Somebody Got A Good Deal

So you were the one that bought the stamp in the first place?

I never doubted the genuineness of the stamp but there are some collectors out there that aren't even remotely comforted by a PSE cert.

Unfortunately with good reason. PSE's decisions on some revenues lately have been very questionable. For example, refer to this recent post:

https://goscf.com/t/54643&SearchTerms=kelleher

If they can make this big of an error, how can you trust anything they put out?

Every person and organization makes mistakes from time to time, on both sides of the equation. Sometimes a fake is called genuine, sometimes it's the other way around.

Maybe take a more global approach to philately, in that, since the very beginning, everyone has been trying to figure out whether a certain stamp is an essay or an error, what used to be called perf. 10 is now perf. 9.75, were the 10 cent orange postage stamps actually printed on watermarked paper or not, and so on. It's all an on-going effort to answer questions, figure out discrepancies, and refine the reference works to be as accurate as possible.

I doubt that the PSE, the PF, or any other firm intentionally creates certificates for fraudulent stamps. If you eliminated an individual or an organization or a for-profit or not-for-profit entity because of an occasional error, you would soon have no one to send your stamps to.

Jim

I don't mind that mistakes are made; I mind that the mistakes are neither listed nor corrected. How does a consumer evaluate the accuracy of a certifying organization other than 'word of mouth'? If an organization is keeping records/database, why do they not go back and fix the incorrect certs once they know they made a misstep? I have documented evidence of one of the primary certifying organization which committed to fix an online cert several times and to this day it is still wrong. Do they even track mistakes internally to understand the areas which need improvement? Or to justify the procurement of new equipment ('18% of all our mistakes were made on watermarks')?
Don

Hi Don,

I would guess that the answer to your questions is that they are too busy with the forward inertia of new submissions to take the time to go back and review already processed certificates, unless the error has been specifically brought to their attention.

And even then they would be expected to expend effort and time onto something that they would receive no compensation for.

It's sort of like expecting the cook to come out and take away your cheeseburger before you ate it because he realized it was a little overdone. Doesn't really work that way, unfortunately.

Jim

Understood. But a good chef samples his food before it goes out. And the restaurant gets both a Dept. of Health rating and typically has reviews which dinners can access.

Putting aside the ability of consumers to understand the track record... how do they make improvements to their processes over time? Gut feelings? Swags? Seems to me that any continual improvement plan would require an understanding of where previous mistakes have been made.

But perhaps you are right, the push is to just sell opinions and move on.
Don