Complaint Review: The Realreal

The Realreal uses some deceptive tactics to extract additional commission from their consignment sales.  They offer "gift certificates" as a marketing tactic, and the appear to sell them as well.  And when you sell an item through their website, and someone buys the item using one of their gift certificates, the price reduction from the gift certificate ends up getting passed through to you.

In effect, you end up paying them a commission, plus you end up paying for their marketing efforts.

In my case, it would not have been such a big deal, except that their customer service was very unresponsive when I raised this issue to them, leading me to think that such issues are nothing new to them.  Furthermore, their review pages on several popular review websites appear to have mysteriously been taken down.  Even still, there are several reviews that are available online that seem to point to many unhappy customers that feel that were scammed.

Maybe I am entirely misinterpreting the situation, but they do not respond to my emails, so I have not heard anything to refute this.

If you are going to sell an item through them, I recommend you read the fine print very carefully, and don't be too surprised if the money you receive is far lower than you expected.