Today’s Mail Bag letter comes from Sam and to see he’s a bit frustrated would be an understatement. His note to me via the contact page here on the site was one that I received in some vein from four other people: They are done buying from the Mint after this week’s fiasco around the Carson City and New Orleans Privy Mark Morgan Dollars.. I selected Sam’s email because it was the least…. colorful of the them.
I have absolutely had it. I’m done buying from the Mint for good. This bulls*** every time there is a major release of their site crashing is ridiculous. It is so disheartening and just not worth my frustration anymore. They can’t seem to get their site to work when a lot of people are on it which no business would ever survive. But the mint will just keep on going on because they are a monopoly. So they can just keep their coins.
Sam
Based on feedback from readers, Sam is hardly alone. I think a lot of people are really frustrated with the continuing issues with the United States Mint and its site. Further, I think Sam is 100% right: If another business did this every. single. time. a major release happened, they’d go under. Can you imagine this happening to TicketMaster?
While I think your approach Sam is admirable, the reality is there will be someone there to take your place and try to get whoever the coin in question happens to be at the time. But equally, if you frustration is this high mate, don’t put yourself through the grief!
An observation I have made this week is that the frustration with the Mint’s site seems to be at an all-time high. Many sites and individuals are expressing their frustration on sites like USCoinNews and social outlets such as Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter.
Ultimately the Mint has to fix the issues. Full stop. They have to change the backend systems they use to prevent legitimate buyers from getting locked out. Life is not fair, I get that. eCommerce is also not fair. I get that too. But when collectors start bypassing the source, that’s a problem. And plenty of people won’t bother trying to go through the secondary market for a couple of reasons. First, they are angry the dealers have the coins (again, life’s not fair but I get it) and second, they don’t want to pay a further premium for the coin. Buying these coins in the secondary market will easily pass the $100 mark in most cases.
Thanks for writing in Sam and thanks to the others who wrote in on the same subject. Let’s hope the Mint sorts their scene.
What can one say? They’ve had numerous complaints, and even sent a survey recently about what they are doing, yet nothing seems to change. PErsonally I gave it a shot, finally got a CC in the “buy bag” went to try for an O and was thrown out completely. Enough, I’d rather put that into a 1900-O/CC to get both as a “real” coin. I think that the problem may be that the people who are in charge and sell coins are not collectors so have no understanding of the psychology of their fundamental consumers. Perhaps they think this is no different than selling cars or maybe they only know about coin sales from the joke shows on TV. Clearly some changes are needed if the Mint’s marketing system is going to find its footing again.