Initial Business Response /* (1000, 11, 2016/09/21) */
[redacted]Document Attached[redacted]
I would like to address the complaint numerically in order of their appearance in the form received from the Revdex.com
1. I am attaching a copy of the contract signed by the [redacted] and some photographs documenting...
the sale.
2. [redacted] commission was charged on all items sold and [redacted] per hour for staff time from set up through donation pack out as is stated and agreed to in the contract. The clients expressed interest in working the sale, which I said would be a way to reduce staff costs. The clients did not work any portion of the sale days, thereby necessitating two additional staff on those days. They did some minor prep work prior to the sale set up, but none during set up other than to continue sorting those items they wished to take with them. This delayed and slowed the work of my staff, as the property was not cleared for our sale preparation.
a. We began our sale prep on Monday morning. Most of the sale was set by Tuesday afternoon, and then the clients added many more items to the sale that required additional preparation time and were not revenue generators. This act, and the fact that they had not removed all items from the property that they wanted to keep prior to the commencement of our work, cost my staff many additional hours, and therefore cost the client more money.
b. Per contract terms, all items are to be removed prior to our starting work. A basement toy room was inaccessible to my staff until Wednesday, as the client had not sorted and removed what she wanted. The same was true of the kitchen and pantry.
c. Nearly 50 garbage bags of clothing were added after this area had been completely finished and all of the new items had to be sorted and folded and additional tables and racks brought in to accommodate this. The bags contained items between 5-25 years old, many in poor condition. The client had sorted many of the initial items and consolidated the original clothing into one area. Many hours of staff time were expended to redo this area and incorporate new items. My staff repeatedly tried to cull items that were torn or damaged, only to be told to include them in the sale. This made everything in this area much less desirable from a shopper standpoint.
d. Multiple boxes of unsorted electronics with unpaired and tangled cords and attachments were brought in after the garage area had been set up. These items all had to be matched up and tested. Most of these items did not work or could not be matched with power sources. Again, this cost the client many hours of staff time, with no real increase in revenue generated.
3. As to three men working in the garage, as the photos will clearly show, over 50% of what was in the garage had to be moved into the house. This alone took an entire day to move all the furniture into the house again and to unbox all of the items in the garage. The garage was so piled when I viewed the sale, I could not see the condition of the furnishings or other items to be sold. Much of the furniture in the garage was damaged or very worn. The same was true of the boxed items. As a result, these items did not sell.
4. The house was not filthy. It is our standard practice to photograph and document any carpet stains, house damage, etc. with the client at the start of sale preparation. When we began the sale I made a point of drawing the client's attention in person to existing stains on the carpeting. I admit negligence in not taking our standard photographs due to this on site face to face conversation. We expect, as the contract states on page 4 that "We will ensure that the premises is reasonably tidy, in our sole discretion, after the sale.". We did pick up the sale area, remove trash, etc., at the conclusion of the sale. We were not asked to have our cleaners come in at the conclusion of the sale, as the client indicated at the signing of the contract that they would use their own. In fact, we had to request that they not have the cleaners present until Sunday afternoon, as the sale would not be packed and removed prior to that time. The cleaners were already at work when we arrived Sunday before noon to meet a second truck from our charity partner to collect another full load.
5. The charity partner spent two days with two people totaling approximately 20 hours just removing unsold items from the property. They estimate 15-20% of this was trash and ultimately thrown away. This included specifically trash, cardboard, and chemicals that the client expected them to haul away in addition to the items that were beyond usable condition. Our contract states that these items will be left for client disposal or can be hauled away for a fee. No such fee was charged. This cost the charity money. The large projection tv alone (pictured) took four adults nearly one hour of time to remove from the property.
6. The contract does state that an accounting will be provided 15 business days after the conclusion of the sale. Due to the Monday following the sale being the Memorial Day holiday, the 15 days concluded on June 21. My letter and packet were dated June 19 and were mailed either that afternoon or the morning of the 20th. I do not know when mail was collected from the post box. I do not send my packets registered or certified. I did not reply before the Revdex.com complaint arrived as my first quarter files were with my accountant. I should have sent a brief not to the client stating that I could not make a quick response. Their email note was sent to the incorrect web address.
