More Exposure with Fewer People coming into the house, and nobody sleeping on your sidewalk...

A very well respected estate sale company had received a negative online review because the buyer arrived at the house a little before the advertised starting time and missed out on a few items. Our critique is not at all about the merits of the complaint, it is in the very honest and open response that was presented by the estate sale company. It’s not our intention to call out any one company in particular, especially as they didn’t do anything wrong, they were simply acting is everyone’s best interest, so we have edited some of the details and changed the script slightly….

“We are sorry to learn about your unsatisfactory experience. I presume you are referring to our (recent sale). This sale had been scheduled to begin at 9:30. Due to the overwhelming response, we made a decision to open the doors 30 minutes early. By 9:00 we had more than 400 people waiting. Due to township safety regulations & limited parking, we opted to open the doors 30 minutes early. As I'm sure, this was unfortunate for the people who did not arrive ahead of our scheduled start time and we are sorry that you missed out on a few of your items. When attending estate sales, we always encourage people to arrive early. We had customers beginning to line up at 9:00 PM the previous night.”

It sounds as though this must have been a great sale and they probably sold a lot of items for their clients. My concerns are that they had FOUR HUNDRED people lined up outside all at one time and that they are well aware that some random people may show up and camp outside of the house for an entire night prior to the sale…

2 specific (of the many) benefits of an online auction are highlighted here:

1) A very typical and completely ordinary sale that we put on will be viewed by between 2,500 and 3,000 people. That is a very large and respectable number of people being presented to what is being offered.

2) However, because the bidding is done remotely via the computer, a very good sale of ours might have between 100 to 200 different bidders coming to collect their items. Even though this is still a pretty impressive number, that is spread out over the course of several hours, in lieu of everyone coming all at once and standing in line outside of your door. This key element is what keeps our sales as organized as possible.

So, in summation. We will will get More Exposure with Fewer People coming into the house, and nobody sleeping on your sidewalk...