Sotheby's Avaliações 

Six (6) weeks post-sale (if I believe Sotheby's response to my inquiry), I am still waiting for the proceeds. Every commitment/promise Sotheby's has made, both in effort and date, has failed ... Next step is to file federal fraud/scam updates. 2 more weeks later STILL NO PAYMENT nor property returned, just more lies/failure.

Awful!! I have a piece that had already been appraised for a lot of money but that was 34 years ago. So I went though the process for a sale. I waited the 15 - 20 days. It was still in the waiting for evaluation stage. At 25 days I inquired. No answer except for automated “we promise to respond in 24 hours. Another week the same. Went through the chat line and was given “urgent” status. Still nothing from them. Tried again only because I had some much time invested. That’s when I got the worst of the bunch. This guy said “well we don’t guarantee we have time, we had someone on maternity leave” among other explanations. When I asked if I was ever going to be told he stopped answering.

Finally I called the phone number. At last they were going to send it straight to the manager. “You will hear something very soon” thst was a week ago.

I have an apartmet in Santo Domingo Dominican Republic
I wanted to sell a number of antique furniture of relatively high value
Sothebys asked me to send all pertinent information and 3 photos of each
This took me nearly half a day to move the furniture around
This morning received message from Sothebys that it is not willing to take my pieces for auction

The only reason I can come up with, is that they do not want to do business with Dominican Republic

If that is the case.why not say it upfront?

Rather negative experience with Sotheby's customer support overall. I bought way over 100 works of art from them in New York, London, Paris, and Hong Kong, just in the past 2-3 years. Condition reports were inaccurate in several cases. Two items were outright fakes. VAT or import tariff refunds were a nightmare with up to 50 e-mails exchanged for a 4-digit refund. Their shipping fees are outrageous. It is hard to get them to stop spamming you with their emails and their printed catalogues. I could go on and on. It seems to me that their support has gotten much worse since they went private (off the NY stock exchange), and it is now really bad when compared with Christies, Bonhams, or Heritage, to name just a few competitors. I hope that some day they will be able to improve it, and I will certainly update this review in case this happens.

They are more interested in Selling Pollocks Diareah artwork, Than 2,000 Year old Relics of the Roman Empire, Not worth the time of day.

They claim they take about 2 weeks to investigate the value of the product. Within 23h they told me they couldn't, sounds to me like they didn't even try.

I listed a designer purse. It sold for a nice price. Payment per the contract is 10-12 business days. I didn’t get paid. I contacted my representative and was informed my contract and tax information was deleted! I had to redo the paperwork. Then was told next week it will be turned in for payment. Not I will turn it in immediately.

Sotheby's wildly overestimated the value of my artwork.
They failed to update the status of my consignment. The status remained at "accepted" even after the close of the auction. It never updated to "listed" or "sold" even 2 months after the close of the auction.
I only found out when my item would be auctioned by accident - I wasn't informed until 2 weeks before the actual auction that my item was to be listed.
The vast majority of items in the auction received no bids at all. Those that did have bids almost all had a single bid.
My item sold for less than ONE FIFTH of the low estimate. Seller's fees ate up more than 60% of the sale price. I am actually netting less than $140 (after sellers fees and shipping) for an item that Sotheby's estimated would bring $5k-$7k.

UPDATE: Like others, Sotheby's lost my seller information, and asked for it repeatedly. Then they came up with some nonsense about their payment information form having no language referring to the word "check"... So I quoted their form back to them... Now, this form has altogether about 6 lines of text, and their payout drone replied "Oh, I guess I missed that line".

Criminally abusive "service" at Sotheby's.

UPDATE: Anjli Patel at Sotheby's has THREE TIMES promised to send a check to me for the proceeds of my consignment and then failed to send the check on both promised dates. I have experienced ALL of the things that other people have complained about. The level of incompetence at Sotheby's is staggering.

UPDATE: Finally paid after a lot of runaround. For a photograph estimated by Sotheby's at $5000-$7000, I received a check for $241. Subtracting $140 from that for shipping, I netted $100. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

BUYERS / SELLERS BEWARE !!!!

I listed approximately 250k - 300k of rare whisky to sell with sothebys. I’m not even going to get into them totally not being transparent from the get go prior to auction.
( auction ended June 16 2023. It’s now September 20th 2023 and i still haven’t received full payment or my property back. They are holding approximately 100k of my property hostage and will not give it back )

My experience is they will try to bully and manipulate you and abuse their power in any which way they can to get their way.

All my property sold and I’ve only been compensated for only half.
One buyer in particular is someone I know ( who knew my property was being auctioned and bid on it and never paid ) NOT MY FAULT you need to take responsibility for your own mistakes and start pre approving customers to bid like all other auctions I’ve dealt with. Sothebys is trying to hold me accountable for their lack of pre approving buyers and just letting anyone bid in order to get commissions which puts YOU / US in a position to be bullied for payment.
You will absolutely NOT get away with this manipulation / bulling and my next stop will be the New York Times / BBB

NEVER AGAIN !!!
PLEASE DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE AND USE SOMEONE ELSE,
DONT BE A VICTIM LIKE ME.

Met with someone from the jewellery department who made me come all the way to London and then went back on their valuation. Thoroughly unpleasant person who should take a lesson in how to deal with people

Atrocious customer service. I’ve been waiting several months to sell an item which we accepted an auction price for.

I agree with these other reviews, this company is most likely coasting on a long lost reputation which is no longer deserved.

I would steer well clear of them and go for literally any other auction house.

Had a very negative experience when selling an old Patek Philippe watch. An astounding 35% were subtracted in total from what the bidder had to pay (15% the seller, 26% the buyer), and the 26% of the buyer were not mentioned in the contract but hidden in the small print. I received significantly less than I had hoped for and feel that my trust in such an old established company was badly misused. Would never sell anything through them again!

They messaged me randomly telling me to fill out an “application” told me they would train me to get paid $2000 bi weekly but the application was just my full name email and social security number thankfully i read these reviews before i filled that out

They exist on a reputation long lost. They are incompetent and arrogant. They pretend to be the best but are the worst. I would be better off with any other real estate company. Just horrible

Absolutely shocking. I bought a piece of art from them and when trying I resell it they rejected the piece and pointed me to an auction site called Catawiki which never paid me the money after selling the piece

Couldn't be bothered

Contacted. Representative gave directions to send photos of an oul paintings. I called multiple times. Rep was unavailable. I was told by another rep, that it may take months before I would be contacted.
Six months later, I sold it at a local general auction for more than $9000.00.
Their arrogant customer no service is akin to level walmart

Bad experience with their office in Prague, Czech Republic, EU. The staff told us to send a picture about the painting. After this, no answer received. After un urgency his "professional" opinion about the painting came without few hours. This has been made based on one picture and by a lawyer!! Not by a professional. Btw he was arrogant. After my few questions about the case no response received. Thank God that I have read these reviews here and will sell the painting with some other, much more professional company.

I had a 18th Century family painting and was offered an estimated $5000 sale at Auction by Sotheby's employee, Frankie Mananzan. Instead, Sotheby's put it on the internet for a month, didn't sell it and sent me a $785 bill for their time. They also wanted another $700 to return it to me. It had cost about $125 to ship it to Sotheby's. YOU DO NOT WANT TO DO BUSINESS WITH SOTHEBY'S.