How about you just go on up to Oregon and teach them then… you seem to have all the solutions… @RipCityGamer, ya’ll hiring a quality control person? Here’s your guy… 
Or maybe a business that sells comics learns how to properly ship them and have training in place to insure it’s done properly? There’s a quick fix right there. I can almost guarantee that those books once they are looked over are going to have all sorts of corner impact creases and blunted corners. Guaranteed. You can’t ship that many books together in one box regardless of how it’s done.
I’m interested to hear what other damage was found on @AngryMrBungle books and others. I know that most corner impact creases are much more noticeable on the back cover. I understand there’s no avoiding damage in some cases. A rough postal employee or even bad driving among many other things. It’s not that that we’re seeing being posted on here. It’s just bad packaging for the most part which is completely under there control.
After my house is paid off next year I’m selling and moving to a cannabis legal state preferably out west. I’ll get my resume ready for TFAW.
I agree with alot of Todds frustration. My last 4 orders and over 300 books had at least 40 damaged books. While customer service was fine, you need to provide pics of all books and if they are no satisfied with the pics you need to provide more pics, its a lot of work. I got refunds for the 40 books but I don’t want to spend all my time taking pics and dealing with customer service. Brendon has been awesome in taking feedback, but it doesn’t seem things have improved. great example is my last order which was just thrown in a box no wrapping no protection, worst than before changes were made. i didn’t bother contacting customer service because I am soon tired of working so hard for decent books.
however tfaw has the best website interface and best incentive price.
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This concerns ALL comic shops: They arent in the business to sell books so customers can turn around and get them graded at 9.8s. If you are butt hurt because the books you ordered arent in the condition YOU prefered, thats on you, not retailers. Retailers sell books, not grades. The ONLY retailer Iv’e seen that sells books at a certain grade is MyComicShop.
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This topic seems to have kind of gone of the rails here on TFAW, but as a store owner, I certainly appreciate that @RipCityGamer genuinely does seem to care and want to improve how their shipping is done.
I do have two tips that I would recommend for any store trying to improve their shipping.
#1. I simply call it the “shake test”. This is just what it sounds like, shake the box and see if you can hear or feel any movement. Every box we ship out has to pass the shake test or it has to be re-packed. While box damages from rough handling cannot always be avoided, damage to movement can.
#2. To make a stack of books, we start with the first comic on the table face up and alternate the spine for EVERY comic in the stack. When we get to half of the books in the stack, we flip the next book board side up (while still alternating spines) and continue the rest of the stack. This way both sides of the stack is always boards out. If that stack is bigger than around 20, make multiple stacks.
I am definitely not claiming I know best and I know we are WAY smaller than TFAW and a lot of other shops out there, but I have used these 2 methods since day one and we have a .001 Damage report to shipment rate.
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I’m so tired of explaining the process…
Yes, one could spend the time to truly secure every package. But I’m willing to bet, with the amount of orders a huge retailer like TFAW (and this goes for others, Midtown, Grahams, etc), spending that much time on each package would create such a huge backlog of orders.
It would also eat into hourly costs that eat into revenue and profit. We would see higher prices for comics and shipping handed off to us, the consumers.
I’ve gotten my fair share of damaged books from just about every major retailer. Some I still do business with while others I never looked back.
But for some of these smaller retailers who do superb packaging, bravo, I applaud them. As they grow with more and more orders, you’ll find them cutting corners to get packages out in a timely manner or raise their prices (due to costs, hiring more help, etc). We see huge delays now with shops like Frankies and Unknown, they’re getting too big for their britches and not addressing the turn around time. So now your customers suffer cause they’re waiting weeks or months for their paid product. Nobody cares how perfect the book arrives and how much time was spent on the secure packing when it took them 4 months to ship it.
It all comes down to risk vs cost vs loss, etc. If I can ship out a thousand orders each week cause my average reported damages are only 5%, I change nothing. I accept the loss, write it off. Now I see that % go up, I change my process but it comes with a cost, I spend more time packing books a different way, how do I get the same amount of orders out in the same time frame? I have to hire someone new cause now I’m spending more time on each package. Oh, I need to order more supplies now to make my improvement on packaging, okay, well crap… Now I can’t pay my extra employee due to the increased costs of supplies, guess I have to raise my prices on shipping or raise the price of my products… that sucks, now I’m losing business now cause everyone is complaining my 20% discount is only 15%… Gee, what do to, what to do…
So many factors. Yes, saying… oh, just train people so they all do it right each and every time sounds great on paper but isn’t reality either. Fast food joints teach people to not use the burger patty they dropped on the floor but they likely still use it anyways (you’re damn right I picked that frozen patty up to throw on the grill). They probably tell people to wash their hands every time they go to the bathroom yet I doubt that happens. I’m willing to bet they tell employees to not spit in someones burger but it happens (yes, I know, I worked fast food and saw it first hand)…
I try to take the logical and realistic approach to all things considered. I wish the world was filled with perfection but that’s living in a dream world. What you think is an easy task is not as easy as you think.
