Well. For starters I will outline what we did to check up on this guy and how it all came unraveled. We initially started our Ebay wholesale company research.
Highendcloseouts came up high on the list, so we called him after looking through his expansive website. Yes, on the site it says his items are sellable on Ebay.
So, we call about his end of the year closeouts on Toys.
He answers our questions with few words and leaves out many points like:
Are your toys in stock?
Are they brand name only?
Are they recent shelved items?
Etc.
So, he gives us the wire transfer location and we call the listed bank to check on whether it has a decent flow of funds, as this is the only thing you can check on when calling a bank. Yep, the bank says this company does a LOT of business.
Great, we feel that we will be getting our money's worth. $3800 for our Ebay sellable toys.
Then terror strikes. He takes extra time to ship with the excuse that he sold many of the boxes and wants to deliver when he has new toys to fill out our order. We wait a bit more than 1 week in panic and about 10 days later get the UPS tracking. We all know it takes a while for things to go from New York to California, so the 5 days we have to eat.
UPS delivers and the order amount comes out correctly. Trouble is that Highendcloseouts breaks our pallet up for shipping and when we finally count up the merchandise we find we were shorted an overbearing amount.
We ask HEC (Highendcloseouts) for a manifest, which he does deliver. Yep, heavily shorted. We are meticulous in our inventory management and can prove the shortage.
But, I have left out the juice of the ordeal.
The "toys" that were sent to us? Sure they were Mattel and a couple of other brand name companies. But. We also got an amazing amount of Disney coloring books that have a sticker of $1.25 or so, that he counted towards our 600-650 items. There were Chinese knockoffs in the group and other lame items valued at or around $1 to $4 bucks.
In fact, hundreds of items in the group were valued less than $3 bucks retail. We know, because the items themselves have the MSRP printed on them. But, when you purchase 600-650 toys for $3800 bucks not including the shipping you get a per item price of $6.33, except we were shorted on the item count. When the dust settled we were charged about $7.20/item (NOT including shipping)
Now, before you gasp, you need to understand that this person represented himself and the company as High End Closeouts. The website is nothing but talk about how great the deals are and how high the quality of the merchandise is. $7 bucks/item isn't much if the items will sell on Ebay in the $20's or higher and are brand name and high end.
So, what we have here is LYING through silence. Or LYING through Omission.
The items are not high end. They are not recent.
They are Mattel, and others, however. A couple of the better products sold on Ebay for $15 being the highest.
Do the math. He delivered a bit over 150 items valued (printed) less than $3 bucks. They amounted to coloring books and comics (Disney). He sent over Disney puzzle knockoffs and other like items.
We ended up having to donate more than half of the items to Goodwill and will just have to write off the loss.
We have some of the items printed 2004 right on the boxes. This is being written in this happened in November.3 years old? How is that recent? How could that be called High End? How could he actually use the MSRP as his base of value?
If you understand what I am saying you will understand that when you buy a brand new car it devalues thousands of $ the moment you start the motor after signing the purchase agreement. Even if you don't put a single mile on it.
Same with Toys. They have a shelf life.
So, if you want to buy his toys out from him all you need to do is search for other New York wholesalers.
He is buying his merchandise directly from them and NOT direct from the manufacturer. How can we prove that? Well, we did the research and found that the items he delivered to us were being sold via a central New York company for less than his price to us. Every single item complete with pictures. EVERY SINGLE ITEM in case you missed that.
He is buying with the money you send him. He doesn't have anything in stock. He is the middle man.
Now, we have our proof and call him demanding a refund on the shortage. It amounts to nearly $1000 bucks. (Actually far more if you calculate $7/item and 150 of the items are printed less than $1.50 or $over $1000 just in false advertising) He offers us $500 in credit if we buy from him again or $200 if we want cash.
NO, we decide, we want the actual loss and no credit. Why would we want to be scammed again? He calls us crooks and scam artists and a lot of insane things as liars usually do when caught.
Well, after a few battles (and this guy prefers to talk down to women (or over them) he agrees to send $300 bucks back, but not before the people I know sign a release stating that they wouldn't tell anyone.
Good thing I didn't sign that agreement. I was on the phone listening to him berate the losing persons and he factually stated I wasn't party to the call and he wouldn't discuss anything with me. Fantastic.!
So, here I am spilling my guts to you about how dishonest this guy is. He has the audacity to say we were the only ones to ever complain about him. HUH?
With the demand for silence agreement he makes all ripped off persons sign, he appears to insure himself against statements like this..
Too Bad, He personally told me I have nothing to do with the transaction and I now believe him. But, since I was listening to the phone calls between he and my friends while on Speakerphone I am released from all liability.
Please listen here. We did our homework on this company and found that he operated under a few names and on the surface appears to be a reputable source of merchandise. And it is, if you want to pay MORE than the items are resellable at.
In our case, more than twice our net from Ebay and I am a professional photographer and our copywriter is a college graduate with English in her major.
Take care when dealing with this person, as it is very likely you will be Ripped-Off.
Lying by Ommission is the worst kind of lying there is. That is a person who knows the facts about his merchandise and feels he is truthful if he doesn't say anything.
HIGHENDCLOSEOUTS.com is bad for business. Look elsewhere, because after this lesson we found 4 more completely trustworthy distributers who purchase 53' truckloads of merchandise from all over and break those up to deliver to their buyers. They have the product in stock and were willing to show us proof via photos and other documentation. The California location we found let us visit their warehouse. (The others are on the East Coast and offered to let us visit.)
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