Question About Vcoins

I think a $12 coin for a business would be too cheap to handle. Buying, describing, picking up, wrapping and sending it out would cost about $12 on overhead costs. So it might have been a mistake somehow, or some computer mixup. Before jumping on them, let them speak up first.

 

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In October 2020, I received a notification that a coin I was watching on ebay, listed for 100 EUR+, is reduced by 99%. Within seconds, I purchased it, but did not pay, and sent a message to the seller asking if he made an error or wanted to gift the coin. He responded that he made a mistake, thanked me, and cancelled the transaction.

One cannot be angry if not getting a 50 EUR coin for 1 EUR in this case.

I would have been mad also if the seller told me that he sold it meanwhile and relist it. It is not a matter of robbing the seller, but a matter of being fair. I am sure FF would understand if an error was made and explained as such, and if the seller was honest. Which is not the case here.

 

This is the seller who acted like I'd peed on his chips when I asked him about the provenance of an item I purchased from him. And claimed the coin was something other than a coin so I got stuck with 20% duty plus £8 instead of the 5% it's supposed to be.

Honestly, until VCoins gets a rating and review system, it's going to continue being as patchy as it is. I've said this before, but when I buy almost anything else online, I get a certain level of basic service and courtesy. In the five or six purchases I've made on VCoins, I have rarely got a dispatch notification, timely response to an enquiry longer than two words, and in one case I was lied to blatantly regarding when the item was sent out.

 

First I read your post and thought, well, that does happen sometimes. Not so long ago, I replied quickly on a new listing by a seller, received a message that the order was placed succesful, but it appeared someone was just a second quicker. The seller apologized, and offered a discount on my next order. It can happen of course, and the seller was a real gentlement.

Then I read your edit:

This is really eeeh... strange! An honest mistake or not, depending on how the seller reacts to you request, you can always chose to shop elsewhere. However, see my note below.

Unfortunately, not all sellers are gentlemen (or gentlewomen). Even the 'bigger companies' refuse to reply to inquiries on e.g. provenance. It occurs frequently, and is widespread, so it's useless to then shop somewhere else, because then there hardly any sellers left! Perhaps it's because I'm not a big spender? Or is it too busy at shops?

 

This is not important here. The seller can choose not to handle any coin under a certain price and many fine gentlemen use this business model. However when they advertise an item for a certain price whether as a loss leader or in error they should be expected to go through with the sale. Typographical errors can be corrected but 'I should have asked more' after the sale should not. When they accept the payment and then decide they can do better they show contempt for not only that buyer but for fair business practices as a whole and need to be dealt with by those who have the overall respect for the hobby in mind.

This is quite true but considering the amount in question is $7 rather than a misplaced decimal point the correct answer is to honor your mistake and learn to be more careful next time. This reminds me of eBay sellers who list coins for a $1 start to draw bids and then complain when no one wants the thing for $100. It was their idea to be ridiculous. Sorry it did not work out.

When VCoins was new, I thought it was the greatest thing to happen to the hobby. Dealers were vetted and people that did not belong were not allowed to be VCoins dealers. Since then the name has been sold and the management changed more than once. In the 'middle period' I had a friend who was a VCoins dealer who received notes from management instructing the delisting of fake coins that were offered in ignorance. While this dealer really did not measure up to original standards (due to lack of education but not for lack of honesty), the system then was making an effort to maintain standards. Later, through a series of management changes, it seemed that anything was acceptable. Today, I rarely look at VCoins and do not consider that label of any value to me. Each seller is good or bad on their own merits just like it is with eBay. I do not hold being a VCoins seller against an unknown member but I no longer assume that a new, unknown, member is someone to be trusted either to know more than I do or trusted not to be selling altered, misidentified or fake coins. I do not know the legal considerations involved in policing the activities and abilities of member dealers so it might not be possible to follow the original model. All I know is that I miss the 1998, original, version.

Disclaimer: I have not kept up with any changes that have been made recently that may have improved the label in recent years. When trust is lost, it takes a long time to be regained to the point that one wants to visit regularly and assume all the sellers are people with whom we want to do business. The idea of rating and review might help but I doubt it would be any better than the eBay ratings unless it were policed severely by management.

 

I understand overhead and all that.
But the part that chaps me is the fact that he told me "it was already sold" when he refunded my purchase and then relisted the same coin for a higher price.

