38 days after auction and waiting for check.
 

On December 19th auction closed and I sold about $4700.00 worth of items. I emailed the auction house and asked for an update on January 18th. No reply. I emailed the auction House again on January 22nd asking for an update, NO REPLY. I called the "president of the auction house today and was told he was out to lunch and would return my call when he returned. I wait about 2 and a half hours and call back. Nice lady on the end of the phone says she talked with Auction house president and there were 2 of 11 items not paid for. I say not an issue it would be fine to send me a check and return any items that were not paid for. It says very clearly on auction house website that items must be paid for within 2 weeks of invoice. Now Auction house President gets on phone and asks how he can help I ask why he has chosen to ignore my emails for the past 10 days no reply. says according to contract he has 60 days to try and collect and to pay me. I agree but point out that it also says that bidders only have 2 weeks to pay. Here is kicker He say that a large bidder in his auction has only paid half of his bill and he has agreed to wait for the rest of his/My money. How nice of large auction house to bend rules and finance Large bidders purchase. And how nice of large auction house to keep my 5 grand and hold onto it until he works out large purchase. Needless to say I will never deal with this large auction house again. who by the way called me an idiot for not understanding. What I understand is 38 days after an auction Me and at least a few others are waiting to get paid while he dose business with my money. If he wants to bend rules and finance a large purchase he should either pay sellers and assume risk or at the very least ask sellers if it is ok to wait. IMHO not a fair and above board way to do business.

Jonathan Sterling

Don't keep us in suspense...which Auction House is it...so we can avoid it.

should we guess as to which AH this is?

Let's take a stroll down.............?

If contract says 60
 

days and you are paid within 60 days I fail to see what you are complaining about at day 38? Just my opinion. (Now if he is literally trying to flip your money on deals that is wrong, because it puts your money at risk) but if you get paid in the contractually obligated time and its just cause he makes sure all monies clear, and is maybe a little lazy, I don't understand your gripe? It's his choice to extend a buyer extra time as long as you still get paid by the 60 days you agreed upon in my opinion.

I agree if you signed an agreement that is 60 day terms then I wouldn't start crying the blues till day 68 vs. 38...

As far as using your money to run their business...try selling any major retailer today your goods...welcome to the club. :)

I think it's wrong for an AH to extend credit to one/some and not others.

To the river?

The OP doesn't have a LEGAL claim but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a right to be pissed off.

Fair? probably not

Can you paddle?

$47K is a lot of cheese. If the contract says 60 days, so be it. However, I don't think that says that the AH has a free pass to ignore the consignor. If they have a whale on the hook that can't (or won't) cough up, why not write a check for a partial amount to the consignor? My instinct says strike a proper balance between consignor and buyer and you won't get posts like this on public message boards.

Prolly a good idea not to call a consignor an "idiot" too.

Yeah pretty much what I was thinking too, that just screams unprofessionalism. Even if the OP called him a prick, you can't engage in degrading your consignors/clients........Smart Business 101.

I would agree but this is the baseball card business so what's new. :)

I know right, sad but true.

Believe me, this is the least we should be worrying about when it comes to how many of these AH's run their business. Wrong? Sure! Top of the list? Not even close.

What's sad is that when the AH name is revealed....there is a dozen or more it could be that wouldn't surprise me.

While the original poster strolls down Memory Lane on a Hunt for his Legendary money hoping that the money comes before he leaves it as a Heritage for his children, we all sit watching our bids climb a Mile High hoping for a Good-win and a Clean Sweep in the next auction.

Very clever Joshua. Very clever indeed!;)

For the sake of accuracy, according to the OP, the amount is $4,700, not $47,000.

As the Managing Partner of an auction house I do run into this situation from time to time. One of our two auctions each year takes place in early November. We often have museums that are winning bidders and often they have to wait until the first of the year to access funding. If we extend buyers terms beyond our consignor payment terms (45 days) then we take the risk of getting paid. We pay out the consignor on time and then wait for payment from the buyer.

I think if the consignor agrees to 60 days they really can't complain at day 38. That being said it's never appropriate to call a consignor an idiot.

Jeff

Bad way to conduct your business
 

I operate a successful residential construction business that is focused on customer satisfaction. I find it very common and irritating when I deal with a business that is unprofessional. It seems to happen more times than not.

You should have received email responses within 24 hours. You should have been brought into the loop about the auction house extending short term financing terms (even if they are holding the merchandise). I think they are stretching the purpose of the sixty day clause for their benefit.

