave Lands
Narset Combo
Rancored Elf will cancel your order if prices go up. Read about him and other shady vendors here.
My Trade Thread!
I am sorry you feel all of the stories are legitimate as some are and some are not, I'm also sorry you feel whatever 10000000000th of 1 percent these issues represent, completely gives you full understanding of me personally and us as a company, I respect everyones right to make their own opinion. However I would urge you to use a little more research in your future opinions than one thread or even five threads. When I look into problems I always check and check myself with the people in control of my situation. I use USAA because of my military affiliations for insurance and they nearly lost my business this year because of an error they made which would be looked at very badly by anyone that heard the story, but instead of going bonkers on their facebook or some thread I called them and spoke to their resolution department and yes, it was a beating dealing with them it took a month and a week to resolve, but they resolved it, and I as a good customer stayed with them during the attempts to resolve it, I didnt say piss off and leave I didnt curse them up and down, was I mad ? Hell yes I was mad, been with them a LONG time and done lots of business with them as a loyal customer because of the way they have taken care of me when I could have left for cheaper rates from Toyota, Ducati, Nissan, Mazda and many many more.
The point I am making is this; if you want to be reasonable and your desire,request,business IS reasonable give businesses, including us, the chance to make things right. MOST businesses and people in general if you give them a chance will try to do right by you, including us. I am not speaking of single people on craigslist, I do mean be careful, but with hundreds of thousands of orders and feedback and 15+ years in the business with insanely good reviews even FROM people with repeated problems we can't just be lying or trying to rip people off, think about it.
Stores and businesses that do that don't exist long or they have to change names, BigF**********, and then try again. Same name, same people, same desire to make situations right and as soon as Im done with this im going to again reply to Dzra in private because we DONT stop trying and thats all there is to it.
Chris
I am sorry you don't see the entire situation but I as I have already said will not go into this ONE situation but all of us here are human beings and at the point where cursing calling people names and threatening people comes into play, the service is done and gone, NOBODY can deal with that at that level, we want EVERY customer we have except the ones that, again as I have said over and over, don't want to try to be reasonable and are only trying to hurt us or damage a situation. Somehow in your statements you think because we are a business we aren't human beings and can't be affected or hurt or frustrated, thats just not even reasonable man.
We aren't Robots and neither is anyone you think should be ok with you screaming and cursing at them on the other end of the phone, I simply can't agree with you here.
Chris
Huktonfonix - Sorry you feel that way, I attempted to address every single person with a complaint and even attempted to address one very bad situation that I feel we were treated badly in as a way to again try to repair that situation. As I said above we are human beings and desire to make our people happy as can be, things happen and if you understand that then let us try to make you happy.
Listen, the real bottom line is that mostly in life WE are our biggest critics, if you guys somehow think I don't get on all the managers and employees cases when these things happen weekly, daily, monthly, your dead wrong. We talk more about our processes than the entire combined group of people talk about our processes I promise you that. We have dynamic reports that run every week that discuss errors in shipping, inventory, damage and 10 others that we graph look at discuss and adjust to resolve, thats not the mark of a company or person, ME, that doesn't care about its customers plain and simple. Nobody can beat me up worse than I beat myself up when we make a mistake, I already feel bad the instant the phone rings, I CRINGE every time a situation is bad for a customer, this week we mispriced Geralf's Messenger at 2.59 because the person entering transposed the 2 and 5 when clearly 5.29 was the right price, guess what, shipped 38 of them, ALL of them we had in stock we didnt cancel any order that we could fill AND we oversold once in amazon and once in TCGplayer, so I went and cracked some Dark Ascension and lost more money trying to fill as many as we could. But nobody sees that, nobody cares we lost 300-400 on that deal, nobody says hey I see i "got you guys" and thanks for the cheap cards.......It was our mistake I own it so we move on.
Lets just agree the way its setup isn't exactly fair for treating people in business with the greatest of respect and that when it goes too far, we still, are human beings.
If you want Robots buy everything you buy from big companies and the attempt at real service will die, along with competition and a good economy, I hope that isn't what we all want, I know I don't. I think if I am mad and I get upset with someone I want them to know im upset, but what I want most is for them to help me fix what went wrong, but then again I am not out to scam, beat, shark or whatever else out of the places I do business with, I know they have a hard enough time without that.
All of this is perspective and regardless I appreciate every criticism and comment I truly do, thanks to the good positive and good negative comments guys, Thanks sincerely.
Chris
I am going to read your message and get with you to show you the payment sent and resolve anything outstanding with this.
