As Upper Deck’s Customer Care Manager, it is my goal to help educate our collectors and fans so they can have a better experience with our collectible products. I’ll routinely post updates about what we hear on the phones and through e-mails from customers in segments called Ask UD. I hope you find this information relevant and interesting. If you have questions yourself, please feel free to leave a comment and “Ask UD!”

Here are some of the questions we’ve received recently in Customer Care:

Ask Upper Deck: The Customer Care group was working on a move last week, can you update us on that?

Nick Leslie: Some pretty exciting changes there. We are moving our corporate headquarters just down the street later on this summer, but we have moved out Quality Assurance and Redemption teams to our printing facility in North Carolina. While Quality Assurance and Redemption requests will be slowed up a bit during this transition as they get settled out there, this will be a very positive change for two key reasons:

1.       In the past we have been receiving cards at our facility in North Carolina and having them sent out here. It takes time to package them up, ship them out, get them from there to here and then getting unpacked. By having our teams out there, that shipping time is removed from the equation allowing us to get cards in the hands of our customers quicker.

2.       By not having to ship items, we can also save money on packaging and shipping which can ultimately be used to deliver more value in products.

So it is a positive change for us. And with that change, comes opportunity. We are currently looking to hire some staff in that area to work in our Redemption & Quality Assurance teams. If you’ve always dreamed of working in the sports industry and you are in North Carolina, this may be your chance. Check out some of the positions we have available out there by clicking here.

With this move comes a new address as well. Starting today, if you have are sending items with a case number to our Quality Assurance group or if you are sending in redemptions like the 2011 Upper Deck Football stripe cards, you want to send them to the following address:

Warehouse – RD
The Upper Deck Company
1001 Aviation Boulevard, Suite 100
Morrisville, NC 27560

It is important to note that if this is for redemptions, mark it “Attn. Redemptions.” For Quality Assurance mark “Attn. SF Case #(enter case number provided by Customer Care).” You must have a case number provided by Customer Care to have a claim processed by Upper Deck. Please do not send any items in without contacting us first.

Ask Upper Deck: Any other changes we should be aware of?

Nick Leslie: There is a pretty big one for me personally. I’ve accepted the position of Sports & Entertainment coordinator for Upper Deck which is pretty exciting for me. I grew up working in a card shop with my dad and I’ve always dreamed about being the one who built the products that end up on store shelves. Now I’m getting my chance and I’m really excited. Hopefully I can take all that I’ve learned in working so closely with our customers over the years to make products they will thoroughly enjoy. I am transitioning to my new responsibilities this week.

And with me heading out of the Customer Care group, I am happy to report we will be transitioning my current responsibilities over to my very capable replacement, Gregg Cacioppo. Gregg collected cards as a kid and still enjoys the hobby himself. His degree is in Sports Administration and we plucked him up right out of college a couple years back working in our Marketing group as an intern. We realized pretty quickly that Gregg was special so we brought him on as a Customer Care agent for Upper Deck Authenticated. Gregg certainly didn’t disappoint there and because of his strong performance we created a position for him where he would manage concerns and queries from our Diamond Club members. It is his time and I know he’s going to be great in this role so look for “Ask UD” updates from Gregg going forward!

Gregg Cacioppo is taking over as Supervisor of Upper Deck's Customer Care group.

Ask Upper Deck: When will you post the checklist for Marvel Beginnings and SP Authentic Basketball?

Nick Leslie: One of the nice things about our new website is that we can publish preliminary checklists earlier for customers. Two that we had a little trouble with where the new Marvel Beginnings and SP Authentic Basketball releases. Those have now been updated and are live. You can download the Marvel Beginnings checklist by clicking here and you can download the SP Authentic Basketball checklist by clicking here.

SP Authentic Basketball has been a fun break for collectors with plenty of Michael Jordan content.

Ask Upper Deck: Any more news on the TBD Exquisite Football redemptions?

Nick Leslie: As we have shared before, we inserted these without indicating which athlete collectors would receive to allow us the freedom of walking away from problem signers if they do not return their cards to us in a timely fashion. We produced less redemptions than we have cards outstanding to be able to make that happen. Fans have wanted us to share who these players will be, but we are not going to release that list until we have received back enough cards to provide a good enough mix to begin sending them. It doesn’t make sense to release a list at this time either given the fact that these will all be sent out at random so collectors who redeemed them will not know what they received until they receive their package from us, kind of like opening up a pack. The players we have in this mix are representative of others who are in the set, primarily mid-range players. We appreciate collector’s patience while we work to get in the rest of these delinquent signatures so we can get them out to our customers.

We are working hard to get players to sign so we can get TBD Exquisite redemptions out to customers.