PWCC Lost Over 7k Worth of My Cards

EDIT: Many have asked so I will answer here. Yes I will continue to use the PWCC Vault. This has given me confidence going forward about their services. Also, looks like my legal stuff written below isn’t particularly correct. My bad. That was just an armchair expert’s opinions about what I read lol. Still not going to get my cards back though.

I was not going to post anything about this, but PWCC made the situation right so I want to give props to the company that fixed their mistake. I hope this helps a few people decide whether or not to send their stuff to the vault when they think about the worst case scenario of your cards getting lost.

The Backstory: I have been using the PWCC vault since the beginning of 2021 once I found out about how the taxes and fees work (I live in NYC so I get royally boned by sales tax on my big purchases). If you know nothing about this, basically you can send them your card and its stored in a physical vault with insurance! The one big draw of using them is the fact that there is no sales tax when sending to the vault so you can save money on the purchase and then pay for the intake fee from them to get your card sent to you (1% I believe). I feel weird somewhat advertising that, but its something they are now advertising so I feel like most people know. When they were running their promo of free vault items, I decided to go on a small buying spree and bought some raw and graded cards. Something felt off when my cards weren’t registered in their system for a while. I’m talking 4x the normal amount of time they usually take. I later found out that it was because of the crazy promo they ran and had a shitload of inventory coming in so nothing bad yet. P.S. Raw cards take about 3 times longer than graded cards to get into their system.

The Situation: Now that my cards were in the system, I wanted them sent to me. When you have cards in the vault, you can ask them to be shipped to you. Once you pay the invoice they send you, they will send out the cards! Nothing should go wrong there right? Right…? Usually the cards take about 1-2 days to get shipped, but it had been over a week and no shipping notification so I decided to call up my Customer Rep. He saw that they had been waiting for about a week to be sent out and said he would check with the shipping team to see what was happening. Two days later, still nothing so I called again and he said the same thing essentially. After about a week of my trying to get the lowdown on where these cards were, the shipping person came clean to my customer rep and admitted that they sent my cards to someone else… Yep, somehow they printed a label for my name, and just put them in a box for someone else… So now what?

The Legal Shit: BUUUUUUT SHERRRRRRB. WHY CAN’T THEY JUST ASK THE GUY TO GIB THE CARDSSSSSSS BAAAAAAAAAACK. Legally, the cards that PWCC sent to the other person are that person’s property: www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-do-if-youre-billed-things-you-never-got-or-you-get-unordered-products . (Ty Coop) “By law, companies can’t send unordered merchandize to you, then demand payment. That means you never have to pay for things you get but didn’t order. You also don’t have to return unordered merchandise. You’re legally entitled to keep it as a free gift.” My customer rep said PWCC tried to get in contact with the person they sent my cards to, but apparently he ghosted them and took all his cards from the vault XD. Obviously they could try to track him down because they have his address and info, but its probably easier for a big corporation to just pay me out. Great, so I’m not getting my cards back. Now what?

The “Oh Shit Moment”: Remember when I said I had some raw cards in the vault…? Normal graded cards are insured up to a relatively accurate amount. So I wasn’t too worried about getting the money back for those cards…

On the other hand… My raw cards were insured at $5 a piece… Yep! GET YOUR MINT BABY MARIO AND LUIGI PIKAS FOR ONLY $5 FROM SHERB’s VAULT!

Obviously this had me a little bit worried that they were going to pass these off as $5 cards and especially the even more pricey Japanese promos I had in the vault (I love me some unique artwork Japanese Promos). I also had a really cool charmander in there… :slightly_frowning_face:

The Resolution: After talking with my customer rep a few more times, he told me to write him up a list of the values for all of the cards that I lost and that he would do his absolute best to get me the fair value. I wrote up what I thought was fair value for my cards/what I paid for them and to PWCC’s credit, they didn’t give me any fuss about what I wrote for the values. On some cards, I got fair market value, and on some, I actually got a better deal because of prices lowering recently (See 3.5k bulba when its around 3k right now and I got paid out for 3.5k). I will say that my customer rep said I would get paid out sooner than I did, but like everything in a big corporation, it took them about a week to get the money into my account.

