Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Panini really comes through

Less than ten days ago I was showing you the box of 2014 Panini Golden Age that I had gotten during the Black Friday sales, and as some of you may recall, that box just happened to be missing it's promised autograph... and now here I am, to show you Panini's response to said missing autograph.

In that original post, I mentioned my lack of success in trying to contact Panini via the telephone, in fact, after weeks of trying... and failing, I had pretty much given up on any further attempts to do so. After reading that, Matt (Bob Walk the Plank), was kind enough to leave a comment in which he suggested trying to contact Panini through @PaniniCSM on Twitter, which was something that I hadn't even thought about trying.

Honestly, I didn't expect anything positive to come out of this newly suggested Twitter route, but I went ahead and tried anyway... and much to my surprise, a response came less than 24 hours later.

This is where Joe White (hopefully he doesn't mind his name being used, especially since he is the hero of this story) enters the narrative. I don't know if he's the only person manning Panini's Twitter account or not, but he's the only company representative that I dealt with, so every time I mention Panini in the rest of this post (and the title for that matter), I'm actually referring to Joe.

Right off the bat, Joe offered to send a couple of 2014 Golden Age autos to replace my missing one, and while I certainly appreciated the offer, "a couple" wasn't necessary as I was only shorted one. Instead, I asked if it was possible to just get one that I didn't already have, and provided a list of the ten or so that I already had from the set. Joe said that not only was that possible, but that he would send a couple that I didn't have. There was that "a couple" again, sometimes you just can't fight generosity without coming across as being difficult, so I didn't try to push my "just one is enough" any further.

So just three days after the initial contact was made on Twitter, replacement cards were overnighted (I really don't like to think how much that ended up costing the company) to me, and I couldn't have been happier with the cards that Joe picked out:

Other than knowing of his World Series outings in 1964, and his involvement with the creation of Big League Chew, I wasn't overly familiar with Jim Bouton. I had no idea that he had authored numerous books, and that one in particular, "Ball Four", was considered such a classic as far as baseball related books go. Since finding out about it just a couple of days ago, I have already found and bought a cheap copy, that is now in transit. Hopefully it lives up to the hype!

The Brady Bunch was a show that I watched quite a bit of when I was growing up, especially after Nickelodeon started running it in syndication, so to get a card that was signed by Peter Brady himself was pretty cool. The only thing that would have been better, is if Mr. Knight had inscribed a few of these, I mean how great would it have been to get his signature with Pork chops and applesauce written somewhere below it :)


Lost in Space was another show that I watched a great deal of in my younger years, so getting an autograph of Will Robinson is pretty cool too. I have been a fan of The Twilight Zone for as long as I can remember, and anybody who's even slightly familiar with the show, has probably seen at least one of the three episodes that he was on, especially since "It's a Good Life" is one of the most famous episodes from the series.

Many thanks go out to Joe, not only for the great selection of cards he chose, but also for being so easy to deal with. Many thanks to Panini as well, mostly for having the good sense to hire someone like Joe, as I don't think that I have ever dealt with someone in customer service who was as efficient and pleasant as he is/was.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

27 comments:

  1. Nice! That’s a beautiful Bouton. You should check out The Battered Bastards of Baseball doc on Netflix if you haven’t already. He’s featured in that as well.

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    1. I've been meaning to see it for a couple of years now, as it's not often that a documentary about anything Portland related is made. I never knew that Jim was a Maverick though.

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    2. It's an excellent doc. Bouton started his baseball comeback with the Mavericks in 1975, and the title of the documentary is a quote from his writings.

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  2. Cheers to Panini for making it right. Those autos look fantastic.

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    1. Indeed, Joe really made up for the missing auto :)

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  3. Sweet haul. Gotta love customer service agents who go above and beyond to help someone. Makes me feel good to read things like this.

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    1. I hope Panini higher-ups get wind of this post and Joe is given a hearty pat on the back.

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    2. Jason: I'm all about acknowledging people who their job well, especially when it's someone in that line of work.

      Tom: Or a raise :)

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  4. Ball Four great book. . Nice Bouton

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    1. Definitely worth the read, I've read it a few times.

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    2. Hopefully you guys are right about the book.

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  5. Kudos to Joe and Panini for taking care of their loyal customer.

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  6. Can't decide whether I like the Bouton or Peter Brady more. I do know that I'm due for a "Ball Four" re-reading sometime soon, though.

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    1. Apparently I'm the only one who didn't know about the book :(

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  7. Now you won't have to wish panini into the corn field.

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  8. Glad that worked out. I had such a good experience when I had an issue that I've been telling everyone about it that needs help. My issue was a pretty big one in that I had multiple McCutchen autos out for redemption that were never going to be filled. They hooked me up with a nice Pirates/Penguins combo to make it right. The process happened very quick too which was cool.

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    1. I'm glad that your situation worked out so well! And I am very grateful to you for telling me to try that route. Hopefully I will be able to pay it forward at some point too.

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  9. Way to go Panini! I love that he worked with you to send you cards that you didn't already have.

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    1. I really didn't think that it was going to be possible, but I'm glad that I decided to go ahead and ask anyways.

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  10. what an awesome selection of autos! I find it difficult to believe Topps would've done the same. I purchased 2016 Legacies of Baseball at Christmas 2016 for a friend. She pulled Chipper Jones/25 auto severely dinged and smudged. I sent this to Topps for replacement in JAN 2017. They returned it to me with a note saying they don't replace damaged cards on non-current year products. 2017 baseball wasn't out yet!! Not a big Topps fan these days. Kudos to Panini!

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    1. From everything I've read on the blogs about Topps, I know that they wouldn't have done anything, especially since this was an "old" box, and since they don't even try to honor expired redemptions, they certainly wouldn't care about a missing auto from a three-year old box.

      That is really sucky of them to have treated you like that, but again, that seems to be their modus operandi. And of course, if they actually cared about their customer's, they would have never distributed a smudged auto!

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