Chris
Instead of quadruple posting please feel free to use the mutli-quote function or edit your replie into a single post. Thank you. Posts merged. -Galspanic
If you check the other store threads on here, you'll see many many instances of people praising the service and honesty of these businesses. Simply put, you're doing it wrong.
Rancored Elf will cancel your order if prices go up. Read about him and other shady vendors here.
My Trade Thread!
Although SCG has unbearable "cut-throat" card prices, they back it up with equivalent excellent customer service.
Unfortunately, I was done talking about this but since you mentioned me I might as well point out something on your statement since it is false.
It wasn't a month. I've timelined and outlined everything for anyone to read.
I was angry and justifiably so because it wasn't the first time it happened with your company. It was the fact that every time I sold MTG cards to your business, every time you got it after an abnormal time period and every time there was a price markdown on the total.
To blame the post office on the constant markdowns for the buylist "en-route" and horrible customer service is ridiculous to be honest.
Plus, minsarkers experience is terrible. I don't care if he got a deal, if he paid 7 a pop, and your played copies were 6 each at least give him that couple of bucks. You should technically be required to give him the new mint copies, whether or not you have them. You can't blame a repeat customer for being smart, understanding a cards interaction with another's, and knowing the market. Have your guys pay more attention to the game and maybe they'll understand what a card is worth, and what it will be worth. Instead they're to far up their butts trying to make the most profit.
If you wanted to improve your image and/or community relations, why not come out here and take the high road? Imagine the following situation, instead of your response here:
Can you imagine how much better that would have gone over? Hell, I'd have at least visited your website to see what I was missing.
Fighting with your customers is like fighting with your wife. You can't win, you can only lose less. They don't care about your margins. They don't care about your long hours, your pricing policies, etc. None of that matters. If you had just taken the high road and tried to start over, instead of continuing this madness, maybe even I would have given you a shot. The fact is, I deal with another store that doesn't ask me how to treat the help, they simply get me my cards fast and for a reasonable price. No drama, no problems, and I go play Magic. If your store is capable of producing similar results, now is the best time to pledge to do that.
I ask this because I genuinely wonder what your perspective is as a business owner trying to salvage a customer/business relationship with the MTGS Market Street community. Was it really worth coming back here and arguing with customers? Was it a pride thing? Maybe you just wanted your voice heard? You must know that whether you are right or not, nothing good could have come from it. At least, not in a monetary sense.
:symu::symr: Melek WheelStorm
:symw::symg: Trostani Enchantress (updated 6/5)
:symg::symr::symu: Unexpected Results.dec
Thada Adel Stax WIP
Ok Brian pulled both your orders up so we can discuss it and I have the facts in front of me.
3 Orders you sold to us ?:
a. 11 March - 19 March, 8 days to us, 40.31 Original STU Total, 39.00? offered, paid next day.
b. 31 March - April 10, 11 days to us, 15.35 Original STU Total, $1.52 in damaged cards 13.82 and $1.00 adjusted, if I remember right we offered 13.00 11 days later, you accepted we paid a few days after.
c. April 1 - April 18, 17 days to us, 45.32 Original STU Total, 11.33 Each adjusted less than 1.00 each offer 42.00 even though we were losing money after this long.
If I have most of this right other than skipping the part about assumptions and tracking and such can you tell me what we did wrong here ?
In checking out it says 5 days to us so we can keep prices steady no package came in that time and we barely touched them still, willing to listen to where we failed but need some kind of explanation as to how you feel we did.
Chris
Mastergee, interested to see what our speed was to Seattle would you mind seeing if you do indeed have a past order with us so I can look it up, would be helpful to me/us. As I stated previously we go directly to our Dallas/Ft.Worth postal hub to cut shipping time to an absolute minimum, im sure packages randomly take longer depending on USPS' feelings that day but would like to see if we were late on yours.
Chris
Not sure what I said that is "talking to them like that" what are you referencing ? If you mean the CSM's original response I can assure you he was spoken to about it, but I can't come in here and discuss our reprimanding and training policies and be fair to everyone, I can assure you however it was discussed and is being discussed in an ongoing manner.
I had no problem offering something as compensation or credit for a situation where a customer isnt happy unfortunately I did not know anything about it at the time, nobody asked to speak to me and until I read this thread I did not know that this happened ( the response ) I always want someone to end up happy if we have a way to make that happen.
If doing something for minsarker now would help I would offer it, if he wanted something, but I dont want to be accused again of being short or facetious. Min happy to rectify and offer you something if you don't feel its too late if so, my apologies as I said already and I assure you I addressed it internally.