The Real Reason I Made This Post: YO. SOME GUY OUT THERE HAS MY NICE POP 1 of 2 CHARMANDER THAT ISN’T THAT EXPENSIVE BUT IS RARE AND COOL AS SHIT TO A CHARMANDER COLLECTOR LIKE ME. I’m not trying to make a witch hunt for this card or the dude that has it, just saying if you see it, please let me know lol. I wanna buy it back XD. I’m now on the hunt for a pop series 5 one in a 10 for the art cause I don’t have this guy anymore lol. I’m not terribly disappointed about the other cards because they are all replaceable unlike this guy.

TLDR: PWCC sent my cards to the wrong guy. Guy ghosted PWCC so I lost the cards. PWCC made it right and paid me for the lost cards. GIB CHARMANDER BACK PLZ.

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Glad they were able to at least pay you the value of what they are.

Glad to hear it worked out! I imagine if that card comes up on eBay you’ll get quite a few calls :rofl:

This was tough to read. I’m glad the situation was resolved for you. I can only hope that these are teething issues and not something we’ll be seeing more of in future.

F the dude that ghosted them

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So moral of the story is avoid PWCC Vault.

Hmmmm i’m not so sure about that personally. I will still be using their services. If anything, I’m confident going forward with their product. If they fuck up, they make it right so I don’t have to worry too much anymore.

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For every story like this, there are a hundred others where people suffer a collection loss with no recourse. No matter what you do with your cards, there will be a risk associated with storing and transporting. In this case, something bad happened that caused by a PWCC employee but OP was fully compensated. Risk is guaranteed regardless of what you do, compensation is not. If anything, this just gives me more confidence about having cards there.

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Every business makes terrible mistakes that increase in frequency relative to scale. It’s how they resolve it that matters whether to keep using them. Glad they made it right as best they could.

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I’m assuming he pulled his cards from the vault before they realized what they had done?

I would have guessed they would have used his vault cards as leverage to get what he was erroneously sent back. Probably just not worth for such a small amount of money and it’d just magnify the bad situation. I’m not sure how all that would work legally speaking either, but theoretically they’ve got some leverage against vault users. I know they will claim your items if you use their leveraged services like advances or loans and fail to pay back.

As pfm said mistakes happen and PWCC did all that could reasonably be expected. Maybe just rounding the 7k up to 10k would have been a cheap way to earn back some extra goodwill for their massive error, but again they made OP whole for the loss.

Mistakes will happen when operating at a large scale. I had an issue with their “shipping” department as well. They submitted the items I won in an auction to my vault when my ebay shipping address for that purchase was for my home. Took about a week to resolve and get my cards, but it was resolved.

Thanks for sharing your experience, very interesting.

Not only this, but you also rarely here about the thousands of people who use PWCC Vault and have never had an issue. Mistakes receive attention because they are deviations from the norm. This makes the successful, or “normal,” experiences of many invisible.

Overall, I am happy that PWCC owned up to their mistake and I think it reinforces that they are a customer oriented company.

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Wow I am glad they made it right, I’m sure you would rather have the cards over the money it sounds like but at least you are not totally out of them.

I am going to write down this cert number and keep a look out for that Charmander, such bull shit this guy is just going to pocket your cards. We must find it!!

I appreciate that! Yes I think it sucks but I also can’t blame the guy lol. Again, no witch hunting please!!! Hahaha. Just if you see it, ping me hahaha

Thanks for Sharing your Odyssey
Getting the fair Price is at least something but loosing such unique cards will take Time to get them again =(
If you would find by any chance the guy who took it, do you have the law behind you to get them back?
You change something in your Future Pwcc-Vault Actions , or just see it as a human failure and go on since there is no 100% Garantie for any Case?

No law helping me. It’s totally his property. Just a nice please if I find it hahaha. I’m totally willing to rebuy it too since I got money back from PWCC. Nope, no change. Just human error and that happens.

What are the chances lighting strikes twice right?

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www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/inside-the-life-of-the-man-known-as-the-spark-ranger/2013/08/15/947cf2d8-ea40-11e2-8f22-de4bd2a2bd39_story.html

@sherbixtus I don’t think that link applies to your situation at all. That law is to stop what predatory companies used to (or some still) do in sending items to people along with their orders or as a part of “free trials” with fine print saying if you don’t ship it back by a certain date you keep it and get charged.

In your situation PWCC sent items they didn’t own to a 3rd party accidentally and I doubt there’s any legal argument the recipient could make that it is theirs. Obviously this doesn’t help your situation at all given the small value not being worth pursuing legally but if something like this went to a trial I don’t see where they determine you to not be the legal owner. PWCC didn’t even own it so shipping it to the wrong recipient doesn’t just legally make it theirs.

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