Kestenbaum &

My experience with Kestenbaum Auction house started well but has ended very poorly. I listed a very rare book with them that ended up selling at the reserve price agreed to. However, upon selling, I have not been paid any of the money.

After contacting several times for a request of payment, I've been told the check was delayed but never came. I was then told a wire would be sent that afternoon - never came. After sending several emails requesting a follow-up, no response was ever given.

To date, I am out a significant amount of money simply because the Kestenbaum & Company refuses to send payment for goods that it auctions (i.e., if you list items with them, then do not expect to be paid if they sell!)

This review is hard for me to write. It will be the first bad review I have made in my time using the internet. Given that my experience is consistent with other negative reviews of Kestenbaum & Company that I have read, I feel compelled to leave it.
I reached out to this company in August of 2022 in order to see if they could sell some of my famous grandfathers personal and professional items(His name is Moshe Oysher). I quickly received and e-mail back from Daniel saying that they could indeed sell them and in fact would include his items in their up coming 100th auction anniversary, to be held that December. He told me that I would need to get the items to them by October. I packed up a large heavy box with personal items and memorabilia and spent about 160$ to send it to them In September 2022.
The hundredth anniversary came and went without including his items. It was like pulling teeth to get any kind of adequate communication from them. But Shaya assured me that my grandfathers items would be in the next auction. Now I was hostage to their decisions. The next one came and went, again without including the items. Again with little explanation or communication. Up to this point all communication had be through e-mail. I now wished to talk to anyone at the company by phone. This was impossible. All attempts at calling failed to reach anyone, and no messages left were returned.
Finally in June of 2023, nine months after receiving my grandfathers items they were include in an auction . To be sold all as one lot. In the end there were no bids on the lot; they did not sell. I was told after the auction that they would try to sell them privately, of course for a lower than expected price. I requested that this not happen, because I would rather keep Moshe's belongings in the family rather than under sell them.
They proceeded to box them back up and of course charge me the 160$ to send them back across the country.
So customer beware! Not a pleasant experience.

Review: This auction house caused me a lot of distress and waste of time and money. They are not honest people in the slightest and cannot be trusted. Multiple times after emailing them with books for sale they asked me to ship and never ended up listing it at auction! so why did he ask me to ship? because [redacted] is too lazy to do research when he gets an email and instead asks to have the books sent as if he is interested, and in worst case he just returns it to you. Well let me say that I spent thousands on investments based on the fact that he told me he would list it and never ended up happening. I also lost a lot of money from shipping since I am currently in Israel. When ever I had valid questions regarding my books, such as the estimates or simply the whereabouts of my books since he would not list them after over a year!!! I would get no response. Only after calling the office everyday for a week and emailing the whole team would he return my emails and then in a politically correct way would accuse me of being demanding. After speaking to many other consigners I realized that I am not the only one who suffered from the abuse caused by this firm. He would blame me for his actions and say that it's my fault that there is confusion between us. So I went as far as to send a family member to him ( paid for gas ) to make things clear and pick up the books he did not want (even though I had to pay to ship it to him), he promised my brother he would list all the remaining books, and of course he lied and did not list most of them once again. Additionally there was hidden fee's such as insurance and other charges which have not been mentioned to me over the email agreement. Also when he did give me an estimate it meant nothing, he would then adjust the price to his liking without confirming with me. I even got a check not signed from him and have serious reason to believe this was intentional. I can go on until tomorrow about the horrible things I went thru with this firm. After nearly 2 years dealing with this firm I spoke to [redacted] only once over the phone after maybe 20 attempts at confirming legitimate concerns with him. When he know i'm the one calling the response is always the same, he's in a meeting. I deal with many other auction houses and it is a real pleasure. these people should not be in business.Desired Settlement: I don't want to deal with this person anymore. I have 3 remaining books I would like him to return them to me and I will be done with him. Contrary to what he thinks, I will not pay for the return shipping of these items as he requested. He is responsible and he should be refunding me the cost of having all the unlisted books shipped to him in the first place and wasting so much of my time.

Consumer

Response:

The complaint has been fully resolved to my complete satisfaction. If you can please withdraw the complaint fully, please do so, since my complaints are not valid anymore. I realized that I may have blown things out of proportion so I do not think it is fair that the company should pay the price. If not possible to completely remove this mistake, at least please mark it as resolved so that we can both move forward.

Sincerely,