Feb 12th, 2018 Update:
Well, this entire experience has left me seriously wanting. The sale ended up being delayed a day due to the number of mistakes Craig made when creating the original online sale. For example, he included 25 separate lots of unimportant books but neglected to include small electronics! The day he took photos I specifically told him the books were not important, but he made 25 of the 116 listings books! These errors could have easily been avoided with more planning and preparation. If he was unable to include all items in one sale, then he should have spoken with me up front regarding which items were a higher priority to be sold. And, if he was uncertain about the number of items that could be included, he should have photographed everything I showed him and then worked with me at a later time to determine what would and wouldn't be included. Instead, he made a lot of seriously incorrect and illogical assumptions.
Because of these incorrect assumptions, I had to arrange and photograph a large number of items myself. I also had to review the sale in detail and send a list of items in order of priority so we could fit everything into one sale. Plus, I had to send Craig corrections to many prices. For example, he posted my KitchenAid Mixer at a higher price than you can buy the exact same model brand new at Costco! He also posted a small framed (unnumbered and unsigned) print for twice as much as all of the larger framed prints I had. He said it was because that particular print sold well at other content sales, but he lowered the price as requested. The irony, it was the ONLY piece of artwork NOT sold!
The sale lasted 4 days and ended yesterday (Feb 11th). 59% of the items listed sold. The main Sell My Stuff Canada website says they average a 90% sold rate -- 59% is well below the average and very disappointing. Unfortunately, many of the items not sold are large furniture items which are hard to get rid of otherwise. I suspect one of the main reasons they didn't sell was because the prices were too high (even though the website insists they are experts at appraising and pricing items and they do research to determine the best price in order for the item to sell).
Craig keeps telling me that I'll sell more items during the pickup tonight. I do hope that happens, but I didn't hire him to sell items during pickup, I hired him to sell items online before pickup. Thankfully, according to the contract, anything I sell tonight is not subject to commission, so I will receive 100% of the proceeds.
My biggest complaints are:
1. I did way more work than I expected. It was not a stress-free experience and I feel if I had not been involved as much as I had, it would have gone terribly wrong.
2. There was little to no planning and organization throughout the whole process. It all seemed to be run 'by the seat of his pants.' Even just some minor planning would have made the whole process significantly more efficient.
3. There was almost no transparency. If I didn't ask questions, there would be a ton of things I would never have found out about in advance.
4. I did not feel like I was a priority to Craig, as a customer. For example, on Wednesday afternoon I called him (as he requested) to discuss the sale and he told me he was working at his store (what store?) and that he had customers waiting, so he couldn't talk! WTF? First off, if you can't talk, don't answer your phone. And second, what am I? Chopped liver?
5. Questions were answered randomly. Some questions I had to ask multiple times before I received an answer.
6. None of my experience lived up to the promises on the website.
7. There were far too many assumptions made about things that were important and should have been reviewed with the customer in advance.
I hope tonight's pickup goes well, but again, I've had to do a ton of work to prepare everything for pickup in order to avoid a multitude of complete strangers from wandering unnecessarily through my house. Something I would have expected the company to help with. Instead, Craig told me he'll arrive 10 minutes before the pickup time begins! read more