I understand that mistakes are made. I don't think this was handled properly though.

As I see it, it is one of 2 things:
1) A mistake in the price was made. There are 2 remedies to this: cancel the sale, apologize for the mistake or sell the coin for the price it was listed at.
2) Seller decided that they didn't want to sell it at the lower price, cancelled the sale and then lied about it already being sold only to relist it at a higher price. That is unethical in my book.

Could there be a 3rd 4th or 5th scenario? Everything is possible.

 

The same thing happened to me, @furryfrog02 , with a VCOINS dealer who I’ve purchased from many times. It was very disappointing—I was informed by the dealer that a person purchased the coin on the dealer’s regular website, and he hadn’t had time to refresh his VCOINS site yet.

 

Part of this problem is caused by computers or, rather, the lack of skill of people using them. In the 'old days' we saw a listing on a paper mailing and either made a phone call or sent a letter ordering the coin. Often, we were not the first and received our payment back in the mail or were told on the phone that we lost. Today we get a note generated by the system accepting our payment and confirming the purchase often with a 'thank you' note for making the purchase. The computer does not know that there is no longer a coin to be sold and has been programmed to give instant service. This can be a real problem back in the old days (last year) when dealers took coins to shows leaving their computer back home accepting orders for coins sold at the show. No one seems to have programmed their system to say 'sale pending' so all the buyer knows is his Paypal/credit card has been billed. When once we waited a week to see if our attempt to purchase was successful or spent the money on long distance (International, even) phone calls back when those things cost money to be sure. Even then slip ups happened when a secretary told us to send a check but the boss never told her that he sold the coin so she should not. Today it is fashionable to list a coin for sale in several different ways and risk selling the same coin several times. Some dealers do a better job than others keeping up with the business end.

As a customer, we are expected to understand that the dealer is too busy for us and his time is more valuable than ours and he is too cheap to hire a business manager who has time. This may be true but dealers who refresh their VCoins site once a month, open their email once a week and set up their computers to accept all payments in a split second tend to find their way onto my 'naughty list'.

All this is the new way of business versus our thinking in the old way and we have to understand the occasional problem. However when the coin was reoffered at a higher price the whole thing takes on a new 'odor'. I can not help wondering if someone bought the coin and returned it so the seller decided that if two people wanted it, he must not be charging enough. Every time you make a purchase you are endorsing the business practices of the seller. If you patronize people who are 'too busy' you have the option of doing what little you can do to make them less busy. The loss of your business, my business and that of all the people on Coin Talk will mean nothing to sellers whose business model is aimed at new rather than repeat, more knowledgeable, customers.

 

I really don't know why this occurred and I'm not going to try to make excuses for it. This seller lives near me and I've known him for years, and it just doesn't sound like anything he would do intentionally.

I do think that everyone needs to understand there is a lot of pressure on the major ancients (and other coin type) sellers these days. By far the largest source of income for many of the ancients dealers are shows such as FUN (here in Orlando) and the New York International. Both were cancelled this year and it's caused some real issues for folks who depend on sales from these shows. I'm retired so it's just more of a fun distraction for me, but I'm definitely the exception.

Again, no excuses, but sometimes we need to look at both sides ... especially these days.

 

Totally understand where you are coming from.
But it still doesn't pass the "smell test" when he relisted the coin for a higher price. It is still listed on his page as of right now.

 

It would be one thing if it had ended at "Sorry, but the coin has already sold". It's quite another thing that the additional step was taken to relist the coin, and at a different price. That's not a computer error, unless computers are now able to change prices on their own - that takes intentional action.

 

I take it you haven't heard yet from Time Machine or from VCoins itself? The longer the silence from the dealer continues, the less willing I would be to accept any excuse that it was all some sort of terrible, inadvertent mistake. (Although I'd be curious to hear how relisting at a higher price the very same coin he told you was sold could have been inadvertent!)

As far as VCoins itself is concerned, I would never make any sort of blanket condemnation of them. After all, out of the 17 dealers from whom I purchased three or more coins in 2020, listed in another thread, 13 of them are on VCoins, and I've never had any issues with any of them. (Of those 13, there are two whose coins I usually purchase elsewhere: I buy from Marc Breitsprecher at his website -- it costs about $10 or $15 less per coin, and I trust him to refund any coin that hypothetically turns out not to be authentic, even without the VCoins guarantee -- and I've bought just as often from Kirk Davis through his old-fashioned mail catalog as from his VCoins site, which has fewer coins. By the way, as soon as I buy from Marc at his website, the coin shows up as "sold" on VCoins. So I assume there must be a way of coordinating things so that happens automatically.)