Bottom line, I try to take the pragmatic approach, give them the benefit of the doubt. If I have issues, I take it up with their customer service. Yes, we have this long running thread topic to report things from online comic shops so of course it’s going to be filled with nothing but all the negative crap that happens and just the seldom positive praise for a shop. People like to focus on the negative and drama…
But I understand why these bigger retailers take the chance on their packaging. They’re selling low dollar paper product and need to sell in quantity to make a profit. Every single penny counts. I’ve had horrible experiences with them all when it comes to damaged books.
You wanna know why I go back to TFAW as my primary retailer online? It’s because out of all of them when I did have to contact customer service, they take care of me every damn time. Yes, the best customer service is the one you never contact but that’s not reality, it’s gonna happen and they’re the only major one from all the bigger retailers who treated me with respect, respected me as a customer and made the overall experience more pleasant despite my books arriving damaged, etc.
After reading your posts in this thread…i think this may be a good idea…for your blood pressure.
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Yup, if you are super picky about overall condition, go buy your books at your local shop so you can sort through the stacks there to pick out the book that meets your grading needs.
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You’re really missing the point. Completely. Another member just mentioned their books were thrown into a box with nothing else whatsoever. The packaging should be the same across the board. You shouldn’t get one shipped as mentioned above and the other bulletproof. It’s the lack of consistency. I could give a shit what there costs are. There’s no excuse and you just keep making them.
Yup, as a person who just sells a handful of books as an individual, that’s key to protecting books, no movement. This is why painter tape works wonders… it holds for the most part and doesn’t damage the bags trying to peel off.
I do the same thing but I limit to 10 books per stack before a piece of cardboard is placed in the stack.
But when I’ve shipped 20+ books, I spend 10-20 minutes packing it securely. My time is also free and infinite. If I was working a large retailer where I had to ship 100x the amount of orders in my shift, one has to realize, you can’t spend 30 minutes on each package… You have to cut corners and take chances… all part of the risk section of running a business that requires hands on packing from paid employees.
Imagine if Amazon fulfilled comics… their robots would just toss the books in a big box, throw 2 small air pillows in it with the rest of the box 80% empty and tape it up, ship it off…
You missed my point, inconsistency happens. They know who fulfills orders so yeah, one worker got in a rush and did it wrong or just didn’t give a fsck that day. It’s gonna happen. Hopefully they address it with that employee… You really think all those teenagers wash their hands at fast food joints after a restroom break? Yeah, it happens… like I said, reality happens… you’re living in a dream world where consistency is going to occur between every employee (even if they’re trained all to do it a certain way)…
When a seller of any kind whether big or small sells something they have the condition listed. That’s what I’m paying for. If that book doesn’t meet that grade there’s nothing wrong with complaining and returning. You didn’t get what you paid for and have all the rights to do so.
I don’t ever recall seeing any grades listed on any TFAW books. But in their HELP section, it defines all new books as in VF condition or better.
I wasn’t specifically speaking of TFAW. Just when you buy a preorder book they generally have a minimum grade for them. So in that case if you’re not getting what you paid for then it’s not whiny to return or complain.
Also as far as the inconsistencies with TFAW and that it’s inevitable. I ordered from midtown for at least a decade for all my previews orders. All of my packages came the exact same way. Bagged and boarded books in a Midtown paper bag, which was wrapped with the big bubble wrap inside a box. Every single order for over a decade was packaged the exact same way. Actually that’s a lie. My first ever order came in one of those rigid mailers like TFAW uses for low dollar or small orders. I complained because the book was damaged and requested box shipping. They accommodated me and I never had any real issues with them.
Same thing with My Comic Shop. A different way of packaging but always my books arrived packaged the exact same way. So in my experiences it’s always been consistent with other retailers.
I’ve had packages different from Midtown… they’re only consistent with the midtown brown paper bag from my experience and most of the time, when there was damages, it was because the books just slid around and the bag ended up trashed in the corners, etc.
