PAUL MCINNIS LLC

Good luck with future sales

So I won a $90 item, a wall clock. They sent it to a UPS Store for shipping. It's 2 weeks later, it still wasn't shipped. The UPS store thinks it's ok to wait forever to pick the items up and ship them. I will never deal with them again.

For me, this was an auction for the frame even though the painting is nice and I am happy to have received it. The frame was the reason I bid the amount that I did, and knowing that this auction was centered on the frame, I have 2 major problems with the way the auction was conducted. The fist problem is that there is extensive shedding/peeling of the gold leaf on the frame and it is very hard to see on the photos that the auction house provided. If the auction house was not going to provide close-ups or photos with higher resolution, they should have stated in the description that the frame had extensive shedding/peeling. It is occurring all over the frame on all sides and given that the frame was driving the bidding, it was something significant to mention since it is not something that would come to the average person's attention through the auction photos. The second major problem I had with this auction is what I saw as an attempt of the auctioneer to drive up the price at the end. It is not uncommon for an auction to slow down during the final bids, but this auctioneer's actions were excessive. The auction was broadcast on video, so you could see the auctioneer basically stop the auction to ask for bids at the end. It would have been different if we had not already exceeded the low estimate, but we had. We ended up going over the high estimate because of the auctioneer. Instead of hammering the auction to a close, he looked over to where the bid was coming from that competed with my bid and he literally encouraged my competitor to bid while he waited. You can see it on the video. The auctioneer's action was troubling and cost me $250 (including the extra $50 buyer's premium that goes straight to the auction house). The auctioneer took the same action after my last bid, but the competitor did not take the bait a second time, and the auctioneer reluctantly closed the bidding. I was very disappointed with the photos of the frame and the actions of the auctioneer.