Do you consign your luxury brand products with sites like Yoogi’s, Fashionphile and Therealreal? Have you ever questioned the reasons behind low ball offers or declines? Do you have an account with The Purse Forum?
Here’s a little insider tip, The Purse Blog is authored by employee’s of Yoogi’s, ThredUp, Fashionphile, TheRealReal, authors of “influential blogs” scattered throughout the internet and people just like you and me who also sell their purses on eBay. If you think for one minute that the free advice you’re getting from The Purse Forum isn’t coming at a cost to you, then I have a quilted Guccitton Caviar with 24k straps, signed by Hermes I’d like to sell.
For years we’ve been told that reputable (re)sellers of all things luxury should stop by The Purse Forum with Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Chanel and all things luxury to show the authors of ThePurseBlog via the Purse Forum for the purpose of authentication and price point. “Let our professional authenticators……”
First of all, there’s no such thing as a “professional authenticator”. There are people who recognize the differences between a counterfeit and authentic handbag but that’s not a profession, that’s part of the job of a sales girl, the same girl who empties the garbage can you tossed your tissue gloves in after examining the Hermes bag you considered purchasing.
Here’s the rest of the sentence: “Let our professional authenticators…… tell you that your $8000.00 bag is only worth $200 resale so we can get you to ship it to Yoogi’s at which point, Yoogi gets cut out of the deal and the receiver sells it to Fashionphile or The RealReal for $1000.00”.
A Louis Vuitton / Hermes / Chanel sales girl in any mall or stand alone store works on a 1 or 2% commission, 5% tops. How many luxury handbags do you think a girl needs to sell every month to pay her bills? If she’s selling Hermes at $10,000.00 per bag, she’s only making $100.00 for herself once or twice a month. It’s not enough to survive.
This is who is operating the gears behind the curtain of the The Purse Forum. If you believe there are luxury brand insiders who live their lives on stand by, volunteering out of the goodness of their hearts, their time and skills away for free, then this is a good time to ask yourself “when has anything associated with luxury brands ever been free?”
I’ve been involved with luxury resale as an internet entrepreneur since 2003. I do consider myself somewhat experienced but readily admit there’s always someone who knows more than I do. I can talk until I’m blue in the face about St. John Knits and Gucci but when it comes to Louis Vuitton, I’m not attracted to the monogram print so I’m not invested in it which is why I always seek the opinions of those who have an eye for Louis Vuitton before becoming involved with it. What I don’t do is bring it to a site of anonymous “professionals” because I know there’s little to no liability and an outstanding possibility of a scam in progress.
This is a quote I grabbed from Site Jabber: (link contains the entirety)
“My mom was almost scammed through PurseForum after I posted pictures of a Hermes bag that the usual gaggle of “paid influencers” including Mistikat, all chimed in and confirmed that the bag was authentic. We sought a 2nd opinion that said otherwise and later the seller was banned from eBay because others reported the counterfeit bag.
fast forward to my feedback to PurseForum..Mistikat the fraudulent and clueless authenticator deleted all my posts and reference to their mistake misauthenticating the bag. Buyers and Forum members beware that when you ask for opinion on that board, Mistikat only allows comments that pretty much promotes Hermes. The tyrant only wants comments praising and idolizing a brand even clearly when the bag in question is fake or a buyer has been deceived or ripped off.”
Like most of us I got my start on eBay. The mentioning of eBay is important because 15 years after the fact I’m realizing just how much I’m still dealing with other people who also got their start on eBay. Some eBayers paved their way to a blossoming career, the majority rode the wave and got out when they saw their market shrink, and many crashed and burned.
This article, Inside Track: The Purse Forum, is about the people who identified you as their competitor (and still do) and will always be snaking about about behind the scenes. The shady types who seem to have their tentacles wrapped around every aspect of eBay’s grey areas, the in’s and out’s of the luxury consignment sites, and The Purse Forum.
Back in the young days of eBay they could recite for you every obscure rule and policy in eBay’s existence, would bend them for personal gain and would self police eBay with their own special interpretation and brand of what those rules and policies should mean. We knew them back then as “The Wolf Pack” “The CSA Boardies” and their own name, “All My Pretty Friends”, vigilante trouble makers who if ever you made a mistake would publish that mistake on every blog, the eBay forums and in many cases to sites that had the potential to permanently destroy your reputation. They were the vendors of the same products you sold and they were trying to eliminate you. They looked for your weak points, and they struck hard when they found them.
Remember this name: Nancy R. Burke of Waltham, Massachusetts aka Been Burned of The Purse Forum.
This is a woman who once called my business line to ask where I was getting my inventory and expected me to provide her with a list of my suppliers. She eventually did get that list. She slicked around long enough to learn that I had a stalker, befriended my stalker and he cheerfully handed over my entire business model to her. She neglected to tell me that #1 I had a stalker and #2 that he wanted me dead. Fittingly, she never did get her business off the ground, she’s still a lowly sales girl and she was banned from eBay in her first year as a luxury resale vendor for unscrupulous business practices such as deliberately sabotaging her competitors’ actions, placing proxy bids 200 times higher than the actual market value. She prevented many sales. She wasn’t alone. She had like minded company. Can you guess who that company is?
People like Stacy Shure, also banned from eBay for unscrupulous business practices, now employed by a well known luxury brand consignment in Southern California.
I created an account on The Purse Forum because I had a vintage Louis Vuitton. Immediately the level of rude to my question was overwhelming. I remained polite even when I was shocked by the low valuation that was placed on my product but that didn’t deter them from bringing it from rude to personal in a matter of three posts. Of course after I was intentionally deflated, the suggestion was that I bring my low value item to a specific luxury brand consignor is Southern California.
Approximately three days later I started getting private messages through The Purse Forum and the e-commerce sites I have my items listed with when this landed in my e-mail box:
“And just ignore BB ( she thinks she is queen bee of the forum) & is quite arrogant in many of her posts”
She was referring to a poster with the ID of “BeenBurned”. After responding to the anonymous poster, expressing dismay at my treatment, this message arrived:
“The time of the year may be the difference between selling & getting the price that you would like. Be patient. I have found that potential buyers take their time & eventually make the purchase. I’ve been on the forum a little longer than you & this BB is quite the character. If you have a moment just google her. It is quite insightful into her character. She is tolerated due to her so called knowledge which most of the time is found from googling. Snarky is what seems to be prevalent on the forum all too
frequently these days. We all are moving on.”
I did what my anonymous contact suggested and Googled, “BeenBurned” of The Purse Forum and that’s when I realized. Yes, I do remember Nancy R. Burke of Waltham, Massachusetts. She has an extensive history of being a sleazy bottom dweller who resides in the sewers of the luxury resale market.
As it turns out, she remembers me too. My consignments were all declined after I declined the low ball offers. Yoogi’s straight up declined my submission… well.. Yoogi’s didn’t, the bitch behind the computer screen did. For no other reason than my name, a known competitor.
After my anonymous messenger contacted me my account was banned from The Purse Forum. I assume the anonymous messenger was as well. I’m not really sure why other than we know their secret.
I’d like to thank my stalker David Forsyth for doing his part and providing people like Nancy R. Burke my personal information, 10 years after the fact. You’re a fucking gem.
A Reputation To Precede Me 