herenthere
Well-Known Member
Each year there's more and more auction houses popping up, all competing for your money. For the most part there are a lot of honest people that can be trusted, but if you’re a first time bidder…look out. Liveauctioneers and proxibid have hundreds of people auctioning items on their sites. I've been very fortunate lately with the buys I've made. As a rule, don't expect to make a profit buying online and then trying to sell later. With some buyers premiums in the 20% area, taxes, unreal shipping charges and insurance, a $100.00 bottle can end up costing you close to $200.00. But as a hobby you can find some really nice stuff out there. After years of bidding with a few auction houses I just recently ran into a problem with Jeffery S. Evans and assoc. on liveauctioneers and thought I should mention this. Of the eight lots I won, one was given to someone else, and three others were very shabby to say the least. I contacted them several times by email and by phone to complain about cracked and scratched items and was asked to send them pics, which I did. Jeff stated that he’s been swamped with thousands of items to inspect and may have overlooked a few. He’s been in the business for quite some time and probably like a lot of other businesses, has had to downsize in order to make a buck, or probably many, many bucks. He agreed to refund me if I returned the items that were damaged, except I would be out the $15 an hour for labor that they charge for packaging. So now I’m ecpected to repackage and fill out forms, take the boxes to the post office, when all he had to do was hire one of the thousands of people out of work in his area and have them help him inspect the items properly. I purchased a group of books and one was so water damaged that it had formed mold and mildew all over it, but you couldn’t see it in the picture, sandwiched between the other books. I have all the emails admitting to the oversights. All I heard was “we’re only human, we’re allowed to make mistakesâ€. Sorta reminded me of BP and their oil problem. Haste makes waste….plain and simple. I’ve mentioned before, Jeff over at American Bottle Auction is as honest as they come. You can buy there with confidence. There are others I’ve been very pleased with, but every once in a while someone pops up and doesn’t run things like they probably should and can create a waste of time. Just be careful when bidding with online auctions, especially with Jeffery S. Evans and associates. For the records, I’ve been a “top rated†power seller on ebay since 03 and have never, ever tried to sell and item that was damaged or do anything underhanded as my perfect feedback shows. It’s all about the Golden Rule. Good luck and take care all.[/i]