Jackline O

Unethical Auctioneers

I had an extremely bad experience with Auction Pro located at Cedar Avenue, Fourways together with their partner company, Not Too Shabby. These two businesses are interrelated, one runs as an Auction House and the second one sells used household furniture. I contacted asking them whether they deal in second hand kitchen and bedroom cabinets, they advised that they don’t but could offer me the service of auctioning my goods through their warehouse to make some money. When I enquired regarding the terms and conditions of their auctioning process, they sent an email with two sentences indicating that there is no reserve price accepted on goods being placed on auction and they would deduct the cost of picking up the goods from the auction proceeds. When I asked for paper work they advised that there would be forms with details of bank accounts to be filled but monies would only be transferred once the goods were sold. They indicated that goods typically get sold in a day. The lack of paperwork work should have been the first indication of what was to follow. I agreed for their third party driver to pick up my goods, these were picked up on time with my bakkie full of kitchen and bedroom cupboards being sold for a whopping R125! With my sink mixer going for R450. Incidentally my goods were sold at a cost just enough to cover their transport costs! When I asked for evidence that there was a real buyer, all I received were internally generated invoices. I struggled to get through to their business owner, a Trevor Stiebel, to get feedback regarding the transparency of their auction process because I complained about my customer experience to his PA who had indicated that Trevor was too busy to take my call but advised that I should call him back the next day. When I called back the phone went straight to voicemail, they had blocked my cellphone number and none of my calls were able to go through. The agent I was dealing with claimed that the business was not hers and all she was doing was facilitating the paper work. I would advise anyone thinking of selling their second hand furniture through this Auction Pro to be very cautious!