At the end of June 2020, at a perfectly healthy 78, I was diagnosed with Stage 3 Ovarian Cancer…read morewith 6 months to live. I chose Hospice. I live alone and have no (capable) family or friends to help me here. I knew I had all but a couple of months to make arrangements for my death. It took me until August to find an Estate/Auction Company who said they could help me sell everything by a sale in a building and on-line. I was also promised that at my death, the Company would come to my house and clean it out for me. I found the business on Estate Sales. Net. (Every other business told me they were booked, or that if the sale couldn't happen in my house, which it couldn't, because I rent in a gated community, then look elsewhere.)
My house held all my life long collections of memorabilia, clothes, household items, furniture, jewelry, enough yarn and tools for an entire store. In other words, a lifetime of belongings and a 10 x 30 storeroom.
I invited Alexandra to my house and met her at my storeroom to make sure she was still interested in handling the job. She was very positive and excited about taking on her idea of a fabulous sale. She told me she had four years' experience, was in the Army, had fought in downtown Afghanistan, and was a Pediatric Nurse. She added, she was divorced and lived in a million dollar house with two teenage boys.
I confirmed with her that this job has to be completed before I pass away at the end of December....that I prefer the sale take place in October to capture the Halloween and Christmas shopping rush. I gave her an advance of $5,000 to help her secure a store, or warehouse, and enough to cover expenses.
After that it was a bad dream. I had several red flags but she dragged out the process to the point where I was running out of time to secure anyone else. I had warnings but I took the chance to continue with her as per my commitment.
Finally, one day before I was ready to give up on her, Sept. 30, she suddenly found a "venue" in which to sell my things. At that point I was getting more ill.
Her brother came to my house with a moving company and picked up everything except my bedroom and living room necessities. It took them over one month to set up the sale in a vacant building. By this time, there was only one weekend available to sell everything.
I was able with the help of a friend to go to the sale on the last day, Sunday, Oct. 4. The building was the Ironhouse across the street from a homeless shelter. Bad parking. Poor lighting in the building. Although many items had been sold, mostly the expensive items such as an Erte art object, fur and leather coats, valuable costume jewelry, miniature collectable items, etc. I could see I needed to pick up the remainder of the items as there were many valuable items still remaining, instead of donating them to Salvation Army.
Jarrod, told me, the owner of the building agreed we could have the room for the rest of the week without charge and he needed more time to sell the items. I gave him three additional days and told him "not to low ball the sale." I had to wait two weeks before they gave me a tabulation of what they sold and how much they sold it for. I had no way to confirm that as the descriptions were obscure, such as "shirt." I knew by this time, they scammed me, and one could see the list was made hastily and was sophomoric. Jarrod paid me $3000.00 cash. In other words, it cost me $2000.00 to let them steal from me. In my humble opinion, the value I expected to receive was between $10,000 and $25,000.
When I collected the remainder of the items, for some reason, Alexandra had cut off all the price tags. Why, I can only guess?
This is the last thing I expected to happen to me at the end of my life. Most people have compassion for dying people. In this case, this company saw it as an opportunity to take advantage of an old sickly woman. I miss my things very much. As it turns out my cancer has stabilized for the moment, and here I am in a near empty house with nothing but a few sets of sweat pants/shirts, pajamas, and just the basics to live till my time comes. It could be another six months.
Although I am grateful to GOD for every additional day HE has planned for me, I am a broken person, that at this stage of my life I was taken advantage of so. I was very nice to give this girl a chance to do a spectacular job, as she had promised, and this is how I was repaid. I am tormented by my bad decision to gamble on this Company and I lost. What makes me sad is this Company can rationalize this abuse and dishonesty and can sleep at night as all criminals can. I can do nothing but beat myself up for allowing such a thing to happen and honestly anticipate my demise with enthusiasm to rid myself of such a horrible way to end my life to which I am mentally punishing myself. Everything I worked for gone with nothing to show for it, except that I paid for that to happen, to add insult to injury.