Quote Originally Posted by BigAl_83 View Post
@RGM81,

It is not as much about not being able to contact them about this because of a move. I can understand that contact will be difficult when moving.

It is about people buying a product. In this product you receive a card that is not actually in it (redemption). So instead of card manufacturing companies feeling bad about not delivering what they promised and trying to do everything possible to make their customers happy. They instead put short expiration dates on their redemption cards, they take longer than the max 8 months they promise to have the redemption fullfilled in, and when you get a replacement it is usually much lower in value or of a totally different player/team (most commonly with UD).

There should be no expiration date on redemptions to begin with, it is something i bought, i paid money to get those cards. It is not my problem they have to have a big warehouse to stash all those cards that have to be send out as part of redeemed redemptions. I have not asked to get a redemption card, they should realise that when putting those redemptions in products.

I can understand your frustration. I've had several long waits with redemption cards and one which ended with me being informed that the card (of my #2 PC player) was not going to be made - it is, unfortunately, something that is a part of our hobby. Having spoken with a few guys at the card companies via email and reading other statements, I know that they hate redemptions as much as we do. Imagine being a customer service rep that handles these sorts of things -- you as a customer only make a call once to get an update, they have to handle dozens of calls every single day where they have to report that the only update is that there is no update. It's not a fun thing for them to have to do. They don't take great pleasure in having to say, "Sorry, we still haven't received the cards/stickers back from the athlete"--far from it.

It's a double-edged sword having to deal with redemptions. They can either go with what they have when it's release date, and risk losing potential sales because Kobe or Shaq or LeBron (I'll keep it basketball specific LOL) didn't get the stuff back in time...or they can grit their teeth and print those horrible white cards that we all hate seeing and go with that, hoping that the players take the time to sign everything and return it in a timely fashion.

I know that there have been instances in which the cards never get signed and end up in a storage room, only to be discovered a year later and the player has already moved on to another team. If you're a collector of that player, and you have that card, you're not going to be receiving it. But how much of the blame do you attribute to the card company vis-a-vis the team agent who never compelled the player to sign them and the player who never took the time to sign them and return them to the agent?

As for expiration dates, they have to have those. It's required by law, and even if it wasn't, it's highly unreasonable to ask a manufacturer to maintain stock of an autograph five years after the product was released. With the way that manufacturers and licensing arrangements are always shifting, can we really expect a company that isn't licensed in 2011 to be holding on to cards from 2006 when they were licensed just waiting by the computer for someone to magically enter a code? I don't think that's appropriate.