New Stamp Certification Service Or ???

A new stamp certification service has popped up on the radar screen; OPGS Online Philatelic Grading Service (opgs.doomby.com). I am trying to determine if this is legitimate new service or if this is just a marketing scheme. I am a bit suspicious due to several reasons.

1. They 'self-cert'. In other words they have ebay listings where they are selling stamps with their own certs. http://www.ebay.com/itm/OPGS-Cat-nu...em19f70d6d8c

2. When I go to their web site it touts being Comodo SSL secure on every page by the site has no SSL certificate for it.

3. They mention significant experience in the hobby but in no place do they mention any memberships in recognized organizations, experts names, or even a contact email address. (I have done a 'whois' lookup on their domain name and web hosting. I do not recognize the names at all but this does not mean that much.)

4. I'm concerned that the web site is being hosted with a free service. Would not a serious business like this be able to at least invest the first hundred bucks to get started?

5. They issue graded certs based ONLY upon an image that customers send them. While identifying a stamp using an image is one thing, how can any properly grade a stamp using only an image? Without the stamp in hand, and being dipped, how can they give it a quality examination? Could not a person simply doctor up a image, submit it, and get one of their certificates? Seems to me that they would then only be certifying that the person was good at PhotoShop manipulation and have nothing to do with a quality stamp.

I have contacted them and asked some of these questions but have not yet heard back from them. Does anyone know anything about these fellows or their qualifications? Is this a legitimate service of a marketing scheme? Has anyone sent anything to these folks for a cert?
Don

DON...Really.
They are garbage.
Just read the terminology on the cert about the watermark paper.
They tell nothing .....
Why would anyone deal with this???
These are ...as you state..."self certs"

http://www.ebay.com/itm/OPGS-Cat-nu...em19f70d9e40

Look at this...
Cert states #7....clearly perfed.

BEGINNER!!
KNOWS NOTHING!

This confirms it.

Well, another tip off is the fact that they cannot tell an imperf stamp from a perf stamp. A bit embarrassing for them as a new startup cert business.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/OPGS-Cat-nu...:AAQ:US:1123

But I thought it best to see if others have heard of these fellows. Everyone makes mistakes and I didn't want to flame anyone based solely on my opinion.
Don

Their proofreading leaves a lot to be desired.

Their certificates states,

This Certificate is printed on special watermarked and is valid without the watermark.

They have left an important word out, and is NOT valid without the watermark,

Pagoda

Their grammar is very unpolished for someone wanting to be taken seriously:


I don't think English is their native language.

I think you hit the nail on the head there.

And besides, who would use the Comic Sans font for making a professional cert?

The domain registration and web hosting is off-shore (France); the domain owner name appears to be English while the technical contact appears to be French. His ebay listings say they ship from USA. So I was thinking that the owner(s) may be in USA and the web site was done by someone in France. I didn't want to publish the domain owner name although anyone can look it up themselves with any of the 'whois' web sites for that domain.
Don

total bogus seller... they've ended their listings...

Not only have the listings been pulled but the entire web site has been removed. I never got a reply back from the fellow but I guess these actions speak louder than any answer he could have made.

Scary at best Don...

Robert