The absolute worst customer service and owner experience I've ever had, hands down! Since the pandemic, I've gotten back into comics and this was one of the spots I choose to invest in, but from the start, I always felt like a bottom rung customer, as books I would ask for I would always be told oh that's going to one of our special guys. Overall Larry and Funko are good guys, but they don't have the strongest customer service skills and often come off as cold and blunt. I recently closed my pull list and would not recommend any business to this store after a series of experiences, mind you I was doing about $150 a week in comics with this store and buying expensive books off their wall.
Examples of my horrible experience:
- I picked up a book off their discount rack, mind you everything on the rack was $25-$40 but this item had lost its tag. Well, Larry told me this book has gone up in price so he was going to let the owner reprice it and would get back to me. I don't feel businesses should be repricing books because your customer brought it up for purchase, absolutely go through and update your prices as often as you want, but clearance racks and repricing at the register is a big no-no in my opinion. Took them 2-3 weeks and was the worst experience.
- I was excited to get in on a BRZRKR #1 signed by Keanu R., I signed up for a payment plan and was told it would be roughly 1400-1500 for the (9.6 or 9.8) I understood there were no guarantees with grading, but still I wasn't told how he would select the people who got 9.8s. Either way, 2-3 months pass and I'm about 900.00 into my payment plans and I ask for updates, to which I was told, yeah we got grades back, you are getting a 9.6, but it's going to cost you more money because you didn't sign up via Facebook. I said you never told me about anything about being on Facebook as I'm not a member and don't use the app. He then proceed to tell me it would be 400 dollars more and they would secure the book for me, to which I told him just forget it and I grabbed a 900.00 Slab off the well. Incident #2!
- As I mentioned, I was doing about $150 a week in books with the store, mind you unlike other local shops (Tosche Station or Gateway/Flashback) they only offer a small discount for your pull items, nothing of the walls will be discounted. Those other shops offer rewards programs, 10, 20, 30% off, so when you spend your money and you can earn big savings, meanwhile you get nothing at Painted Vision, yet their books are marked up for retail so it's a no-win situation. But the real issue I had was it takes months to modify your pull list, books I didn't even order that the shop workers would put on my pull list as a suggestion I couldn't even stop buying because they said I took one of the copies last month when they slipped it in, I needed to take the next once since they preordered it for me. So for several months, I would argue to have books removed from my pull list, but they had no clear record as to what was on my pull list when I asked. Extremely frustrating.
- Recently, I've just been going in to grab a book I want, with no pull list discount, but the final straw came on 6 March 2022, when a book that had been sitting on their racks for 5 months (Back Issues), High Republic #10, I went in and grab 4 or 5 copies along with 1 or 2 other books. The regular cashier Funky had no issues selling me the books and was just finished with totaling up when the owners, (mind you I've never met this gentleman) walks up and didn't even introduce himself and proceeded to halt my purchase. This guy had literally just walked in the store and said hold up we have a new policy we don't sell more than one book to a customer off the rack. I said, but I've shopped here numerous times and that just isn't true, he proceeded to say, well new Wednesday books are the policy, to which I said this book had been here for 6 weeks or longer. Well, his employee "Funky" just turned his head away as he could see this owner was about to be a real piece of work to me. He opened his phone and looked up the books on eBay and said to me in a nasty tone... you can have one book, I said nope, I won't have any of your books. Hunting comics in back issues is a pleasure, I will not be bullied by any shop only who wants me to do the work for them and then they want to reprice a book in my hands that was in old books for 5-6 months. No sir!
For the casual reader, don't spend your money here, they are overpriced and have poor customer service.
For the hardcore collectors, investors, and spec hunters, avoid at all cost, if I spend thousands of dollars with you, I deserve to be treated like a VIP customer, not berated for grabbing old books and having you come up with on the fly policies. To Noran... You rock bro! I've never had a bad experience with that guy and he get the job done, sucks you are a part of what I see is an extremely bad business. read more