Pros, Cons and Legalities of Online Storage Auctions

Don't know if this particular article has been posted here before as I don't follow the online scene as much as someone like Travis would, but if it has, he can direct us to an already exisitng link...  OTHERWISE...here's some dope on the pros, cons and LEGALITIES of this "trend."

insideselfstorage (dot) com/articles/2013/02/the-pros-cons-and-legalities-of-online-selfstorage-auctions.aspx

Several facilities on NorCal sell online now.
I have not yet won one, bid on 2 just to be horrendously outbid.

It appears to me as a buyer you simply don't have the view you would have on your own.
The site I looked at also opens everything they can access, take LITERALLY sometimes over 15 pics of the same damn HomeDepot box, making it look like there is more than it is.

Overall it just does not 'feel right' when I see their auctions.
They also post a full length video of the entire process in the auction.

My biggest concern is staging/theft of units. But I realized that is no more less or more likely than any other auction, as we are usually not around whe the lock is cut and the unit inventoried.

But the bids online seem MUCH higher as much as 2-3 times of what you would expect for the same unit in a live auction.
I contribute that to newwbees and the lazy wannabees sitting on their asses at home and it is REAL easy to get carried away when you are not in the heat of the actual auction and see how much dirty crap it is, you have to haul.

One local facility alwready went back to regular auctions due to massive problems with buyers, asking for more tinme to clean out, because they live 2 hours away. No shows and all that.

I hope this is just a fluke and will go away.

The higher prices should not be a major incentive for the facilities as any overages go to the tenant anyway.

Just my dirty 2 cents...

It think I posted it a few months ago. It was written just before VirtualStorageAuction.com came out. If they would have known about VSA at the time they wrote the article, it would have been titled "the pros and legalities of online storage auctions." Seriously though, VSA provides a solution to all the cons the writer lists.

Has anyone dealt with Storage Battles online? I have tried twice for local auctions and the first time I couldn't get in to bid after I had been outbid. Today I bid, got outbid came back in to bid the last minute or so and all of a sudden my account wasn't updated?? This seems to be pretty crooked to me. How can it be good one minute and not the next? I have emailed them to tell me exactly what is missing as I cannot find anything wrong. I also asked that they send me a link to where I am to go to "update". They never returned my email from the auction question a month or so ago. It'll be interesting to see if they do this time. Oh well, just needed to vent a little...If they are crooked I sure don't want to waste my time with them and would love to blog about it at the same time. :-)

Has anyone dealt with Storage Battles online? I have tried twice for local auctions and the first time I couldn't get in to bid after I had been outbid. Today I bid, got outbid came back in to bid the last minute or so and all of a sudden my account wasn't updated?? This seems to be pretty crooked to me. How can it be good one minute and not the next? I have emailed them to tell me exactly what is missing as I cannot find anything wrong. I also asked that they send me a link to where I am to go to "update". They never returned my email from the auction question a month or so ago. It'll be interesting to see if they do this time. Oh well, just needed to vent a little...If they are crooked I sure don't want to waste my time with them and would love to blog about it at the same time. :-)

You're not the only one who has reported issues like this.

Well, that definitely seems to reinforce what others are saying.

Notice at the end of their response how they try to pass the blame "I am forced to conclude that DSMITH is either a competitor or someone who has sour grapes about losing an auction, but the facts as stated in this post are fabricated!"

Apparently it's happening enough that people are taking notice. I doubt there is actually fraud on their part...sounds more like coding/design problems to me. That's what you get when you have a custom site built by someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

Just for kicks, I decided to search AuctionsTX.com 3000 +/- members for people named Smith. We have 33 members with that last name, 4 of which have first names beginning with D and two of those members are from the Houston area. What I find hard to believe is that they claim to have 250,000 registered users but in their response they say they don't have a user with the name D Smith. That's highly unlikely if not down right unbelievable.

I have dealt with Storage Battles for two auctions won.  One was a huge mistake my partner made with the bidding but Storage Battles was fine.  The other one was a $20 unit I got and again no problems. 

I do agree that the pictures are not sufficient compared to being there and seeing things in scale with your own eyes. My $20 unit had a desk that I thought was smaller than it actually was and the mirror was not what I thought even after careful screening.  All in all it was still a good buy for $20 but not what I thought.

Still I bet there will be more storage auctions online because the bottom line is better for the storage facilities.  I know my sample size is extremely small but  the two facilities that had online auctions were very nice facilities with great managers Advantage Storage in Irving TX and Store More in Allen, TX.  They were both high end facilities.

I think there is a place for online auctions and I will always browse the ones near me.  There are opportunities to snipe a good unit for cheap, but you won't be able to get a "great" locker because those price will be outrageous

The prices online right now are great! Before they would got for 3 times what a person would pay at a live auction according to my friend that runs a facility and yes I know what lockers he has that are good look but dont touch anything. Thats what she said.