Today, we’ll review the wholesale source, Liquidation.com. We get the information you need to make an informed decision. If there’s anything else you’d like to know, please leave a comment.
What is Liquidation.com?
Liquidation.com is an auction site that specializes in wholesale merchandise. They carry everything from jewelry to computers to tools to industrial ovens. Don’t expect to buy 1 item here unless of course it’s an industrial oven or a truck. (Yes, they also have wholesale lots of cars and trucks.) Most lots consist of 50 to 100 pieces. The site is very active and always seems to have an abundance of merchandise to choose from. Their stock ticker is LQDT for all you financial analysts out there.
What kinds of products are they offering and how do the prices compare?
They offer new, used, returned, refurbished, and salvaged merchandise. Most have the disclaimer that all sales are as-is. Meaning, those 20 lcd monitors you just bought for $100 might not actually work. It’s up to you to check out the products before placing your bid. This is my official warning for you to read the fine print and do a reality check before placing any bids. There is a nice selection of merchandise on this site, but you still need to watch out for the duds.
Do they have name brand merchandise?
Yes. A quick scan shows that they carry products from Dell, Apple, HP, Compaq, Samsung, and a slew of other name brands. (Sorry, that was my techie side showing. You’ll also see brands like: Coach, Kenneth Cole, Movado, and Rocawear.)
Do they have the products that are in demand?
Yes, the products you’ll find there are the types of products that are in demand. Web cams, LCD TVs, purses, jewelry, and consumer electronics are all found at Liquidation.com. Their most popular category is consumer electronics with jewelry and watches coming in a close second. The electronics products generally aren’t the latest models, but you’ll see that the prices take that into account.
How are their prices? Is there room for markup?
This is an auction site, so the products go for the price you bid. Popular products may get bid up to fairly high amounts, but if you do your research before bidding, you should be able to set a budget and stick to it. $100 for 10 digital cameras might be a great deal, but $1200 not so much. There are tons of great deals to be found on this site, but again you need to watch out for the duds.
How is the shipping?
Liquidation.com has warehouses all over the United States so you should be able to find items at a location near you. This will help immensely when shipping large wholesale lots. This is another area that can catch you off guard. For large and cheap items, the shipping could exceed the amount paid for the product itself. They have links on the auction pages so you can get shipping quotes or ask questions before placing your bid. DO THIS! Those monitors won’t be a great deal if you have to pay $1000 for shipping.
How is their customer service?
I was surprised to find actual email addresses available on their contact page. You can easily email or call their support or service departments with any questions. They also give the phone number to their headquarters which you can call from 9AM to 6PM Eastern time. (Actual customer service test to be posted soon.)
Summary of Liquidation.com
I think Liquidation.com is an excellent place to get started with wholesale merchandise. You can easily browse the products and prices without having to commit to anything. With the power of the Internet, you can find a product on Liquidation.com, open Google in a new window and search for the current price. I also recommend searching Ebay for the product to determine the going price and scope out your competition. If the market is flooded with $2 auctions for your product, just look for another product.
Registration is free and allows you to ask your questions to the sellers. Don’t be afraid to ask tough questions. Once you win an auction, you’re responsible for what you bought. Whether you just want to get started selling wholesale products or you just want to sell a few things on Ebay, I think Liquidation.com is a great place to test the waters. Click here to register for a free account.
Disclosure: I have an affiliate account with Liquidation.com. If you sign up for an account through a link on SellWholesale.com I might receive some compensation. I hope you found the review useful and if you do sign up for an account at Liquidation.com I hope you use the links on this page. Every bit of compensation helps keep this site online.
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how can u say this about liquidation.com? did u not google them before your blog post?99% of reviews say it is a shame. I don’tknow this personally but after an hour of research on them i am sick to my stomach
Jason, You will find terrible things said about just about any company you can think of. I think many of the complaints about Liquidation.com come from buyers having problems with the companies offering products in the auctions. In those cases, the complaints shouldn’t be directed at Liquidation.com, but rather with the company the goods were purchased from.
Here’s a fairly even back-and-forth post about Liquidation.com and whether they’re a scam or not. I encourage you to do a little more research before judging. No company is perfect, and if you want to find bad information, you will.
