MJL Estate Sales Mary Jean Lamperti Misleading Advertising Califon New Jersey
On Friday 8/8/14 I attended an estate sale held by MJL Estate Sales of Califon, NJ. The sale was in South Orange, NJ. There were several works of art pictured in MJL Estate Sales' advertising on estatesales.net. Upon arrival at the sale, the owner, Mary Jean Lamperti, did not show up until 15 minutes after the start of the sale. This made her customers quite upset, especially since many of them had been there for 2 hours and had other plans.
When the sale finally started, it was clear that some of the advertised paintings were no longer in the sale. There were many empty picture hooks hanging throughout the house. Since I was the first person in the sale, I know know no one bought them in front of me. When I asked Mary Lamperti about the paintings she said "Oh the paintings are upstairs". Of course, there were some paintings upstairs, but it was obviously clear that many of the paintings were sold or removed prior to the sale.
I believe this is false advertising because I spent hours of my time (as did others) going to this sale to buy specific items that were not available. When I pressed Mary about the issue, she said maybe the homeowners took them. Well, I saw the homeowners arrive that morning, and they did not remove any paintings from the sale. It is my belief that MJL Estates sold these paintings prior to the sale and used the images online to attract a large crowd to the sale.
In addition to the unprofessionalism shown in arriving late to a sale she was managing, I was told by some of the others waiting in line, that Mary Jean Lamperti has a reputation for high priced sales in which very little is sold. They speculated that she was not serving the homeowners best interests.