Dear Acaeum, valued customers, long term business associates, and dare I say a few friends,
From what I understand there are several concerns in this thread:
1) Noble Knight Games service, grading, etc, has been basically accused of being terrible, lately.
2) We don't post actual pictures of expensive items.
3) We used a picture(s) we should not have.
I will address all of these issues as best I can:
1) I do care about every little thing that happens in regards to
NKG. Short of my daughter, it is my life's work, and what I go to bed thinking about, and wake up thinking about. The quality is never going to be perfect, especially since the business has grown "out of the basement" there are several people that handle things. However, Rick is still the exclusive
OOP grader, and barring that, not a whole lot has changed around here. I was on vacation over the last few weeks, my annual January vacation. I don't work 70 hours a week every week running
NKG anymore. NKG is more than a $ to me and always will be. I can promise you these things:
a) If we make a mistake (and this will happen from time to time), it will be fixed, to your satisfaction. I believe some people in this thread didn't even DO business with us (based on terminology and things they are saying which don't add up). We do get confused for T&T and other companies quite often. I don't mean to disregard anyone's legitimate issue but this whole thing feels like some sort of virtual monkey pile to me over resellers in general. I do work here every day and do see what happens and its good work I'm proud of
We get compliments daily. Nonetheless, you will get quality responses from anyone that works here and at least the record clearly shows that. We love the Acaeum (I should have created this myself back in the day) but in some ways it is a nightmare to keep up with, there are so many different printings and variances (which of course change all the time as new info is found) that it literally is VERY difficult to be accurate all the time. You will get a refund, a replacement or whatever you want if there is an issue. I've never been offered MONEY BACK when there is a problem from another company, yet I encourage my employees to GIVE money away (discounts, half priced items, different items at less price, whatever) when there is a problem, if they see fit. Who does that? Well I do, because I trust our customers. I've never said that before because I'm afraid someone will abuse it. However all that said, I do see what happens around here and I still do handle a good deal of the customer service and especially oversight of customer service and let me tell you, it's not as perfect as it could be (never can
IMO) but I'm pretty darn proud of us and anyone that knows me will you I'm anal retentive and picky so I daresay we do not suck
b) The amount of mistakes we make is small. There is approximately 1 mistake for every 100 items we ship. That's pretty awesome compared to other companies, and when you consider the industry we are in, expected to be experts on every gaming product ever made, various printings, conditions, editions, etc., even more impressive.
c) There are just some customers that expect such a high level of perfectionism that they may find consistent small issues. I had one customer that literally opened a brand new book and found a tiny wrinkle near the spine. I sent him another (could find nothing wrong with it). He found another tiny imperceptible issue. I was honest with him - I don't think its best for us to do business, I can't help you. Of course I hate to do that, but it shows that there is just a level of perfection required by some people that even
NKG cannot satiate. The bottom line is that by far most people have a positive experience with
NKG and if I don't think you will, I'll tell you. And if you are willing to be reasonable and work with us, I'll take the time to help the pickiest person out there.
2) We are a small operation. We are not big. We are not a faceless corporation. We are approximately 1/10th maybe even 1/20th the size of T&T, from what I have read. A long time ago I decided to stay small and manageable to continue to do business how I felt it should be done, despite the fact that I left literally millions (and millions) of dollars on the table doing that (yes some days I regret this
lol). If you want a real picture, ask us. If it's a cheapo item, we probably aren't going to take one, it takes more time than we have. You'd really sooner have us spend all our resources doing this? How many cool collections and items would be lost? We will describe this for you at any rate and answer any questions you have, frankly a picture isn't really worth 1000 words when we are talking about a book. Of course we have a camera. Pulling an item from our warehouse, taking a picture, putting the item back (which has to be recataloged per my requirements, otherwise it might be put back in the wrong place), emailing you the photo, etc., takes 15 minutes of time. That is expensive. If it's expensive item (over a couple hundred bucks), we'll get you one if you want one. Many pricey items DO have actual photos and these typically will be stated in the listing. You can always stop by our store too.
3) We use stock photos wherever possible. This is clearly stated on the webpage and the eBay page. It boggles my mind how many places I can put information and still have it be missed or ignored. EBay is new for us. No we don't list those items one at a time and go over them, that is not feasible. They are bulk uploaded from our webpage. The info on the page goes up there. The water mark is struck across every single picture on the page automatically via software (something implemented by my programmer years ago to stop people from linking to our pictures to create their own web stores and crashing our site). If a picture was taken inappropriately from a source it should not have been and we are notified it will be removed. Again, please don't think anyone here even has the time to try and pull anything over on anyone. We don't, we know someone will complain eventually (as sure as the day is long) which will just take more of our time to fix it. Time that could be used to do things for example like list for sale Monte Cooks personal gaming table which sits in our store criminally unadvertised
In summary, I hope that those of you who enjoy
NKG will continue using us for the long term and not listen to what I believe are false or misleading comments and I really do appreciate your business, but even more, having positive experiences with our customers is what drives me! I do really personally take every criticism and complaint (I know I shouldn't but it's my baby!). If you choose not to because you don't like us for whatever reason then I assume there is nothing I can do to change your mind then no hard feelings on this end. If there is something I can do to win your business I've been very amenable about those things (and
FYI have been told not many times over the years by the "other" guys) and will gladly listen. For those with issues or any concerns or complaints you can forward those at any time. Just please understand we can't change everything we do per every customers request although we do try where at all feasible. If you notice an error or questionable listing I would appreciate you emailing us so we can fix it.
Thank you for listening and allowing
NKG to continue to exist. Without you, our customers, your kind words, and faith in us I may have to get a job at a competitor, and I'd probably be fired for being too accomodating!
Aaron Leeder
Owner
Noble Knight Games
PS. Anyone that ever wants to email me personally about anything may do so at
nobleknightgames@aol.com That is only checked by me. However please note I only check that about 1x a week or two weeks as it's just a backup email. Please do not send anything other than obviously private communication to that email, normal business stuff should be sent to our normal email address please