Buyer Beware! Please Read Carefully~
The items were delivered Friday the 27Th of February, 2009. I disputed the transaction on the 28Th of February, 2009. I sent documentation and photos. My dispute was received, reviewed and honored. I received that conformation, and was told to send dresses back with return labels. Email conformation below. I requested return labels as they were not sent to me, I then received an email asking if I wanted the seller to send additional dresses as replacement for defective ones, I replied no thank you, I would return the dresses. Emails below. All communication from liquidation.com stopped at that point, I have sent at least 20 emails, I have read receipts but no response. I called liquidation.com only to get a message machine. I left message and have not received a call back. I am left with no other recourse but to file a dispute of transaction with my credit card company. Liquidation.com are no more than thieves, that knowingly sell defective products, with no regard to it’s buyers. Be warned, the products they sell are less than garbage, they are fully aware of this, and continue to sell these products~ I also would like to respond to Jason’s comment, it is Liquidation.com’s policy that you may not contact the seller (who by the way is “1finderzkeprz” ) all disputes for transactions are handled by the Dispute Transactions dept, as is their policy.
—– Original Message —– From: Paula~ To: disputephotos AT liquidation.com Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 6:33 PM Subject:SAMPLES PICS FOR DISPUTE TRANSACTION # 1491923
First, I only received 116 of the 121 dresses stated for receipt in auction, I do not know which I did not receive since it was not stated as to how many of each there were. Second there are black spots on some of the dresses and flower attachments, as shown in photos, 1 has a tear of the zipper seam, 1 is coming apart at collar line of ornamentation, and 9 of the 10 dresses with flower ornamentation are smashed beyond repair, the pic to show flower ornamentation in the auction does not represent what was sent. Clearly the boxes were over packed for shipment, I don’t know if the flowers were as I received them because of over stuffing the boxes or if they were are sent in this condition, but they are not resalable. I am not sure weather this is standard for this company, but all of the wholesale orders that I have received up to this point have been absolutely great. I also need to state that I thought that I was going to receive good quality dresses, these are not to say the least. I have disputed this transaction thru PayPal until we can get this resolved. Thank you. paula eckstine to disputes show details Feb 28 (6 days ago) Reply Hi, I have sent pics for the dispute, can you please confirm that you received them? Thank you. Paula Eckstine
via RT to peckstine AT gmail.com Mar 2 —
Yes , we received the photos for the dispute, and the dispute has been honored. please return the units back using the labels that we sent. Thank You, Buyer Relations
Paula~ to support show details Mar 4 (2 days ago) Reply
I need to have return labels sent so that I may get this resolved. Thank you Paul Eckstine
via RT to peckstine AT gmail.com Mar 2 — I’m so sorry for the confusion, we are not ready to return the units yet. The seller states that he Seller is willing send 24 dresses to compensate for the 10 dresses with issues. 1491923 Any styles and sizes 4 to 6x (Sizes) 7 to 14 (Sizes). Would you like to receive the dresses? Please let us know. Thank You, Buyer Relations
peckstine AT gmail.com to via show details Mar 2 (4 days ago) Reply
No thank you, I will return the dresses. Paula Eckstine –
Show quoted text – Read: SAMPLES PICS FOR DISPUTE TRANSACTION # 1491923Reply Derek Birt
Paula,
I’m sorry to hear about your trouble. However, I think the solution offered by the seller seems reasonable. Obviously, I don’t have all of the details of your situation, but to return a shipment of 100 good dresses over the 11 that were damaged and 5 missing seems unreasonable. The seller offered you an additional 24 dresses for the 16 that were missing or damaged. Unless there’s another reason for you wanting to return the entire lot of dresses, it doesn’t make sense to me that you wouldn’t accept their offer. You mentioned that all previous orders had been great, so something just isn’t adding up for me.
However, if you’ve been sending emails to Liquidation.com with no response, I agree that’s wrong. The only thing I can think of is that they took your last email to mean that you don’t want their help, and you’ll be returning the dresses yourself. “No thank you, I will return the dresses.” Regardless of that, if you’ve sent follow-up emails since then, they should respond.
My recommendation would be to detail these events in an email to Liquidation.com and any contacts you have at the selling company. I would accept the offer of 24 additional dresses as compensation for your trouble. For future orders, perhaps you should take your business elsewhere.
Beware!
Liquidation.com is very tricky. Will sell you broken merchandise as ‘returns’ even though according to their own classification it should be listed as ‘salvage’. When I filed dispute based on what I just described I was told by their customer service that item can be fixed (at my expense, of cause) and after I argued that they just closed my account without any warnings. When I joined Liquidation.com as a buyer they offered 3 (three) days for inspection after item is delivered to you. Now it’s 2 (two) days (compare to eBay’s 21 (twenty one) days. There is no way to provide a feedback to seller or contact a seller.
