Dealing With Backstabbing Antique Shop Owners
First I need to apologize for not writing in so long, it has been one helluva crazy year so far and it just doesn't seem to be getting any better.
I hired the worlds worst antique auctioneer to get rid of excess inventory, since he did not sell anything I just finished a marathon 7 day garage sale in 100 degree temp. The neat thing about the garage sale was seeing some of my shop customer's and old friends.
As to the topic in the title....
What is up with some of these antique shop owners? They will lie to you, steal from you, talk about you to other's and in general act very immature and unprofessional. I am too old (50) to play these teenage girl games with folks yet I am currently embroiled in a little kid piss fight and actually had the police called on me today. Thank goodness the police didn't see me as a real threat to anyone (I think they were more concerned about the shop owner) so I didn't see the inside of a jail.
So Michelle, what happened today? I will give a very condensed version:
My shop closed at the end of Feb. 2010. I was approached by 2 women who were opening an antique shop and asked to come on as a consultant, help them price items and basically teach them the ropes. For my time and effort I would get a free booth. I talked to my consignor's and all of them were in agreement to move over to the "new shop."
In the midst of closing my store, coping with the grief of my moms passing, raising children, sorting inventory and life in general I still managed to put in about 60 hours at the "new shop" pricing and advising.
One day I had several boxes of my inventory returned and was told "we don't have room for you to sell in our shop." Okay I want my reference books and personal inventory returned and I am out of your hair. Frankly I was ready to focus on my website anyway.
That was 4 months ago, I still don't have my personal inventory nor all my reference books and today I find out that the "new shop" is using my contracts with my name on them thereby making me responsible for items I have no control over.
So today I created a contract for the "new shop" in their name along with a letter demanding that they cease using my personal and business names in their dealings.
I go into the shop and present these to the owner... she goes bonkers.. calls the police. Mind you, for once, I was not yelling, cussing or otherwise throwing an adult fit, I simply presented the info and told her I needed to move on with my life. I guess we will end up in court over this stupid mess.
As if that is not childish enough, for the past hour I have had most of my former consignor's calling me asking why I "was picking on the shop owner."
I don't understand why the signing of new contracts has not already taken place and they are still accepting new consignments under my name.
They are the ones that backed out on our verbal agreement so why are they so angry with me? My guess is that they realized it was a pretty stupid move on their part. Neither of them are antique dealers or business people now they are stuck with what could be an amazing shop in a terrific location and don't know what to do with it.
Does anyone have a similar story?
