I still use VGA for SNES games and Wata on NES. I'm not entirely in love with either scale (both can be a bit too lax for me at times) but each one is more or less consistent for the most part.

As someone who has submitted a fair amount of games to Wata this has been my experience with the turnaround times.

Select - Never used it. To me, if a game is worth grading then I'm willing to pay for a service above the bare minimum. Never used the cheapest VGA tier either, though I never sub more than about 10 games at a time. If you were sending in a boatload of stuff at once I can understand why you may want to minimize the grading cost.

Turbo - About 2 months. You get grades somewhere in the middle then it takes a long time to ship.

Speed Run - About 2 weeks. Got my grades around the 1 week mark but another week for shipping. I only did this with one set of games though, maybe was just unlucky, not sure.

Warpzone - Spot on. If I see the tracking as arrived today, I can count of having the grade by COB tomorrow. May take another day or two to ship but this tells me Wata is probably at least opening packages the day they receive them, or next day.

VGA hits their turnaround times more or less, but a much longer delay between receiving and processing, at least 2 or 3 business days. And there is no Warpzone with VGA, best they offer is 7-10 days which is pretty damn slow comparatively. I sent one under a 7-10 day tier last month and it wound up taking nearly a month. They close for Action figure shows and other crap and put things in a week delay.

End of day, neither company is hitting their turnaround times quite as advertised. Use that information for what you will, coming from someone who is still using each.

I haven't dealt with WATA as yet but can understand that initial business there might be lack of staffing relative to the possible demands of consumers. I think what's made the waiting times worse, from a casual observer, is that WATA has been too heavily into the promotional aspects and ramping up deals and further advertising with Heritage Auctions. Hopefully things can turn around and back to normal rates of advertised grading and item returns.

Finally received response(s). Looks like my game will be mailed at some point next week. Guess I should have exercised just a hair more patience.

I have 2 more items I want to send their way, but I'll probably wait until things start operating more smoothly. Seems like they're working hard to make things right, which I greatly appreciate. Communication goes a long way to restoring faith and audience building.

Not sure if anybody responded to this. But my guess is that those who spent a set period of time train those who are hired to be graders. And that each company creates guidelines based on notes, etc. when it comes to previous gradings (both successful ones and mistakes). So while I am not sure about anything tied to WATA, there are auction houses out there that often include both grades and details when it comes to items they are auctioning.

So in all cases, these professionals are doing something similar to what a doctor or detective does. And while not always spot-on they were trained to look for things others tend to overlook.

Well, they still haven't shipped my game. How's everyone else out there faring with them?

Still waiting here too. About 2 months ago I was told my order was close to the top for shipping  

Mine was marked complete 2 weeks ago and hasn't changed status since then. Sounds like it'll be a while.

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OK, so let me get this straight.  Your game is graded, it's done.  They just haven't packaged it up and shipped it?  And worse yet, it was ready to ship 2 months ago?  I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous.  They need someone to help them develope an optimal workflow process if they are not equipped to do it themselves. 

I really wonder what the operation looks like behind the scenes.  Kinda has me worried.  I've had 5 games sitting with them for a couple of months now, which seems to be at the lower end of the spectrum when I read some of these comments.  It seems to me that the best thing for them to do right now is just stop accepting orders, clear their backlog, and reflect on their experience so far to figure out whether or not they're configured properly to actually provide this service and meet the expectations that they themselves have set. 
 

Is it labeled complete in your dashboard?
 

Not sure if this has been posted yet but I got this yesterday:

"Wata Games - We Are Expanding


Dear Wata Subscribers...


Due to Wata's growth over the past few months, we are expanding our infrastructure to meet your valued demand and expectations. While we are in this expansion process, we can only accept Speed-Run and Warp-Zone service level orders, which are submitted and received between 30th September and 25th October 2019. We will grade, certify and ship all such orders based on the two service levels ordered and submitted. Speed-Run and Warp-Zone submissions will be accepted as submitted, but may not process and ship within the respective standard turnaround times.



At this time, we cannot be certain when we will be able to accept other service level submissions. In the interim, we will store your orders securely and will notify you as soon as we can on the estimated delivery time.


Please be assured that if you have outstanding orders that have not yet shipped, we will be working to complete and ship them by the provided date of 25th October, 2019. We assure you that your games are kept secured and safe.




Thank you for your recognition on the value of grading and certification. We are expanding so we can support you better. We greatly appreciate your patience and continued support during this time"

Yes, my graded order is "Completed" and a completed order from last year is "Shipped" which seems backwards, but that's what it is. I've been able to see my grades online since at least mid-summer.

Not dealing with them. So I am great! But in all cases I did have one issue with VGA where my proposed 7-10 turnaround took around 4 weeks. And the photos arrive after it was returned to me. Which I hope is not an issue next year since I want to rebuild my console RPG collection in 2020.

From what I understand from the vague WATA email everyone will be getting there stuff shipped back by October 25th? Even the stuff from this summer? I'm hoping this is the case been waiting on 11 games forever and no update since early August that just said scanned

So you have to pay a premium price just to submit but won't get premium service?? That seems ass backwards to me. Customers paying for the insufficiencies of this service.

Exactly. They can't handle the volume, but if everyone pays more, they will magically be able to meet their customers' demands?

If everyone submits via Warp Zone, it doesn't change anything except WATA makes more money and is still as backed up as they are now.
 

I don't understand why a representative from WATA doesn't come here and make an attempt to explain things and save their customers. People seem to be bailing on the idea of submitting to them and I figured they would want to put a stop to that and restore faith. It seems like they're making no attempt to save their business.

I thought this exact thing. Ive been waiting on their times to get better before i sent in about 10 games but honestly, the way theyre handling the situation as a whole, i probably wont even send them in. They've been using "were moving/expanding" excuse for months now. With no transparent plan of getting caught up. I sure as hell dont want my games to get caught up in their warehouse and moved who knows how many times. Theres a huge liability there with them keeping them for so long. 
 

I feel for Wata, but yeah, i mean i have games that have been there for months and I didn't pay the economy shipping speed either. At a certain point you're forced to seek alternatives, like VGA.

Deniz said they don't have time to patrol forums/social media and respond, don't want to get sucked into conversations they can't keep up with, etc. I think a little outreach would be better than nothing but I'm not running the business and I'm not sure what day to day operations are like with their backlog. I don't see how this is going to end except with another insurmountable backlog once the cheapie tier opens again and people submit piles of low-value crap all at once.

Wait, didn’t they hire someone new to manage social media and such not too long ago?
 

WATA is simply taking the sealed collecting proposition to its logical conclusion: You can't play sealed games, you can't unseal slabbed games, and if they never send the slabbed games back to their customers, there will never be ANY risk of harm coming to them ever again! Trapped in the WATA game vaults forever, perfect and unseen! It's ingenious, actually, this is the next level of game collecting: C;CI;CIB;NIB;Sealed;Slabbed;Vaulted

Well done WATA, and congrats to everyone with their elite "vault-level" game collection!  

I half remembered this as I was typing that post then thought I must be crazy because I haven't seen much social media presence still. I guess he's typing up the emails?

i submitted a game at the TooManyGames expo on June 23rd. It still only says "Scanned" for its progress. I contacted them about 3 weeks ago but havent gotten a response.

Well, this has definitely not been a good experience.

My game finally arrived and the Wata holder is scratched up bad in the front.

Sent them an email about it, so time to just wait....again.