Boycott "Buyer's Premium"

As long as I make money...

Have only attended one auction with a buyers premium of 10%.. The Auctioneer would wait for the door to open then stand there gaping in. Then he would start the bidding what he thought he could get out of it. Only on one did he end up where he started. He was frustrated because he did not make a lot of money that day... He still made bank but not what he wanted... LOL
So not on the boycott band wagon really don't have to be not that many near me. Would be better to encourage the storage facility to use a non BP service our do them themselves.

Correction One of my main Auctioneers said today "there are some changes there will be 10% BP but no cleaning deposit" Guess the shows are still having an impact.

Confirming Extra Space is charging this 10% fee via StorageAuctionsUSA here in MA. Not to mention they cut the locks prior to the auction and I've heard rumors that the mangers look through the units to inventory them as well as take pictures.

I'm still pretty new with this, but I'm pretty hesitant about bidding on their lockers and so far I haven't seen many nice ones at their locations.

Confirming Extra Space is charging this 10% fee via StorageAuctionsUSA here in MA. Not to mention they cut the locks prior to the auction and I've heard rumors that the mangers look through the units to inventory them as well as take pictures.

I'm still pretty new with this, but I'm pretty hesitant about bidding on their lockers and so far I haven't seen many nice ones at their locations.

Its a normal practice, and depending on your state laws it may be required to do so.

It's very common for the prop mgrs to cut locks and take overall pictures from the door (a wide shot). They then place a legal notice in a newspaper of record (or even a fickle nickle kind of paper). Typically the ad has to run twice before the auction date and typically that is in a two week period just before the auction.

They also send out registered letters to the lkr contents owner. They get those back if they are undeliverable by the post office.

Given all this there is no reason the frm contents has any reason to complain. If they didn't give the post office a forwarding address or a new telephone number, that is on them.

*****

Some prop mgrs may walk in the lkr and they may even open a box or two to see what's inside. Depending on how honest they are, it can go from there. Most will be honest and not take anything...others are not so honest.

Honestly I don't see many people not bidding on a unit because of a buyer's premium. Sure, in the back of their mind they know that they will pay an extra 10%, but not a lot of people are going to factor that in to their final price.

With the final purchase price being such a subjective matter, you might decide that the 10% pushes you over the edge, but that extra $100's might still be far below another bidders overall estimate.

It's a smart move by the auction owners to squeeze out a few more  bucks, but when the market reverts back to some normalcy (if it ever does, maybe this is the new normal?) Then I can see the premium hurting them.

Boycotting will just mean someone else will be standing in your place in the auction line.