The Estate Sale Diaries - Beware The Clingy Client

Two children are playing in a playroom.  Billy has his train and Emily is plundering the toy box in search of something entertaining.  She pulls out Billy’s old G.I. Joe from the detritus and begins running around the room playing with the toy.  Suddenly, threatened with the loss of his toy, Billy has no interest in his train and desperately wants his G.I. Joe back, never mind that he last played with it two years before. 

The above story is a basic phenomenon seen in playrooms around the country.  What most people don’t realize is that it is an aspect of human nature that never quite leaves us.  Take the case of the Clingy Client:

When we conduct estate sales, it is under the pretense that a client is ready to part with his things – whether he has inherited these things from a relative or accumulated them over his own lifetime.  Many clients are happy to see their possessions go to a new home.  However, every so often we encounter the client who, for all intents and purposes, was ready to part with his things until another potential owner comes along.  Then, and only then, does this client come up with alternative uses for the item, thus inflating the price he must now receive in order to part with it.

Sorting through the possessions accumulated over the course of a lifetime is a time-consuming and emotionally taxing process full of difficult decisions. This stressful situation is only compounded by the overwhelming clutter that seems to expand with each drawer emptied.  Of the hundreds, or thousands, of items processed for a sale, it is possible that an item or two were left in error.  It is also possible that the client forced himself to part with an item, but found himself regretting the potential loss significantly.  These are all normal issues with normal clients.  We, like any compassionate firm, will “rescue” an item from the sale when we are notified the client has just realized that he cannot find his uniform buttons, grandfather’s watch, or other small, but meaningful item.  We, like any business, must, however, draw the line when a client’s list of items to pull from the sale is longer than the list of items to be sold and only seems to increase as the sale progresses. 

The Clingy Client is why most estate sale companies prevent clients from attending their own sales.  This client is also why you may arrive at the door of an advertised estate sale only to find a Post-It note (left by the Clingy Client) declaring the sale cancelled - to the surprise of both the potential customers and the contracted professional.  


Once the Clingy Client sees someone else with his “toy,” the situation deteriorates for the estate sale agent, the sale customer interested in the “toy” and the Clingy Client himself.  In the most extreme cases, the thought of parting with an item is enough to catapult a planned sale from a profit-earning opportunity for both the estate sale company and the client into a waste of the company’s time, customer’s travel time and the client's energy convincing himself and everyone else he was ready for a sale in the first place.

Trademark Clingy Client moves:

• You, a customer who has unknowingly entered the domain of the Clingy Client, ask about an item and are not told the objective facts (it is 200 years old and in remarkable condition), but the personal history that has led to a subjective price (it was my dear mother’s favorite serving piece).

• Whether you are the estate sale company or an estate sale customer, the client segues from the sentimental value to a critique of the perceived low price it has been assigned.  Whether during a public sale or during preparations, if a client disagrees with pricing, it is best to bring the discussion of the purchase, and the sale as a whole, to a close.     

• Unless you are a Dishonest Estate Sale Company (with ridiculously low prices to empty the house with minimal expended effort or advertising expenses), a client should not have grounds to disagree with an expert’s designated prices.  If he does, and if he makes a big fuss about it, there are deeper rooted issues at play.

• No items are freed up for sale.  (Normal clients, upon seeing the types of things that do command cash in the resale market, often decide they would prefer the money to extra furniture or dishes and add items to the sale as it proceeds.)  

• Items are pulled from the sale in front of customers, or outside of public sale hours without communicating with the estate sale company.  Once a contract is signed, the client has committed to paying a percentage commission on items that sell.  If significant and expensive items are repeatedly pulled from the sale, the company is losing potential revenue.  When Trent Services commits to a sale, we consider the most significant pieces first.  Our commission and effort would be excessive for an average household.  However, we have had several Clingy Clients who have pulled the pieces that warranted our services leaving us with sub-standard collections to sell.  Naturally, these sales came to a quick and unpleasant end.

• Screaming.  In my experience, the clients who end up screaming, either for customers or estate sale companies to get out of their houses, are Clingy Clients.  They could probably be further diagnosed and described by an expert in the mental health field, but I do not have such expertise.

Beware the Clingy Client.  Even if the sale promises chests full of precious metals, you are better off staying in for the weekend.  After all, he will demand top dollar (for pieces that could not command top dollar in the best showrooms) only to decide he should never have considered parting with them in the first place.