One more thing. They have ‘BBB’ stamp on their front page but Better Business Bureau has no record of Liquidation.com.
BK,
I’m hearing a lot of bad things about Liquidation.com from my readers. At this point, I’ll agree with “buyer beware”. Before dealing with Liquidation.com or any other wholesaler / distributor, I suggest reading through every word of their policies and procedures. If you don’t understand, or don’t agree with any of the policies, do not do business with that company.
Another option is to test their communications skills before engaging in business with them. Send them an email with a few general questions. If they don’t respond or don’t answer satisfactorily, use your own judgment when deciding to do business with them or not.
As for their Better Business Bureau status, they are incorporated as Liquidity Services, Inc. They are also traded on the Nasdaq market under the symbol LQDT. You can find more information about them at: LiquidityServicesInc.com
I have purchased from liquidation.com for some months now. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. The one thing that sticks to me is how the Buyer Relations Dept is suppose to be there to support the buyers; but in return they follow the guide lines as we stand behind our warehouses. Some items I purchased and was scheduled for pick up, once the items were delivered to me I only had 1 of the lots that I paid for. I was told that they were still at the warehouse when I called the front office, but was later told that the items were picked up after I complained to Buyers Relations. Hello did I miss something, you just told me they were still there and now they were picked up and that you have a signed form for this. I asked for the forms to be sent to me, it took nearly 2 weeks and they gave me forms that was signed off on by my driver that I had hired 2 weeks after my missing shipment problem. Can you believe that, they had a new driver sign off on the items that was suppose to be picked up weeks ago and passed it off as an old release document, which by the way did not have a date on it. I spoke to BR several times, thought they would resolve the matter for me, only to find out that they didn’t or wouldn’t resolve anything. So now I do not have my items nor did I receive a refund.
I also believe that Liquidation.com uses their own employees or the employees of the sellers are bidding on their own auctions. The same buyers Smartsaver, Gesia, Smok1, and what now seems to be many more they go in and jack up the prices. It doesn’t surprise me that they have so many items relisted. Liquidation.com – Liquidity Services is nothing but a scam. They rip you off and if they can’t do it in a nasty way they find a sneaky way to do it. It’s sad, but as I read one person say, there is really nothing that we can do about it. AT LEAST NOT RIGHT NOW anyway.
Jayson, I think before you review a vendor or resource you should make a purchase or talk to buyers who have has some success with the company. In apparel auctions , they will take a 3 pc. childrens set and break into 3 seperate items and ship it to three different buyers. This leaves the buyer with no hope of a return on his investment. I have received apparel items that were wet and had serious mold problems.
When you suggested someone contact the vedor rather than blame Liquidation.com it shown a complete lack on knowledge. Why would anyone go thru the auction process if they could have direct contact with the vendor. On a 50 pc. lot you will be charges approx. $50 for the auction fee and shipping and logistics (whatever that is)
Jayson, I think before you review a vendor or resource you should make a purchase or talk to buyers who have has some success with the company. In apparel auctions , they will take a 3 pc. childrens set and break into 3 seperate items and ship it to three different buyers. This leaves the buyer with no hope of a return on his investment. I have received apparel items that were wet and had serious mold problems.
When you suggested someone contact the vedor rather than blame Liquidation.com it shown a complete lack on knowledge. Why would anyone go thru the auction process if they could have direct contact with the vendor. On a 50 pc. lot you will be charges approx. $50 for the auction fee and shipping and logistics (whatever that is)
Sid,
My review of Liquidation.com is simply something for my readers to get started with. If you are serious about making a purchase, I hope your own research involves more than simply reading a few blog posts. You should re-read my reply to BK above.
Basically, this article is working because it’s getting the bad reviews out to the public. So far, I’ve only heard bad experiences and even the good reviews have some trouble sprinkled in. At this point, I’d like to reiterate that you need to do a good deal of research before buying from any online merchant. Of course you should read blog posts and reviews, but like I said above, you also need to contact the merchant (Liquidation.com in this case) to verify that they respond to your inquiries in a time and fashion that’s acceptable to you.
If anyone out there has had an absolutely wonderful experience with Liquidation.com, I’d love to hear it. Until then…buyer beware.
Buyer beware or just stay away. Liquidation.coms terms and conditions does not clearly spell what their obligations are when you pay for item and never receive it.
I have gotten conflicting information as to my refund for items not received. It’s been weeks since my purchase. Every time I call I et a different answer to timelines as to when I will get my money back. They have failed to respond to every single one of my emails about the cancellation and refund. But they were sure to make sure that I was fully informed that my invoice was to be paid immediately and if not paid within two business day I would get a $200 fee.
