As a comic investor residing in Singapore, I have no choice but to buy comics online. It is not something I want to do but I have no choice. As such, it is common for me to take risks in sellers or stores that I have never used before because they might be the only options that offer what I want at a reasonable cost.

One disadvantage of buying with new sellers is encountering one with bad business practices. Unfortunately, that is what happened to me with heroesassemble.com. It got to be one of the worst online comic buying experience I have ever come across. If you got some time, sit back as I tell you why you should avoid buying from this store if possible.

First, let me show you proof that I did actually buy from them twice during the past month.

One is for a set of 3 copies of Might Avengers 13 2nd print. Note the 3 copies here.

Second order is more expensive, comprise a copy for Young Avengers #1 Wizard con variant in 9.8 as well as a NYC #3 in 9.8

The ordering process went smoothly and I thought it was doing to be one of the new places to buy comics online. How wrong I was going to be!

The first bad experience came one day after I placed my second order. The store owner, Mark, canceled my order because they had actually sold the Young Avengers #1 without updating their site. They also mention that they only take Paypal for large payment, which was not made known to me during the checkout process.

They refunded me but I still made a loss of almost USD50! Why? Credit card currency exchange rate differences. Below is evidence of how much I loss because of this refund. Look at the last column. The bank deducted SGD889 but returned me only SGD822. That difference is my loss.

The above should be quite easy to understand right? Guess what? Heroesassemble.com evidently did not. I wrote about this in my email to them and this is what Mark reply:

Look at Marks’ reply above. It is bad enough that he doesn’t understand currency conversion losses. The worst thing is his attitude. “Don’t bother to waste our time again” indeed! I wonder who is wasting who’s time? Who is the one who doesn’t bother to update their inventory list and make buyers like us go through the process of buying, only to turn up empty!

That is only the first bad experience. The second one happened when I received my first order. Remember the 3 copies of Mighty Avengers #13 second print I ordered? Guess what. They only shipped me one copy because….. wait for this…… they ran out of inventory but did not reflect that in their online store! Yes, the same problem occurred to me twice in 2 consecutive orders.

How this damage me financially is the shipping cost. If you noticed from the first screenshot, the shipping from heroesassemble.com to Singapore was around 15 pounds. If I divide this by 3 copies, it will not be too bad. However, due to their faulty online inventory, I literally spent 18 pounds or USD28 on one modern book. Wonderful!

The best thing is heroesassemble.com didn’t notify me when they shipped the comics. Yes sir. Mark didn’t send me any email apologizing about this nor did he refunded for the other 2 missing copies until I emailed him about it. How is this for customer service?

It is because of this series of bad experience that I decided to write about this. I don’t want any of my readers to go through what I did or to suffer any financial losses due to heroesassemble.com’s negligence. If you read this and found my case convincing, spread it around so that less buyers can get hurt by sellers like them!