As I already mentioned earlier, that is NOT the official guidelines and I took order numbers from multiple people who reported that problem so that our warehouse lead could talk to whomever was packing that way. We’ve hired 7 new people in the last month, and with how busy the warehouse has been plus having to stay distant there hasn’t been as much time for managers to shadow new employees for a few days and make sure they follow training correctly. For the most part, they’ve been fine. Every now and then, someone forgets or cuts corners without realizing that what they’re doing is wrong for reasons other than because it’s policy.
The new changees we’ve been working on should all start rolling out with last weeks/this weeks shipments. Before we were testing them on some orders with new materials, but to get the amount we needed and to make sure that they weren’t making damages worse they needed to be rolled out over a few weeks.
So to just quickly respond to a few things on here…
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The last few shipments people got with nothing being wrapped are against our internal guidelines. The manager has talked to the person who packed it.
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Things aren’t just thrown in a box then out the door. They also pass shake tests. We’re constantly looking at better packing materials and are looking into alternate eco friendly peanuts (the ones we already use are eco friendly but aren’t quite as rigid as we want). The main problem comes from when things start to get heavy. Mailers and package delivery drivers don’t know or care what’s inside, they’ll pick up and throw, drop, or kick things that are heavy to move them.
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Despite this topic seeming to turn into a support group, our rate for damages has gone DOWN this year vs previous years. We have an under 1% damage report rate on all of the shipments that go out, and roughly 1/3 of those reports are peoeple reporting damaged packaging but the contents inside are fine once opened. We have the least reports of damages for the envelopes, which we use the most often since a large majority of our customers only order 1 or 2 comics as readers.
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Yes we do charge for bags and boards. But we also have better discounts than a lot of sites, don’t raise prices on things, and subsidize shipping costs (especeially on orders of 5 comics or less) so that people who want to get comics to read can get them shipped without having to pay a crazy amount. Not everyone is a collector, and keeping the prices as cheap as possible for all customers while letting people who WANT extra things like bags and boards is the best solution.
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I have had many recent orders that came in from tfaw and haven’t had any issues as of late. Yes. There were a couple a few months back.
As for midtown I have had some with bubble wrap and some without. There are actually two things consistent, the brown paper bag and the bags are never sealed which has caused some of my books slide around and get damaged.
While tfaw requires pictures for refunds, midtown has had me ship books back at my expense for a refund. This really sucks because I am spending $3.54 to ship a book back for a $3.99 refund. So more times than not, not worth it. I will take pictures from every angle instead of shipping a book back.
Kyle has always told me to keep the books and do what I want with them… I usually end up selling them at a discount if what a NM copy sells for. So I get my money back and make money (sorry @RipCityGamer) but that’s a win win for me.
Want to give a hearty shout out to a couple of retailers, who are consistently good. I purchase from the UK and want to give kudos to:
Sad Lemon Consistently high quality books - better than any other store I have used in terms of the ongoing NM+ condition of book after book. Simon is a good (but super-busy guy) and his packaging of orders large and small is top notch.
MCS Only tend to use them for occasional graded books, but have to say my experience has been very good. Decent shipping prices, timely arrivals and books exactly as described.
Pleasure doing business with both over the past few years.
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So let me just say a few things as well…
My books weren’t ruined. I may have overstated things in my post. It’s more of a higher potential for damage with how they are being shipped to me. How they arrived is more of a major annoyance than anything. I have never received books which were heavily curved in the boards like I have from Tfaw. It has a higher potential to cause spine ticks. While I have not received damaged books from Tfaw the curved boards is not something I want to deal with every week and I don’t think it is something I should have to deal with in the first place.
I just come in here to post what I received and if it was good or bad or ok or great or awful or amazing and then I am done. There is no need to keep harping on it repeatedly. I say my piece and move on. People can have their opinions about what I(or anyone) posts in here and think I am overreacting or underreacting and that’s ok. We will all shop where we want based on our own experiences. The most important thing really when discussing Tfaw is that there is someone in here from tfaw listening and trying to make changes and I appreciate that. We should all appreciate that.
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How long do TFAW pre-orders stay in “processing”? My order has a date of 11/24 (the date the books were released, well the day before anyway) and it’s still in processing 10 days later. I’ve never done a pre-order with them so I don’t know if this is normal. I should say I’m in no rush to get these, they’re variant covers of books I already own, but I really want these covers for my collection!