However, I would never assume that just because a dealer is on VCoins his or her coins are necessarily authentic. Nor would I expect VCoins to proactively police the authenticity of the tens of thousands of coins on sale through that platform at any given time. (After all, most of us are familiar with the two ancient coin dealers on VCoins -- see the old "A to Z" thread -- who are rather notorious not for selling fakes, but for selling genuine coins to which they've applied artificial "desert patina" and other kinds of artificial toning, such as the alarming blue tone often applied to silver coins by one of them.) The important things to me are (1) the incredible convenience of having so many ancient coin dealers all on one platform, with their coins collectively searchable; and (2) the VCoins-imposed money back guarantee if a coin does turn out to be fake. Including a fourree.

 

To answer your question @DonnaML , no I have not heard from either of them. Vcoins did say that the response would be within 2 business days. The seller though, no response.

 

I keep on saying there is no end to the decadence but I have heard only disagreeing voices so far.

For reference, from the Terms of Use:

The Websites will not be responsible for, and has no control concerning the availability, quality, safety or legality of the items or services listed or advertised on our sites

AND

shall not be listed concurrently for sale on a website other than the Websites

 

Obviously they don't enforce the second one.

 

That would make it better in one sense but I fear that it would cause another problem. At shows I hear people say, I got that but I did not bring it today. I generally write that off as a lie unless it is followed by instructions like (see my website). I fear a hardcore enforcement of a one sales method would cut back on what we see at shows or on other sites. This may be a can't win situation but there are some sellers that do delist sold coins rather quickly so a lot of the problem is just priorities.

 

Let me just go on record by saying that I love VCoins. My first VCoins purchase was in 2005. My most recent was from this morning. I had a fallow period when I didn’t do much collecting for about 10 years, and some of you buy more coins in a month than I do in a year. But still, some 65 coins, and just a few mishaps. A Beast coin got lost in the mail and was fully refunded. A Julius Caesar denarius fake from a Spanish dealer that was fully refunded. I did make two problematic purchases from The Time Machine. In one case the wrong artifact was sent, while the one I really wanted ended up being “not available”; and in the other case, an artifact that I purchased via VCoins interface had been “already sold.” So it seems that particular dealer may have some inventory control problems. But as the great American philosopher Donny Osmond once said, “One bad apple don’t spoil a whole bunch of girls.”

So many other transactions have gone off perfectly. This morning I made my first purchase from Roy’s Coins. He just sent me an email (independent of the auto-generated VCoins email) with my USPS tracking info. I often get same-day service from people like Victor Clark, even on weekends when I don’t expect it.

For the novice collector wary of eBay and intimated by the auction process, VCoins provides a valuable service. Besides MAShops, it seems the best alternative to find reliable dealers, especially for U.S. collectors.

I don’t think @furryfrog02 was impugning VCoins by airing his justifiable frustration. I do regret that not all dealers are uniformly conscientious in their business practices. Perhaps there needs to be repercussions (suspension from VCoins) for repeat offenders. I just wanted to share my experience.

 

I've purchased maybe 20 coins from vcoins and so far have not had a problem with any of the dealers. On m-a shops which I also frequent the worst thing that happened was that the dealer was on vacation when the sale was made (August) even though I got a purchase confirmation saying that the order would be shipped post-haste, but it actually took about three weeks before the coin was shipped and I got a confirmation with a tracking number.

 

Roy is a good dealer, expensive but good. He's worked with me over the years with layaways for some of my more expensive coins.

 

For the record, I really do like vcoins. If it weren't for them, FFIVN and I would have a lot less access to decent coins at prices that are affordable for us.

When I started this thread I was more curious about the potential issue between a sale being made on a different site and then still being for sale on their vcoins store.

Where it took a hard left turn was when I noticed that the seller had relisted the coin I purchased but for a higher price. That isn't on vcoins though, I don't think.

They have their code of ethics and, if it turns out that the seller DID relist the coin I purchased, I hope that there is some sort of repercussion for the seller. Though, I know I am small potatoes to what that store probably generates in revenue for vcoins so I don't expect much, if anything, to happen if that is the case.