We are in the midst of an estate sale in Austin TX. Like many things, estate sales are a little different in Austin.
We had a nice crowd and as always had a lot of fun. It was a great sale and I am looking forward to tomorrow.
Just for fun I did a little research on the Internet, checking out the web sites of other Estate Sale Managers in the area. There are a lot of people who do estate sales here, as you would expect. There were some interesting differences.
One thing that was surprising is that some local companies charge a "Setup Fee". For example, one company apparently has 3 principals. When they have an estate sale, they charge in excess of $100 per person "Setup Fee". This means several hunderd dollars are taken off the top of the estate sale proceeds. They also take off the advertising costs. Then after they have deducted all of that, they do a 60/40 split. Wow! Why would anyone put up with that? What do they think a commission is for?
Looking around I saw several other references to Setup Fees including on one website that proudly proclaimed they do not charge those fees. Good for them. They understand what fair business practices are and do not try to disguise their fees by calling labor costs Setup Fees, charging the clients for it, and then charging a more than a full and reasonable commission on top of that.
We work on a commission basis and never add an extra fee here or an extra fee there to try to pad our return. Working on a straight commission is the the best incentive one can have to provide the absolute best service you can provide.
Austin is fun. We love doing sales here. I know there are a lot of good, hard working, fair minded, and honest estate sale companies in Austin. It is a pleasure working alongside of those professionals. The efforts of the good professional companies working together can help change the bad image that many people in Austin (and elsewhere) have of the Estate Sale industry.
Come check out our sale in Austin Texas.
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Almost from the beginnings we have handled sales outside of the southeast Texas area including sales in southwest Louisiana, Houston, and the Dallas area. Now we are offering our services in Austin.