In conclusion, I believe these claims to be unjustified. We have dozens of satisfied clients for our services. I would be happy to provide references to that effect. We strive to provide a professional and thorough service. I regret that the clients did not find value in this. I believe that we followed our contract obligations for the service we were hired to provide.
Initial Consumer Rebuttal /* (3000, 13, 2016/10/02) */
(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
[redacted] Beatty's response has multiple outright lies. The first is that she states that she mailed the letter out on June 20. We have the envelope which is post marked Weds June 22, not Monday June 20. The contract says net proceeds shall be remitted to [redacted] and [redacted] within 15 days of final disposition of any remaining items and payment of all expenses. The sale ended Saturday May 28, 2016. We recieved our information and check on Friday June 24, 2016. That is 19 days, counting business days and holiday, not 15 days. According to the post mark the information was mailed 17 days after the deadline, not 15 days, so for all practical purposes [redacted] violated her own contract.
[redacted] told us not to come to the sale, we would just get in her way and it would be too emotional for us. We did go to witness and only stayed a short period of time during the sale. We were upset that there were three guys standing in the garage doing practically nothing and a friend of ours also went to the sale and commented on this same thing. [redacted] told us that we could help out prior to the sale to decrease costs, which we did.
[redacted] also was well aware that we would have to work on sorting stuff while her staff was present and she had plenty of rooms already done so that her staff was not delayed. We also told her that we would bring extra stuff from our lake cottage for the sale and she agreed to this as long as we got it to the house by Thursday, the day before the sale. She also said she had the right to stop taking extra stuff at her discretion, so that she could have stopped anything extra from coming into the house at any time, which she didn't. Besides, there were not 50 bags of added clothing.
Regardless, as I previously mentioned [redacted] violated her own contract so it seems rather hypocritical to bring up the contract to support some of her contentions and neglect it for others.
[redacted] even directed us where to place items when we sorted them to save her time so any critic of this is ridiculous. Also we did not tell [redacted]'s staff to include or not include items in the sale. We followed [redacted]'s directions on what would could sell, what should be donated, and what should be thrown out. [redacted] contends that most of our stuff was junk, well many of the items were of very high quality, and the worst quality stuff was placed in the garage at [redacted]'s discretion.
The cords were already in the garage or house prior to the sale and [redacted] saw these, so the contention that these were brought in after is false.
Again our complaint about the three men was not in the set up, but during the actual sale and even in the set up we moved many of the heavy items instead of the three men.
The only stains in the house were well documented by our real estate sales person. There were many additional stains that occurred during the sale. Our cleaning personal did not arrive until Sunday afternoon May 29. We have messages on our phone from the cleaning ladies to verify this. The cleaning ladies stayed out of the way of the charity movers, starting upstairs, where the charity movers had already moved all the items. The charity movers actually arrived late.
We never told [redacted] not to clean up after the sale and she said that was one of her services, as the contract stipulates. We had hired the cleaning service to just touch up and make sure that our house buyer would have nothing to complain about. So the [redacted] charge for cleaning is evidence of [redacted]'s negligence.
[redacted] arranged all the charity people to come and take items from the house not us, as she agreed to do this prior to the sale. We also helped the charity people do their moving and they were ecstatic to receive there items. Again [redacted] had directed us on what to throw out and not prior to the sale and stated that items not sold would be donated.
As far as the projection TV, [redacted] definitely saw this prior to the sale, it would be impossible to miss.
Again, [redacted] knew what was involved prior to the sale as she did a thorough inspection. All factors that she mentioned were seen or discussed prior to the sale. She essentially gave an estimate of costs that was not even close to the actual costs. The end result is a bait and switch where [redacted] collected 93% of the proceeds of the sale. If we would have known this we would have never hired [redacted].
If you need further documentation let us know.