Also, do your research on their estimated value, so far all have been highly overblown.
Very expensive lesson for me. I’ve spent several thousand the one week I used their auction site and later found everything cheaper at ebay, particularly if I was willing to purchase from out of the US.
A very horrible and expensive experience.
I have id on several of the auctions at liquidation.com. ran into shill bidding. when i actually won something it came in poorly packed in used broken boxes. I paid for 76 lbs of shipping in 2 different packages and it arrived in one box barely held together with tape and they only paid for 30 lbs of shipping and most of the expensive items were missing. Another auction I won 400 lbs of computer returns – a whole pallet- paid 350 in shipping and what I received was broken home DVD player trays and smashed wide screen LCD TV screens no computer parts at all. I contacted customer service, they basically said TOO BAD! I am going to have to take them to court. This is BY FAR THE WORST RIP-OFF COMPANY THERE IS!
DO NOT BUY FROM THIS COMPANY EVER! THIS IS A TOTAL RIPOFF!
@qwerty, Be cautious when taking Liquidation.com to court. It’s likely they’ll find a way to get it thrown out, then you’ll be out the amount of your “purchase” as well as court costs. If you go through with it, good luck.
Again, I’d love to hear someone with a success story about Liquidation.com. However, it would have to be quite the success to balance out all of the negative reviews in the comments so far.
Recently tried liquidation.com only for a month now. My first purchase was successful I received the item the next day after I paid for them. I end up paying $1 each item after winning the bid but I couldn’t even sell them for $1.50. I am not blaming liquidation.com for that my mistake, I probably should have research what most likely to sell online. 2nd time items were described as new but half of them are factory rejects and about to rip apart. I couldn’t stand the smell while I was sorting them out, they have this moldy smell and some of them are even wet. I disputed the item but just after 2 days I started bidding on my 3rd item. I won it and received it after a week 3 heavy load of cosmetics, nail products etc. I have 450 items missing in addition to that number, about 250 are damaged or use, 500 are not describe and 148 are empty plastic containers that were at the bottom. 5100 pcs on the listing probably about 2000 you can resell for a little low price not even a dollar. Oh yes, I counted each of them took me 2 days to finish but made it to their 2 day policy. It wasn’t described as NEW so I knew not to expect much from it, they describe it as SHELF PULL. But to receive something that should have been in the trash is unexceptable. I am still waiting for a decision and I have $1200 at stake at the moment. If they deny the claim I will try to dispute it to my credit card company. After reading all the reviews from them I can’t get it out of my mind that I might be just kissing my $1200 goodbye. I’m just a pregnant woman for my first child who’s husband is deployed and staying home by myself is so boring I thought of something like resell will overcome my boredom and make alittle $$$ aswell. But then again, my dispute is still on process I’ll cross my fingers maybe they change their bad old ways.
Have you actually USED liquidation.com? You certainly have a lot invested in promoting it. As a buyer with 20 years experience, and having used it over the course of the past 12 months, I can say the following:
1) Read EVERYTHING and understand your contractual liability
2) Don’t expect them to offer much – they are only a web-portal interface for vendors and warehouses – basically, they make their fees on providing a means to list
3) Know your sellers – this is difficult, since you’ll have to commit $$$ to find out, but some sellers have more accurate descriptions and sources than others – Liquidation.com could easily fix all of this by adding a rating system – I’ve limited to only buying from 2-4 sellers
4) Know your margins and resale – much of what is listed on liquidation .com is over-valued, and over-bid to irrationally high amounts (read: shill bidders), don’t participate in last minute bidding frenzies
In short, it’s HIGHLY unlikely you could use it as a sole-source, and given the complaints about their business practices, and what I see happening there daily, I expect they’ll wind up with a class-action lawsuit and/or serious federal investigation.
In the meantime, they will profit from newbies.