Chris
I am glad you said this so I can clarify. I want to say up front that I wholeheartedly agree with you, arguing with your wife/my wife, is a dead end road lol. The only thing to be gained is more frustration and less non-stress time together honestly.
A few of the situations I wanted to explain my perception of how things occured and get the other persons thoughts on how they saw/felt the situations. In my personal life there is a measure of pride that I carry in some things but honestly pride is an overrated commodity, I have no problem apologizing when we are wrong and even when we aren't wrong honestly. I don't want to just come here say things without understanding perspectives, I wanted to explain how we saw a few things and get the other side of the stories then see what I can do about it.
One thing I want to note to everyone here, during my looking at Brian, Patrick and several of the issues here I noticed something. Literally most of these issues occurred at the first month of our new CSM starting. We had a CSM leave us with 2 days notice to move to Oklahoma ( following his girl ) and had to hire/train/bring up to speed someone very quickly and that was exactly during this time. I am not offering an excuse but a possible partial explanation, there is no pride in the way, no caring for my "voice" to be heard other than the aspect of people understanding we need reasonable solutions to problems.
I Had a guy ask me today to send a .33cent card same day express........
Do you know what that bill looks like ? $235.00, how do I fix that I can't I explained I could priority it give him more ship another free do lots of things, even if I wanted to I couldnt have gotten a same day out the door at 4:40CST. My point was only that we need reasonable options when things fail. My perspective is simply to look at and address each time we fail, myself included. We are a small business compared to most large online retailers Best Buy, Newegg etc and we do care about each and every one of our customers. Was it worth it, yes any information I get even from people still angry or angry again with us or me is worthwhile, you can't just stop learning or trying to grow.
We talk internally every day about customer service and how to make it better, anyone in this thread or forum that has had a negative experience I am sorry it happened no matter the circumstance we aren't sitting around chuckling about these things I take them to heart and we try to grow from them and get better every single time. No excuses but for those that experienced problems in the earlier parts of 2012 while bringing a CSM and the rest of a CS department up to speed I truly apologize and if I can do something to make it right let me know.
Chris
I have offered to try to make it right with any of the people here and per your suggestions here you go.
Orders placed on our website directly not 5 but 10% off to MTGS for the next couple days.
www.whiteliongames.com Add items during checkout when coupon / add code comes up put: "MTGS10" in the box.
C
This was a good first step and I believe your intentions. Also very nice of you to offer a coupon code. I hope a few of us drop by. I've got a WLG brower tab open right now.
If you want to go one further, the only other thing I can encourage you to do (beyond the previous hypothetical improved response) is to try to handle the rest of your customer service inquiries in private. I mean, think about it. If someone in your store starts to make a big fuss and gets loud because they are upset with an aspect of your service, you wouldn't get into a shouting match there, right? That would scare off all your other customers. You would gently and discreetly pull that person aside and deal with the issue privately, to avoid embarrassment for all parties and to keep the rest of your customers happy. The same logic applies here on the forums. As an example, I know you're not a big fan of the big stores you're competing with but SCG's Ben Bleiweiss, known for exemplary customer service, encourages his customers to send emails when they have issues so his staff can deal with them swiftly and discreetly.
I wish you luck in your business and I hope to see some positive experiences reported here in the future. Maybe we can even get this thread unstickied...
(This thread really should be unstickied as an MTGS gesture of good will to respond in kind. We can always re-sticky it if problems persist.)Agree that perhaps we should wait on this:symu::symr: Melek WheelStorm
:symw::symg: Trostani Enchantress (updated 6/5)
:symg::symr::symu: Unexpected Results.dec
Thada Adel Stax WIP
One fact that cannot be ignored about WLG that all the folks on here claim: bullying.
The WLG representative first appeared with a book of abusive counter claims that ment nothing, cause no one on here has returned with a positive answer to there claims after trust7 got on here. Also, "trust7"? this user name is a mental trick to scam you again. He jumped on her fast and furious to quite down the claims to run out everyone with a real issue. This is a typical tactic of con-artists. They use a "comfort tone name" and quickly take over a conversation to attain a few goals: 1st- use soft attack speach to upset folks with claims to fall into being the attacker, 2nd shift arguement so that WLG is the victim, 3rd respond to everyone in the future of thread like its an illegit attack platform. Lastly, start selling the business again on the thread to remove doubts of claims. It's a double counter con folks, cause they can't survive if they don't sell it harder.
I have watched this thread for a while and its looking like an episode of American Greed.
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