Ebay Valet - Total Waste of Time

I recently tried Ebay Valet service and was deeply disappointed. Despite the ridiculously high fees to list your items for you, I was willing to give it a shot. I sent them 2 huge moving boxes with 14 items valued between $40 and $300. You can ship your items to them for free and they provide free return shipping for items that don't sell, which is nice, so you really have nothing to lose.

At first glance, I thought this was a really good way for people who don't have a lot of free time to list their wares online. Then I read the fine print. No fragile items, only items valued over $40, used items must be in perfect condition, etc.

So, after waiting 6 months, I contacted customer service again and they told me that none of the items had sold. I told them to send the items back and I received them back about a month later. I checked my inventory and 4 of the most valuable items were missing.

Long story made short, it was a gigantic waste of time. Anyone had an experience with Ebay Valet?

This experience just wont seem to end. Had to call eBay valet because several items were not returned. After investigating the missing items, eBay informs me that 3 items were damaged when they received them. Two of the items were antique 18" pewter statues valued at about $700 +/-.

The other item was an Asian urn. I was never able to determine the value of the urn, but I do recall that the tenant asked the storage facility manager to call me to see if she could get this urn back. The woman wasn't Asian, the urn was filled with candy and there was over 2 grand in silver found in the unit, yet she only asked for the urn back? Didn't make sense to me either. Who knows, maybe it's worth something.

Back to the eBay Valet fiasco. During the phone call with customer service, they informed me that eBay valet would be determining the value of the items and issuing payment via PayPal this week. This is the first thing they've done right so far. Now, being an optimistic cynic (yes, that's possible) I assume I'm going to get a payment for $58 and spend months going back and forth with them trying to get a fair value for the items. We'll just wait and see.