I have been purchasing apparel from Liquidation.com for about 6 months and I guess I got lucky for the most part. I made some mistakes buying my first load of yves St. laurent eye cream it was advertised as a pallet came in 3 small boxes. It took me weeks to get the $200 dollar shipping charges reduced to $80 dollars, the shipment was less than 7 lbs. Bought a load of dresses that aren’t designer and am having a hard time selling them. After that it was swimwear and I have had some pretty good luck with that. In the last few weeks I have had a different experience that has left me wondering if I should give up on my ebay business or find other avenues for buying wholesale. I bought 3 loads of supposed returns in good condition designer dresses and a shipment of designer blouses listed the same way.I will list the company’s that I bought from because as far as I am concerned they are liars and scam artists. These items were listed as returns in good condition, in the dress lots over half of the items had broken zippers which are very expensive to repair at over $20 dollars per dress I will be lucky to make my money back and who wants to spend 100s of extra dollars for items that may or may not sell. The blouses were even worse. Most of them were w/o tags laundered and used looking some had large holes, many with major staining, the few items with tags were cheap products. Anyone who sells on ebay knows that people are not willing to buy anything that is no quality and they want it for rock bottom prices! I was not able to dispute the 3 loads of dresses sold by Fifthavenueretail because arranged shipping and you can’t dispute after 2 days. I should have known better than to buy 3 loads but I have had good luck and really wasn’t expecting these companys to lie about their merchandise, lesson learned. The blouses I had liquidation. com ship and I filed a dispute within an hour of recieving the merchandise supported by photos. The gave me back a whopping $5.18 for a $155 shipment that I can’t sell. This company is fashionforward. As far as I am concerned these auctions should have been listed under salvage. These company’s threw in a few descent items and pass this stuff off as good quality. I have spent of $10,000 dollars with this company in the last 6 months, you would think I would get better treatment. Liquidation. com seems to be more interested in supporting their sellers by allowing them to get away with lying and misrepresenting their merchandise. Where else can the consumer go so unprotected? Needless to say, I will be much more careful and looking for other outlets, I am very disappointed.
Thank you Lisa for your review of Liquidation.com. It does seem that Liquidation.com is more interested in their sellers than their buying customers.
For anyone looking for a new supplier, please take a look at my reviews of Salehoo.com. They aren’t a supplier themselves, but are instead a directory full of wholesale suppliers. You should be able to find someone that’s better to work with than Liquidation.com.
Best of luck to you.
I would like to thanks everyone who posted! I decided not to purchase. Thanks for protecting my wallet.
I am a current and recurring user of Liquidation.com. I strongly believe that they engage in shill bidding. I went to one of their ware houses where in the back they had rows and rows of computers with people who look like telemarketers. Only thing is none of them had headphones on, and they were all on the liquidation.com website.
I am pretty sure this is why they wont let people get in the back to use the bathroom, even as a customer picking up goods. Because this is how they make money.
I have seen items that even they mark as valued for $300, bid up over $310.
The government needs to put in a regulatory oversight on e-commerce that requires the identification of whoever is buying and selling as this would eliminate a lot of this.
The other part of this is also the descriptions above of teh problems people encounter dealing with liquidation.com. These are all there because they know what they are doing is illegal. Not enough people trust them to use their site, so they resort to shill bidding.
They also consistently mislead people on their item description and then tack on heavy and unreasonable fees if you refuse to pay after rejecting an item that clearly doesnt meet the description they gave.
Sometimes they have great items. I bought a new watch from them and sold it on ebay for 50% profit, but everything else they seem to sell is crap, which is why they mix junk with good items. I have even spoken to one of their warehouse managers who acknowledged that somewhere in the range of 60-70 of the shelf pulls and used items are junks, and around 20-25% of the “new” items are actually returns that have been resealed by them to present for sale.
On teh flip side, I sorta dont want them to get caught cause on occassion you get realy good deals. But lets be clear, “ALL” their sealed bid auctions are practically the only ones devoid of shill bis as they will only pick the highest bidder and its at their discretion. If you are the highest bidder and they dont wish to sell, they wont. But you wont ever know as they wont ever tell you.
If you are looking for a new place to try sell, please try list99.com. My friend started it and needs new members to combat the ever increasing cost of selling on ebay.
Thats my two cents. I hope the new year brings you all better luck in business.
Ohh let me add, that the main reason people return to liquidation .com is becuase they are realy good at what they do.
I dont know anyone who has won any of the free TV’s they advertise that they are giving away as of yet. NOT a single person has been put up as a winner that I am aware of.
But they have a great strategy, and there will allways be people with more money than common sense. Thats how capitalism works. I will continue using them, assuming of curse this post isnt being moderated by someone with a vested interest in them, in which case I wont be surprised if my account mysteriously gets closed after my post.
Desmond, I do have an affiliate account with Liquidation.com, but I am more interested in getting the word out about how they run their company. It’s terrible that they allegedly participate in shill bidding. My recommendation for that would be to bid what you’re willing to pay for an item and no more. You might not get the deal you started bidding on, but you’ll pay a price you’re willing to live with. Good luck with your future dealings with Liquidation.com.