Anyone interested in selling physical goods online will no doubt be familiar with websites that provide large quantities of stock at greatly reduced rates, and one very popular website in this field is liquidation.com.
However, in recent times there have been a number of complaints online about liquidation.com and the quality of the stock that you can purchase on their website.
Is this just another example of buyers not getting exactly what they paid for, or is it a genuine case of liquidation.com misleading its customers? We take a closer look…
First of all, liquidation.com was established in 1998 as a liquidation auction site, and over the following years, it became established as a standard within the industry.
By late 2010 it was averaging around 70,000 visitors per month, as buying and selling goods from companies like liquidation.com peaked in popularity.
But during this period of growth, it also received many negative reviews from customers who felt they had been misled or misinformed over the stock they were purchasing.
So I decided to write this post following an email from a regular workfromhomewatchdog.com visitor who felt she had a bad deal at liquidation.com.
What the heck is going on here?
Is liquidation.com a genuine service, or is there no smoke without fire??
The first thing to remember is…this is a service very similar to eBay, where liquidation.com simply lists details of stock available to purchase via auction.
The difference is, liquidation.com sells goods in bulk and in various states of condition.
From my own research and understanding of the complaints made against them, the majority came about between 2007 – 2010.
The more serious complaints against them appeared to have slowed considerably since that time.
Could this mean that liquidation.com eventually got its house in order? Probably, although I’m not going to say that is definitely the case.
Instead, I would like to focus on what I consider to be the biggest problem with stock sold on liquidation.com. Unfortunately, I think it will always be a problem area…
Buyers feel they are being misled about the quality of the stock they are buying.
During my investigation, this was a consistent complaint, and it is a big concern.
Of course, buying stock that is not new carries a degree of risk anyway – especially if the value of your purchase is a few thousand dollars.
This leads nicely to the next most-reported problem by those who have used liquidation.com – customer service/support.
I would imagine that offering support to customers buying stock of this type is one tough job, and would therefore require a solid support network along with strict policies.
Whilst many of the complaints are focused on the quality of the goods, people are generally as unhappy with the fact that liquidation.com hide behind their terms and conditions.
In doing so they do not lose out when it comes to their cut of the deal.
Is this ethical? I don’t think so.
In my opinion, this combo of negatives is bad news for the most important component of the liquidation.com process…the customer.
What concerns me the most is they do attract people who are fairly new to this type of business. People who maybe can’t see through the marketing fog.
I can now see why a lot of the complaints focus on misleading information.
For the record, I don’t think the information is necessarily misleading, but I can see how people reach that conclusion.
One final point of interest that I discovered during my research…since May of 2011, the traffic stats for liquidation.com have dropped substantially by over 20,000 visitors per month.
I know from my own online experience this could be mostly related to Google search engine ranking updates that have taken place.
However, I’m also inclined to believe that all the negative feedback online is starting to affect liquidation.com.
Or could it just be that selling liquidation stock is perhaps not as lucrative as it has been in the past?
Liquidation.com is, without a doubt, an established business, but that doesn’t always count for much online.
If you are considering using Liquidation.com, my advice is to proceed with caution for the reasons stated above.
Marcus – WFHW