Initial Business Response /* (1000, 11, 2016/09/21) */
[redacted]Document Attached[redacted]
I would like to address the complaint numerically in order of their appearance in the form received from the Revdex.com
1. I am attaching a copy of the contract signed by the [redacted] and some photographs documenting...
the sale.
2. [redacted] commission was charged on all items sold and [redacted] per hour for staff time from set up through donation pack out as is stated and agreed to in the contract. The clients expressed interest in working the sale, which I said would be a way to reduce staff costs. The clients did not work any portion of the sale days, thereby necessitating two additional staff on those days. They did some minor prep work prior to the sale set up, but none during set up other than to continue sorting those items they wished to take with them. This delayed and slowed the work of my staff, as the property was not cleared for our sale preparation.
a. We began our sale prep on Monday morning. Most of the sale was set by Tuesday afternoon, and then the clients added many more items to the sale that required additional preparation time and were not revenue generators. This act, and the fact that they had not removed all items from the property that they wanted to keep prior to the commencement of our work, cost my staff many additional hours, and therefore cost the client more money.
b. Per contract terms, all items are to be removed prior to our starting work. A basement toy room was inaccessible to my staff until Wednesday, as the client had not sorted and removed what she wanted. The same was true of the kitchen and pantry.
c. Nearly 50 garbage bags of clothing were added after this area had been completely finished and all of the new items had to be sorted and folded and additional tables and racks brought in to accommodate this. The bags contained items between 5-25 years old, many in poor condition. The client had sorted many of the initial items and consolidated the original clothing into one area. Many hours of staff time were expended to redo this area and incorporate new items. My staff repeatedly tried to cull items that were torn or damaged, only to be told to include them in the sale. This made everything in this area much less desirable from a shopper standpoint.
d. Multiple boxes of unsorted electronics with unpaired and tangled cords and attachments were brought in after the garage area had been set up. These items all had to be matched up and tested. Most of these items did not work or could not be matched with power sources. Again, this cost the client many hours of staff time, with no real increase in revenue generated.
3. As to three men working in the garage, as the photos will clearly show, over 50% of what was in the garage had to be moved into the house. This alone took an entire day to move all the furniture into the house again and to unbox all of the items in the garage. The garage was so piled when I viewed the sale, I could not see the condition of the furnishings or other items to be sold. Much of the furniture in the garage was damaged or very worn. The same was true of the boxed items. As a result, these items did not sell.
4. The house was not filthy. It is our standard practice to photograph and document any carpet stains, house damage, etc. with the client at the start of sale preparation. When we began the sale I made a point of drawing the client's attention in person to existing stains on the carpeting. I admit negligence in not taking our standard photographs due to this on site face to face conversation. We expect, as the contract states on page 4 that "We will ensure that the premises is reasonably tidy, in our sole discretion, after the sale.". We did pick up the sale area, remove trash, etc., at the conclusion of the sale. We were not asked to have our cleaners come in at the conclusion of the sale, as the client indicated at the signing of the contract that they would use their own. In fact, we had to request that they not have the cleaners present until Sunday afternoon, as the sale would not be packed and removed prior to that time. The cleaners were already at work when we arrived Sunday before noon to meet a second truck from our charity partner to collect another full load.
5. The charity partner spent two days with two people totaling approximately 20 hours just removing unsold items from the property. They estimate 15-20% of this was trash and ultimately thrown away. This included specifically trash, cardboard, and chemicals that the client expected them to haul away in addition to the items that were beyond usable condition. Our contract states that these items will be left for client disposal or can be hauled away for a fee. No such fee was charged. This cost the charity money. The large projection tv alone (pictured) took four adults nearly one hour of time to remove from the property.
6. The contract does state that an accounting will be provided 15 business days after the conclusion of the sale. Due to the Monday following the sale being the Memorial Day holiday, the 15 days concluded on June 21. My letter and packet were dated June 19 and were mailed either that afternoon or the morning of the 20th. I do not know when mail was collected from the post box. I do not send my packets registered or certified. I did not reply before the Revdex.com complaint arrived as my first quarter files were with my accountant. I should have sent a brief not to the client stating that I could not make a quick response. Their email note was sent to the incorrect web address.
