ComplaintsforBirdnest Sales and Liquidations

• Initial Complaint

  06/17/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Order Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Estate Sale held May *****th, 2023. Birdnest Estate Sales and Liquidation (***) make agreements verbally and via text to a 75-year-old woman and then had her sign a contract in opposition to what was said. *** owns a physical store where the remnants of your estate sell will be sold without an option to see what remains, in fact, I was told that it would not be fair to *** if I started taking things back from my own home. Make sure in your contract that you specifically say in writing that at the end of the sale you would like to see what remains or you will find it in the *** store or future *** estate sales. *** does not have an active business license for their store (file #**********), but however does have a business license for a 501c. This company Side Lot Studios (file #**********) is under the same owner, management and physical address as ***. Unethical by any business standards. As is owning a storefront that is filled with the leftovers from its clients' things. It is my belief and I admit to not having any proof to this, but it would appear that things desired from your sale are cherry picked specifically to sell elsewhere. Good practices surely would direct a business to consign these items or buy them outright prior to placing them for profit in their store. Add to your contract that you will not pay any portion of the consumer's sales tax. I was charged 40% of the sales tax. If *** does not choose to make the buyers pay sales tax, that is their responsibility to pay those taxes not me. Assure that general basic care is taken with your items, carpets, paint et cetera. They have liability insurance, too, don't forget that. Get a hard copy of the contract signed by both parties PRIOR to the sale. Do not agree to anything verbally, get it in writing. After an arduous back and forth of negotiations, *** did compensate for the carpet, bathroom items, taxes and the difference in reserved items which were sold for less than the reserve.

  Business response

  06/26/2023

  It will be impossible to give an adequate representation of the interactions between this client, her representatives and BSL in the 30 min you've provided. I would welcome a phone call at ************ to fill in the blanks if that would help. Here is a list of her grievances, however, and what BSL has already done to address them:
  1. We sold items out of a bathroom that were not to be included in the sale. BSL's response: while our contract states that all items not included in the sale need to be given to us in writing or clearly marked (these were neither), BSL admitted there's proof that we DID have an oral conversation about these items (although I really don't remember it). In a secondary reimbursement check BSL repaid our client in the form of $200 on top of an initial $100 payment to recover the items that were erroneously sold out of the bathroom for a total reimbursement of $300.
  2. We sold items that had a reserve price on them for less than the reserve. BSL's response: a table and chairs were mistakenly sold for $150 less than the reserve price while a buffet was sold for $100 less than the reserve. In the secondary reimbursement check BSL paid the client the full $250 without taking anything out for the commission which would have resulted from selling them at the reserve amount.
  3. Our client was required to pay taxes on her own items that she hadn't purchased. BSL's response: In an effort to make the checkout procedure as quick and efficient as possible we do not charge our shoppers sales tax. We simply consider that the cost of doing business and split this 'cost' with our clients according to the terms of the contract, in this case a 40/60 split. However, in an effort to make amends, the sales tax charged to our client was reimbursed to her as well in the form of $126.23.
  4. Our client complained that we should have taken better care of the carpets in her home. BSL's response: A successful estate sale draws 100's if not 1000's of people into your home. Any event of that magnitude is going to leave a mark. It is also highly unusual that a client is staying in the home after the sale. Most are selling their homes so they are having them cleaned in order to get the house listed. However, again in an effort to make amends, we agreed to pay for the cleaning of the carpets in the amount of $150.
  5. The final thing our client asked for was an itemized list of everything sold during the sale. BSL's response: these types of records just aren't kept. Not by BSL or any other estate sale company. That's just not the way the industry runs.
  While not listed in the bullet points of grievances in her initial email, my client's daughter has made claims that my client was not given a chance to review the items not sold. This is false. First of all, in her own handwriting our client has written that she wishes for BSL to liquidate any remaining items. Once the sale was over the leftover items had been boxed and were waiting to be picked up. I AGAIN asked my client if she wanted us to take care of those items which she replied in the affirmative. She had every right and opportunity to review anything she wanted to pull out of that collection. Her last sentence describing an "arduous back and forth negotiation" is laughable at best. Jaymi sent one email which I returned with the agreement to take care of 4 out of the 5 demands they'd made, the 5th being impossible. At that point I'm not sure what else I could have done.
  In conclusion, our client presented us a list of her grievances. While we disagreed with some of them we went ahead and made amends on almost all of them for a total of an additional $826.23 for a sale that only grossed $2439.28. Please call for additional information.

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