The auction house knew the seller would be upset and did not respond to the seller hoping the buyer's check would show up. BAD WAY TO CONDUCT YOUR BUSINESS PERIOD!

Wow, my eyes are bad...smaller cheese....patience probably the better path

This is why, in my opinion, it is better to sell to competitive-paying dealers at times.

You get payment the second the deal is done. Typically with the 20% juice auction houses charge the spread you will encounter can be under 10-15%. Would it have been worth it to have pocketed $4200 in one day, or wait + get stressed over this amount of time from the auction house?

I guess the thrill of auction adds to it, but I view it as a risk rather than thrill.

Just my two cents.

Touche Sean! I can't tell you how many times I have run auctions on Ebay, only to see the final selling price be less than what I could have gotten had I shipped the card off to All Star Cards, if it is one of the cards on their BUY LIST! And NO FEES!!! I have kicked myself in the butt soooooo many times. I guess I still do it for the HOPE that two people will bid the card to what it really should be. When it sells for below wholesale though.....OUCH!!!

I once waited 5 months for a consignment check, about $4K. I didn't think it was that big of a deal. That said, I had done business with them before, so I wasn't worried about getting paid.

Thank you to all who participated in this tread pro and con. The Auction House contacted me and promised a check tomorrow. my sincerest thanks to all of the Net54 community. At the very least the Auction House was willing to look at this from a customers viewpoint.
Regards
Jonathan

Joshua, this is priceless - I'm still laughing 10 minutes after I first read your post!
Val

And now you won't name them presumably. Well this was informative.

Jonathan, I assume the AH president has been reading this thread and is now striving to do "damage control."
Val

Whaaaaat? :mad:

so jonathan...
 

just out of curiosity, have you agreed NOT to divulge the auction house that you started this thread about, if they pay you immediately?
just wondering.......:confused:

I made the decision to not list AH name in my original thread or in any of following posts. not part of any settlement with AH.
My hope is that every AH that read this thread will put themselves in their customers shoes and respond quickly and with transparency to questions from Consigners and Bidders and that one set of rules set before the auction begins will apply to everyone.

Regards
Jonathan

I'm calling Bull $hit! How about protecting your buddies on the Five Four? Let us know what auction house calls their consignors "idiots".

just for the record...
 

... I feel used :(

Geez. Another AH teaser story. Sucked in again. RoseAnn RoseAnna Danna saying "never mind". At least she was funny.

Well, which auctions ended on Dec. 19?

Classic.

$4700 Dollars (american??) - Really? - they are little pieces of cardboard with pictures of men playing games on them... Did you really think someone would pay that kind of money for little pieces of cardboard......WTF

Memory Lane.

Jeff

It was easy to figure out, Jonathan made a post over in the Ebay/Vintage Card Auctions B/S/T forum on December 19, advertising for the items he had up for consignment with Mile High.

It's hard to keep a secret around here...

+1

Would also be interesting to ask the OP of this thread if he is banned from bidding with any auction house, and if so, why?

Along a similar vein and while I'm not expecting this, it would be interesting to hear the other side's story, to know the exchange of words from the other side of the discussion.

Even with a contractural agreement in place, it should not be too hard to understand the seller's frustration if you are the auction house. A lot of collectors sell their cards because they need to finance another aspect of their life. So it should not be too difficult to understand that a seller is counting on the money that is being held.

I don't see why an auction house can't advance funds after a certain period of time. If they are awaiting payment from some priviledged bidder that they have extended special financing to, why would they be worried about covering the price for the bidder and expediting payment to the seller?

I would hope not.

On a separate note; it's amazing how many AH owners/management/employees read these threads. A few months ago I shared a bad experience with an item I bought from Heritage. Amazingly, I received an email from Chris Ivy less than 12 hours later apologizing and offering to remedy the situation. It was outstanding costumer service and I won't soon forget it.

I'm sorry but I do find the seller's frustration a little hard to understand. The contract he agreed to gives the AH 60 days to pay. If the OP didn't like the terms of his consignment, or he wanted his money quicker, he should have taken his business elsewhere. The terms the OP agreed to for consigning are independent from the terms the 3rd party (the buyer) agrees to when participating in the auction.

As to your second point, maybe because, unless the buyer has a proven on-time and clean payment record, the AH would be assuming way to much business risk in just blindly advancing a consignor's payout before even receiving the funds, let alone waiting for the funds to clear completely.

Well that would be true of a stranger. But I would think if you're extending a financing plan like that to only certain bidders they are bidders that you trust.