In conclusion, I believe these claims to be unjustified. We have dozens of satisfied clients for our services. I would be happy to provide references to that effect. We strive to provide a professional and thorough service. I regret that the clients did not find value in this. I believe that we followed our contract obligations for the service we were hired to provide.
Initial Consumer Rebuttal /* (3000, 13, 2016/10/02) */
(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
[redacted] Beatty's response has multiple outright lies. The first is that she states that she mailed the letter out on June 20. We have the envelope which is post marked Weds June 22, not Monday June 20. The contract says net proceeds shall be remitted to [redacted] and [redacted] within 15 days of final disposition of any remaining items and payment of all expenses. The sale ended Saturday May 28, 2016. We recieved our information and check on Friday June 24, 2016. That is 19 days, counting business days and holiday, not 15 days. According to the post mark the information was mailed 17 days after the deadline, not 15 days, so for all practical purposes [redacted] violated her own contract.
[redacted] told us not to come to the sale, we would just get in her way and it would be too emotional for us. We did go to witness and only stayed a short period of time during the sale. We were upset that there were three guys standing in the garage doing practically nothing and a friend of ours also went to the sale and commented on this same thing. [redacted] told us that we could help out prior to the sale to decrease costs, which we did.
[redacted] also was well aware that we would have to work on sorting stuff while her staff was present and she had plenty of rooms already done so that her staff was not delayed. We also told her that we would bring extra stuff from our lake cottage for the sale and she agreed to this as long as we got it to the house by Thursday, the day before the sale. She also said she had the right to stop taking extra stuff at her discretion, so that she could have stopped anything extra from coming into the house at any time, which she didn't. Besides, there were not 50 bags of added clothing.
Regardless, as I previously mentioned [redacted] violated her own contract so it seems rather hypocritical to bring up the contract to support some of her contentions and neglect it for others.
[redacted] even directed us where to place items when we sorted them to save her time so any critic of this is ridiculous. Also we did not tell [redacted]'s staff to include or not include items in the sale. We followed [redacted]'s directions on what would could sell, what should be donated, and what should be thrown out. [redacted] contends that most of our stuff was junk, well many of the items were of very high quality, and the worst quality stuff was placed in the garage at [redacted]'s discretion.
The cords were already in the garage or house prior to the sale and [redacted] saw these, so the contention that these were brought in after is false.
Again our complaint about the three men was not in the set up, but during the actual sale and even in the set up we moved many of the heavy items instead of the three men.
The only stains in the house were well documented by our real estate sales person. There were many additional stains that occurred during the sale. Our cleaning personal did not arrive until Sunday afternoon May 29. We have messages on our phone from the cleaning ladies to verify this. The cleaning ladies stayed out of the way of the charity movers, starting upstairs, where the charity movers had already moved all the items. The charity movers actually arrived late.
We never told [redacted] not to clean up after the sale and she said that was one of her services, as the contract stipulates. We had hired the cleaning service to just touch up and make sure that our house buyer would have nothing to complain about. So the [redacted] charge for cleaning is evidence of [redacted]'s negligence.
[redacted] arranged all the charity people to come and take items from the house not us, as she agreed to do this prior to the sale. We also helped the charity people do their moving and they were ecstatic to receive there items. Again [redacted] had directed us on what to throw out and not prior to the sale and stated that items not sold would be donated.
As far as the projection TV, [redacted] definitely saw this prior to the sale, it would be impossible to miss.
Again, [redacted] knew what was involved prior to the sale as she did a thorough inspection. All factors that she mentioned were seen or discussed prior to the sale. She essentially gave an estimate of costs that was not even close to the actual costs. The end result is a bait and switch where [redacted] collected 93% of the proceeds of the sale. If we would have known this we would have never hired [redacted].
If you need further documentation let us know.