I’m not usually one to vent about places that piss me off, at least not in my blog. That’s what I have a husband for. I do however need to spread the word regarding a certain consignment company that has two locations in New Jersey and a couple in PA. Green Street Consignment has a location in Princeton in which I recently consigned 8 pieces of clothing. They only take designer labels and the prices are much higher than your average consignment shop. My husband was laid off several months ago and we are pretty desperate for money, so I went through my closet and picked out all the best pieces that I had.

First Claim:
No one makes it easier to consign than Greene Street with no appointment ever required. Stop waiting months to consign your items!

First off I would say that 90% of the employees there are pissy and rude. They don’t want to be bothered with questions of any kind and just hand you a contract that you read on the spot and sign. In the contract there is the usual disclaimers that they aren’t responsible for any lost, damaged or stolen items, which in a normal consignment store would be reasonable. But then you find out that after you drop off your very expensive property, it is sent to a warehouse in who knows where. It then spends the next 4 weeks being processed, sorted, priced and is then shipped back to the original store. Why do they do this? I have no idea. Then your property is hung out on the floor for a few more weeks until your claim date. You must then pick up your property up to 5 days before your claim date or your property becomes their property. You must go to the store whether you have anything to pick up or not because they won’t tell you if you have anything to claim over the phone. Inconvenient? Yes, but that’s not the most annoying part. When you do show up to claim your things, they hand you a list of the items that didn’t sell and say that it’s up to you find your things. You then walk around the store looking through all the racks to find your clothing, accessories etc… using a brief description and a code to recognize them.

Now here’s the fun part. If one of the items that did not sell can’t be found… it’s just tough! As you recall they are not responsible for it. How do I know this? Well, it’s because the most expensive item that I dropped off to be sold was either lost or stolen and all I got was a blank stare and a reminder of the contract that I had signed 2 months earlier. No apology or a “we hope that this won’t keep you from selling here again”. I would at least expect something from them. A store credit perhaps in hopes of keeping me as a customer. I guess they got what they wanted from me and that’s that.

It’s a pretty good gig ya know? Get a job in a consignment shop that’s not responsible for any stolen items and walk home with a $100+ jacket in your bag. Maybe there’s a guy in the warehouse that knows the street value of a designer label. Who knows? What I do know is that my jacket is gone and I’ve got nothing to show for it but high blood pressure.

I should say that there was one nice employee and she was unfortunately the one that had to tell me my jacket was “lost”. Her manager was the one with the blank stare. I would definitely warn my friends and anyone reading this to take care when selling your stuff at any of the Greene Street shops. Maybe my case is a unique one, but it was handled very badly.

Second Claim:

http://www.greenestreetconsignment.com/images/placeholder_logotop_06.gif

Supposedly the store that “fits all”. One of the guidelines for the clothing that they accept is that they do not accept plus sized clothing or maternity clothes. Well, that takes care of that segment of the population. Luckily I was selling all of my skinny clothes.

In conclusion, I was incredibly dissatisfied with my selling experience at Greene Street and will never shop there knowing how they treat their bread and butter.