Thrifty Thursday: Honest Reseller Stories

Since really devoting time to The Reclaimed Vintage, I have had the literal joy of curating beautiful high end and designer pieces and delivering them to many of you. Currently, I am an Above Standard on eBay and a 5 star rated seller on Poshmark. I don't say that to brag, I say that to say that I try to do my best with every single sale that comes through, from finding and assessment of each item down to shipping it out as quickly as possible. And for the most part, my buyers love my services.

I am excited because a few of you have even written to me about staring your own reselling. I am psyched for you and I really do hope you all have as much fun as I am having! However, I would be irresponsible if I didn't prepare you for he downside of reselling.

There are those people who you run into who are very, well, peopley. Some ask super weird questions, some never leave any feedback, some complain for no other reason other than the fact that they feel like complaining. So I have decided, on this thrifty Thursday, that I would share with you a few of the annoying, strange, and one down right hilarious stories.

This is a short list of the craziness that I have encountered in the three years of reselling.

One woman bought a $300+ coat from me (for about a tenth of that price), in PERFECT condition but because it was missing a belt (also in the description) she demanded that I refund her a portion of the coat's price. Nope. Not at all. Reading is fundamental.

There was once when a woman opened a "item not as described" case against me for a perfect pair of shoes I sent her because she couldn't find the shoe size on the shoes. (face palm). Apparently that is my fault somehow. The platform closed the case and gave me my cash.

I even had a fellow seller seek to sabotage my success. This seller went through each of my items on my selling platform and left nasty, rude, and even a few profane comments. When I would block her, she would start a new profile to come and write new ones. This process happened over 5 different accounts and 2 hours later, almost all of my items were covered in these comments. Thank God for the helpful folks at the platform quality control center removing each one of those slanderous comments. They even cleared away the fake profiles. Oh, and that night, I made a pretty big sale too. Just goes to show you that reaping and sowing is so real.

Another time, I sold a gorgeous silver bracelet to a woman, following some haggling. I polished it for her, shipped it off to her, no problem, right? Wrong. A day or two later, she messages me, complaining that one of the background items featured in the cover picture of the item was not sent to her along with the bracelet (keep in mind, her purchase was the bracelet). The item she was complaining about was literally in the background and was for decorative purposes. No where in the description of the bracelet was there any mention of the inclusion of this item. It would be as like taking pictures of the bracelet with flowers and she expected me to send her the flowers. No. Incorrect assumption. Before I had the chance to respond ( it was literally 5 minutes later and I was in the middle of explaining what I explained above) when she opened an "item not as described" case against me. Sigh. Needless to say, once the people in charge of that sales platform say her reasoning, they gave me my cash and dropped the case.

The latest nightmare actually happened fairly recently: There was the woman, who, for whatever reason, just wanted to leave bad feedback on an item she received earlier than expected, in pristine condition, for way below the price I wanted to give it to her for. Apparently reaching out to her to see if there was anything I could do to fix the problem was an even worse idea. She proceeded to berate me about how she can leave whatever feedback. Where it got funny was when she (almost screeching over the screen) proceeded to tell me that both my item and myself were fake. To which I could do nothing but laugh out loud and move on. I got paid. She can keep the item and her bad attitude.

Reselling is pretty fun for the most part. I love finding beautiful, high quality things, some things that are typically out of the price range of many of many of us, and bringing them to people. The majority of people really do appreciate it, they find what they are looking for and fall in love with it. And that is what drives me, treating each of my customers with the high end treatment for less than their weekly Starbucks run.

And for those who do appreciate it, it make every few and far between nightmare, annoyance, and bad review worth it.