TL;DR In March I submitted two items to the PWCC Vault using their Free Vault promo. My items were received but never entered into my vault. I contacted PWCC and later learned that they had shipped my items out to another PWCC member. After a few months of speaking with PWCC, they acknowledged their mistake, tried to buy back the cards from the new owners, and when that wasn’t possible - they bought replacement copies for the cards.
I wanted to create this post because this was my first experience with PWCC and although it had a tumultuous start, the way it ended has given me extreme confidence in them as a company and I will gladly be using their service again in the future.
To start, back in March PWCC was running their FREE VAULT for life promotion. I submitted and sent 2 cards to them, two (2) PSA 10 2016 Festa Pikachus pictured below.
As a newer collector, these items were the most valuable cards in my collection and I wanted them properly protected and insured. So when I heard of PWCC’s free vault for life promotion, I thought that was the perfect opportunity. I sent the cards off March 8th and they arrived at PWCC on March 12th. I received an email from PWCC on March 13th saying the package had been received by them and my Vault Submission would be processed in due time.
I checked every few weeks to see if the submission had been uploaded but after a month, I eventually forgot about it and assumed that PWCC would alert me when the process was complete. Keep in mind, this was in March when grading companies were closing their submissions because of their backlogs so I assumed PWCC was experiencing something similar.
A few months went by and I had other life events that took me away from Pokemon for a bit, but when I returned I saw buckna talking in Discord about his recent June Vault Submission that had just been processed. At that point I knew there was something wrong with my submission so I immediately contacted PWCC to check on the status of my cards.
Now I have to admit, my first point of contact with PWCC did not go well. I was directed to a case worker from their automated chat and I won’t name the person but they gave me absolutely zero confidence in any kind of resolution. It took days, sometimes weeks, to get a response to a simple email and most times I would get a blanket non-answer statements like “Thank you for your patience. We have confirmed that those cards did arrive and our team is looking into why they aren’t in your account. We will update you when we have more information.” For a few months, every email went pretty much like that until eventually they informed me that my cards had been mistakenly shipped to another PWCC member and to fix the mistake they would pay me out a value for each card.
At that point I was confused and angry. I had specifically sent these cards to be shipped and securely stored away but instead they had somehow opened an incoming package and sent it out to someone? How does something like that even happen? I refused the payout because the reason I wanted these cards stored was because I did not want the current market value, I wanted them put away for safekeeping. I asked them to use the payout they offered me to buy back the cards from the new owners.
A few more weeks went by and I was losing hope, so I started checking what other options I had. I tried filing a police report but they said because nothing was stolen it would have to be settled privately. PSA also contacted me because someone was trying to add one of the copies of my card into their set registry. I eventually had to release it because I couldn’t prove I was still the owner. Eventually I found a post by @sherbixtus, and his own saga with PWCC. I hit him up on Discord and asked what he did to reach a resolution.
He put me into contact with the service rep who aided him and at that moment everything changed. I contacted his service rep who escalated my case to Betsy Huigens, manager of Client Services at PWCC.
In her very first email, Betsy clearly explained to me that the cards had somehow been placed into an outgoing package for a high volume member at PWCC. This member did not realize that these cards were not part of their order but had already listed them and sold them to customers. The member had been cooperating and aiding in connecting PWCC to the new owners, but the new owners were adamant in getting paid more than what they originally bought them for because of the increasing value of the cards. At this moment they were still trying to buy back the cards but it was looking less and less feasible so if they ultimately couldn’t, they would purchase replacement copies for me.
Wow. After 2 months, I finally had the complete picture of what had happened. Knowing that in and of itself was a huge relief and I felt much more confident in the level of communication and also the potential of a new solution. I thanked Betsy for her email and waited to hear from her again.
I occasionally checked in to see the status and eventually learned that they had exhausted all hopes of buying back the cards and were now on the search for replacement copies. A little over 2 weeks ago on September 17, I received an email from PWCC that my vault submission had been accepted. I logged on and saw this, the first replacement copy.
After months I finally felt like we were reaching the conclusion of this journey. I thanked Betsy and waited for the next copy to enter until just this past week on September 30, I received another email from PWCC.
And just like that. That was it. It was over. PWCC had lost the two cards I sent but replaced them with new copies of the cards in the same grade. I want to thank Betsy Huigens for her work in obtaining new copies and thank you to @sherbixtus for putting me into contact with someone else at PWCC.
In the end, this was a crazy experience as a first time customer of PWCC but it has honestly made me much more appreciative of the services they offer. They were willing to stand by their mistake and do what they could to make it right. The communication started off shaky, but I eventually was able to speak to someone who was a person of authority and directly help me in my case. With all this PWCC vs eBay drama that’s happened in the past months, I couldn’t help but think what would’ve happened if a similar lost package incident happened with them or even PayPal. I will definitely continue to use their service in the future and again, thank you to everyone who helped.