Julie M.

This is not a traditional consignment arrangement. Literally, based on what I sent in, some of which they didn't take, I ended up making about $1 per item. If you include the clothes they didn't take, I made less than $1 an item. It's not worth a closet clean out and trip to the post office for that. Sorry! My bag totaled about $14. From what I hear this is the average payout. What they do not make clear on the web site is that if your item is not LISTED by them at $60 or more (meaning, it has to be worth that much in used condition), you are only getting the pay out, which is tiny. So unless you shop at Saks Fifth Avenue for all of your clothes, you aren't making jack squat off of them. It took me digging around to figure out what the pay-out meant vs. the consignment. The information was very absent in the instructions and explanation of how things work.

Some other squirrely things: I sent in a brand new pair of Naot pumps, never worn, in the original box, and they were neither paid out up front nor consigned. These shoes retail for $150 and up, and I saw far uglier and more expensive shoes for sale in gently used condition on their web site. I did not pay the $12 to have my items sent back to me and it's a good thing, because that would have meant I netted about $2 for all of my trouble. Another squirrely thing was that the items that they paid me 'up front' for, I never saw listed when I went to shop on the web site. As of today, all but one of my items (a Tahari dress new with tags) has sold, according to them, but the last dress is nowhere to be found on their web site and that is just weird. My things are cute and sold within about a week, but I checked repeatedly and never saw one item up there. Do they have a store front somewhere or something? I don't really get how I can send things to a consignment website and then never see the listing posted on the actual catalog. Weird.

If ThredUp could have given me $25-$35 for my bag, I would have been a lot happier. I am not vain about my clothes or think they are worth more than they are when used, but including shipping and processing, getting the price per item for nice things closer to $4 or $5 an item would leave people a lot happier and probably have them do business with you again. $1 an item isn't good enough for my trouble and I won't be back. I wouldn't order a Thred Up bag again unless the items I put in it were on their way to the trash. Then it would be worth it.

I understand that there is a cost to shipping the items in, as well as the man-power needed to process and list the items, but this is not what I would call a true consignment arrangement which usually gets you at least 40% of the sale price. They call themselves 'Consignment and Thrift', when it should really be Thrift and Consignment. The bulk of what they do is thrift-store pricing for stuff they didn't pay much for. The convenience of their business model means it costs you a lot more than if you just figured out a way to sell your items yourself. So take this into consideration when you decide to send clothes in. Maybe this is just a really expensive business to run and they can't help it, but that doesn't mean I'm doing business with them again.