I don't know If I will be allowed to post here on the boards...but I guess most of us might learn a lesson or two from this experience.

This would probably get the ire of many board members here who are frequent CELGA users but I just have to get this out of my chest....

I was bidding today for 2 Cronic Figures on YJA. This is officially my first time to use CELGA for bidding. To anyone who is familiar with CELGA, they would ask you for your maximum bid for a particular figure---in my case, I said 35,000 yen for each fig. So its 70k total. They would require you to place an initial deposit of 50% of your maximum bid for both items. So I sent 35k in USD to them, so they said its cool.

On the first fig, I clearly lost the item to a bidder because it was way higher than my maximum bid on the first. On the second item, which I alloted a 35k yen maximum bid---CELGA DID NOT PLACE A SINGLE BID AND ALLOWED THE LEADING BID TO END AT 17,600 YEN. IF CELGA PLACED MY BID of 35,000 yen, I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN THIS FIGURE---BUT NO....HERE IS THE RESPONSE I GOT FROM CELGA:

Hello,
I am deeply, deeply sorry... I do not know what
happened. I remeber both of these auctions. I am not
sure why the bid didn't come up with the right amount.
I will look into it and see if I can find out.
Please allow me to offer you discounted markup on your
next item (just forward this email to
billing@celga.com) and they'll apply it for you.
Would you like a refund of your deposit now?
Thank you

AND THE SECOND ONE...

I am very very sorry. I'll forward this to billing
right away.
It appears that one of the new trainees made a mistake
with registering the max bid. ;_; I have given them a
lecture about following proper procedure.
I am so very sorry.

ERROR BY A "TRAINEE"???WTF!!!!

Usually, I let something like this pass...But please tell me what to do?And what to think? I am so frustrated right now as a collector......

Do I charge it to experience and pretend that nothing wrong happened to me here? Do I forgive and forget? Any suggestions???

not much you can do i guess..they explained what happened and you just have to hope it doesn't happen again

yup, i guess its the logical thing to do...but i really thought since CELGA has been there for awhile, it would be run by PROFESSIONALS who will not let something like this happen.

and , yeah, trainees making errors??? this is so frustrating on my part man...

Sorry to hear Jay.
Mistakes happen.
And don't go too crazy on YJA.

i think it is true that they are having changes (as someone new answered one of my emails). my last bill, I won 4 auctions and they billed me for 5 (they charged me twice for one auction)... so my bill was about $280 more than it should have been and i had to ask for a charge back. i wasn't very happy about that.

thanks Joe...I know i cant do anything about this but I guess atleast someone should learn about this. can you imagine waiting for days for the auctio to end only to find out that a "trainee" messed up your chance of scoring! great man, really...

i haven't even tried celga yet..I think there's too much good stuff on yja for my own good....I stay broke enough already...I'll wait untill I win the lottery

I wondered how the hell that figure ended so low. max got a great deal. I totally spaced this auction or I would have bid also.

sorry to hear this jay, what can you do? It sounds like they are deeply sorry and hopefully never do it again. I guess its better the intern bid one zero less than one zero more, you could have ended up paying $3,500US for your figure j/k

haha, I couldnt do anything I know, but i'm just throwing this out here for additional overview of how celga operates. i hope they improve on this aspect for many collectors are depending on them. and when they charge that fee, the collector would atleast feel they are taken good cared of atleast.

This has happened to me twice. A MIB Forest Secreter was one of them. That one really hurt, cause it went for way less than I was willing to pay. To rectify the situation they deducted all of their fee's from one of my shipment's which was like $60.00. My recommendation is to go Gold & place your own bid's. It truly is easy when you get the hang of it, plus they aren't charging a sign up fee right now. Although, they make a few mistakes Celga is very solid, & I wouldn't deal with any other third party after dealing with them for so long.

Haha, max was lucky, I too was going to bid and stuffed my account settings. Go me. Several peeps after those figs.

Jay,

forget that regular Celga account, you gotta go GOLD...

we've all been hosed by Celga, but I think they are still the best service out there.

Thanks K---I am going to try the Gold now. On a side note, I'm glad that a boardie got the item I missed..

Yeah I had some recent problems with my shipment being split into 2 just due to error, but they ended up sending me back the difference in shipping cost so that was cool.

I think we have to remember that Celga bids on EVERYTHING YJA has to offer... the sheer number of transactions they track and execute must be staggering. Toys, model kits, books, misc. crazy Japanese junk... I would imagine that they would need to employ a substantial number of people to be available 24 hours a day to get bids in.

employing substancial number of ABLE and PROFESSIONAL people. you can always stuff your office with a bunch of amateurs and the end result would be as disastrous.

yeah... well getting a workforce to bid on all the auctions is their problem, that's what they get paid to do (i would think they have a program to do their bidding.. just a guess). overall i'm content with their service and their packaging is excellent... but they will make a few mistakes here and there.

As long as there are trainees, noobs, & humans, there's gonna be errors...it just sucks when & where those errors happen sometimes. Hell I'm so broke I can't even spell Celga. May your next score be that much sweeter!

I think some people have mentioned issues with celga in the past but my experiences overall have been really good. I know they get busy and a lot of last minute emails for bids which isn't an excuse but to me it's understandable. Sorry to hear about your experience though.

If you sent me 35k in USD i'd say it was cool too.

i had a weird one a few weeks ago (not celga's fault) - i bid on a couple walder henshins, but saw that i was outbid eventually by a non-gold celga.

so i paid no more attention to them, and bid on a few more things.

well, i get an invoice from celga for the henshins about a week later. i was so confused and swore i didn't win them.... even though the auction now said i had

what happened is that the seller evidently cancelled the celga bid because it was celga. so my second place bid on both items ended up being the winning bid. so i dropped way too much money at once AND i have 2 red walders now

anyway, if you just started using celga, you are going to have to continue using it for awhile before they will let you make a gold account... it's a trust thing. but if i were you, i would make one when you can...

i got hosed a few times where they didn't place bids.

and one time they forgot to include a figure in my shipment, because they said it was "so small that they overlooked it ". but didn't offer to ship it to me but said they would ship it with my next one.
oh well. i have been controlling myself on there anyway.

I can totally appreciate the frustration but gotta say ... the apology really does sound sincere, and there's no such thing as a perfect company where everything always goes correctly, no matter how generally professional and sharp the personnel are. You know how slick and perfect Apple Computer's public image is, for example? You should hear some of the stories from people who work there. Like, chaos and madness behind the shiny facade.

"Forgive and forget" probably is the healthiest attitude. Sorry man, you didn't deserve the loss, but there's nothing to be done about it.

Since Keigo reads this board anyways, you can pretty much kiss your bids and toys goodbye....lol....!!!











just kidding....

Keigo & Hyla have always been good to me, fast buy it nows, and bids in a timely maner. 2 years no issues.