EstatesNY Estate Sales and Services

We engaged Estates NY and owner Wendy King to perform an estate sale at our home. After the sale ended we asked Ms. King and her daughter Jessica for a detailed accounting of every item they sold and for what price. We were told it would be sent shortly. Several weeks later we received a check with no explantation or backup. We followed up for an accounting. She texted "this is your total, I will send you an accounting" For the next several months , we continued to follow up by text, calls and emails and on the rare occasion when we did get a response, she was extremely rude and dismissive. She made us feel like we were wrong to ask what our life's possessions sold for and that we were crazy to ask. We are shocked at this behavior and lack of professionalism. We have been ignored, hung up on, taken advantage of and made to feel like fools for trusting Estates NY. We cannot in good conscious stand by and not say anything to other potential victims. We feel no one should have to be treated like this. We feel that people like us hiring estate sale companies that deal with someone lifelong possession should be treated with respect and honesty. We would suggest consumers to be very careful and be aware of their disreputable business practices.

The provider is an estate sale agent. Her (changed) commission was 30% of sales plus other fees, so the approximate cost is an estimate based on what we believe the estate goods would have sold for. We needed an estate sale agent to sell household items in New York. We met with four companies, and two were not interested in hosting the sale. We weighed the pros and cons of the remaining two (one of which was estatesny), and decided to go with the other company. After informing estatesny we chose the other company, here is the e-mail response we got: a THOROUGH waste of my time and a blatant misrepresentation ... my time gas, emails and otherwise deserved more than a two line turndown, but it is definitely for the best on my end. You are the kind of people that smile in your face while for lack of a better term, passive aggressively do whatever they want with a total and absolute lack of integrity. Call it what you will, WE are a local estate sale company, your choice was about money, and remember what I said, you get what you pay for. Needless to say, we were shocked. In the past I was a contractor, and driving to potential customers homes, talking to them, and giving them an estimate was just a part of doing business. I certainly did not pout and resort to name calling when I did not get the job. We sent this follow-up e-mail: I will be saving this response for appropriate feedback on the internet. You just confirmed I made the right decision. And got this response: You're upset? Oh dear. You didn't waste 10 hours of my time and staff costs, fuel costs, And deal with an endless barrage of questions designed to extract as much free information as possible--real clients know they need to pay for it. Regardless of your threats, I stand by my comments without reservation. If you make slanderous statements when you didn't even use our service, that will end up in court. We are booked solid through 2014 and I guess that speaks for itself. But make no mistake, you did misrepresent yourselves several times and I ALMOST lost another sale because you wanted that date. There was nothing in my response indicating I was upset, just matter of fact. Also, at no time did we mis-represent ourselves, I don't even know what she is talking about. We had informed her we were meeting other companies. She did raise her commission from a verbally agreed upon amount though, and left out many additional charges such as set up fee, advertising, and clean-up. We only noticed those when she finally e-mailed a contract. I cannot recommend calling this company for estate services. If you decide to go with someone else, be prepared for a childish verbal assault like the one I just posted.