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I estimate that my items sold for about 10-20% of their fair market value. Items were bid on and then not picked up. When asked about it, I was told it was "my problem now". Also, items were not paid for and I was penalized for that. I asked for help from support and was told that I had signed a contract stating that I would be penalized. I don't recall that part of the contract, but all communication was cut off at that point. So, be warned. You won't get all of your items sold, and you won't get a good value for the ones that actually do sell.
UPDATE: I've seen other responses to negative reviews and there is a comment about these services being more about "time" than "money" - I. E. in order to assist people in a difficult situation they work quicker to get the items sold. However, that's the first time I had ever heard that as a seller. After talking to at least three different people in the phone and via email during the introductory phase of this process, it would seem someone could have told me that.
Also, I've seen where the effort is described as 45+ hours onsite. I had one person come out to take pictures for about 4 hours and one person stay to have items picked up for another 3 or 4. So, there is nowhere near 45 hours put in for these auctions. It seems like an excuse for an exorbitant rate. Now, in my case I was given a $200 credit on services since my auction wasn't that "large". Without that, though, I would have made less than $100. With it, I didn't even make $300. However, by this same math, they did about 20 hours of work for me and cleared over $600. That seems a bit high for the services I received as well as the fact that about 30-40% of my items were either not sold or not picked up.
Scott P.'s review of MaxSold earned 5 Very Helpful votes
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Response: It’s always disappointing to have a seller unsatisfied with our process. In this case, we are both sorry but also confused by the comments as our information does not coincide with the details listed in this review. That said, I will attempt to address this review for other readers:
Prices: It’s an unfortunate reality that the market doesn’t always pay a seller what a seller thinks is a fair price for individual things (or perhaps even in aggregate) under a competitive auction model (this is true for any auction company). Maxsold does its very best to provide both a detailed outline of our process (www.maxsold.com/sell) and share our past auction data (www.maxsold.com/past) to prepare sellers for the realities of the market when items must be sold. Sellers have both financial and emotional attachments to items and so our job is to sell only those items they need to part with - typically items that will soon be a liability due to a move / sale of real estate / etc. as selling the items avoids additional, ongoing, logistical and/or storage costs. Our model, which includes selling everything to the highest bidder regardless of price, guarantees our sellers a finite and transparent experience that passes the logistical burden onto the buyers as they MUST arrive and remove, with their own resources, all of their purchases from the sellers location during a short time window agreed to by the Seller. This saves hundreds (if not thousands) in labor alone.
Contract Elements - Section 8 of our contract has the Seller understand and acknowledge that they will be responsible for things not included in our services such as organizing, pre-sale de-cluttering, cleaning, and disposal of unsold, unpaid, or unclaimed GOODS (if any). In this seller’s case, they had us market 16 auction lots (a typical ask is ~120 auction lots) and, due to the low volume, did not have the results one might expect from a full estate sale.
Our maxsold managed commission is public on our website (www.maxsold.com/fees) and is listed as 30% + $700. This typically covers about 40+ hours on site, 5+ hours behind the scenes, and $100s in marketing. In this seller’s case, we performed 6 hours on site so, instead of billing them our contracted and agreed to fees for our effort, we billed them our standard ‘time’ fee of $50/hr for the labour and 30% on the sale of goods (as if they had conducted a Seller Managed sale with us providing assistance). We cannot determine what ‘value’ a seller places on their time. In this case, we provided a credit (where no credit was owed) given we were efficient in completing the job. This represented a $400 discount on our fees.
The unpaid amount in this sellers auction was $3.69 and neither party (the Seller or maxsold) benefited from this as Maxsold does not collect commission on unpaid amounts.
Ultimately, it’s always disappointing when we do not achieve our average 98% sell-through/removal rate, however, I think you’ll find that if you review the auction yourself, you’ll see it was an odd and interestingly low volume for an estate sale.
If interested, check out this perspective on the evolving need and how Maxsold helps:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/maxsold-tomorrows-auction-housetoday-adam-gordon/
MaxSold continues to reinvest all funds made in the pursuit of its vision to Sell. Everything. Simply for downsizing and estate clients without judgement: http://maxsold.com/maxsold-purpose/
Feel free to check out the results of this auction for yourself. As with all our auctions, this auction was executed with unmatched transparently. Additionally, our experience suggests our solution was not the first chosen given the very limited volume of goods (i. E. there were other sales conducted first by other parties which in turn hurt our ability to create a more successful result for the Seller). Although we support every seller who wishes to hire us, we can only work with the inventory we are provided and we are ultimately sorry that our seller is disappointment in this case:
https://maxsold.maxsold.com/auction/dalton-georgia-usa-estate-sale-online-auction-south-glenwood-avenue-13517/bidgallery/