Varagesale.com Reviews

Having had items on here for over 2 years, I have never sold 1 item on this site despite lowering prices.It is useless.

I can honestly say I've been using varagesale for about 7 years, you just need ONE PHOTO & your name (or any name) to get approved & the rules are not that bad to follow
Examples (No counterfeit items. No animals allowed, always follow the time when you want to sell or buy an item 'if you sell or buy an item make sure you contact the first person who messaged')
I've had problems with it sure, people were mean/racist to me but I told the administration & they revoked there account.
Also you CAN CHANGE YOUR NAME. My name on the app isn't even my real name.

So much great meetings with people that sell.
So happy I joined and get to save money on good things.

I gave email, phone, Facebook and a selfie and not accepted. The admin and staff doesn't provide real names and photos but I give what they ask and not accepted.

This is really full of people that should be removed.

I was a good standing member on VarageSale for 4 years and had 84 positive reviews. My membership was revoked by Tasha Penner suddenly due to the 3 Strike rule. 3 Strikes and your membership is revoked! I had two warnings back in 2017 and 2018. One was for posting a bedding set (bed in a bag, pillow shams, etc). Apparently, I was supposed to post each item individually despite the fact that it was a bedding set. Then recently I posted a Charm for Pandora bracelet using the same picture. I had 5 of the identical charms for sale. Out of the blue I got "This is your final warning!" and "your duplicate ad has been deleted". I didn't understand what the issue was and was taken aback that I was spoken to so rudely all of a sudden. Tasha went on to say that you cannot use the same photo when posting multiple items as each item must have a unique photo. These charms are mass produced and they all look exactly the same! I had a buyer that wanted two of the charms, so I had posted two additional charms (one to reserve for my buyer and one to post for potential new buyers). Tasha deleted the charm I had reserved for the buyer and the other one I posted for new buyers. My understanding of the problem was, that I was "to take different photos of each charm and repost the items". I did this and then all of a sudden my membership was revoked! Now I finally understand that Tasha deleted my postings for TWO reasons (the second reason was not clear to me at the time). First, I used the same photo and second, in the ad description I stated that I had 3 of the same Charms available. It felt like Tasha was setting me up for failure and actually wanted to revoke my membership out of spite! I explained to her that I misunderstood the rules (as there are so many) and it was an honest mistake. She said they are FIRM on the 3 strike rule (meaning HER not they) and there were NO exceptions. Unbelievable! VarageSale is going to lose all their customers at this rate. No understanding or consideration given to a long standing member with a lot of positive reviews from buyers. VarageSale has so many rules you can't keep track. When Tasha informed me to review the rules I couldn't believe how many icons you have to click that will open up to rules. It's a lot to take in and very confusing. Take my advice, steer clear from this selling platform and use other sites instead.

The site itself seems pretty good. I've had more good buys over any bad ones. But the admins are nothing more than power tripping control bullies. If there was a way to charge these people I would. They need a refresh of admins.

My advice would be to use Facebook and nextdoor to sell on. VarageSale has strict rules on everything and the admins tend to power trip. People are leaving to find other platforms, as sales are hard on VarageSale.

I have never had an issue with any admin person until Lynn Gray. She is nuts!... targets people at random... so much so that a past admin messaged me about how crazy she is. I've been a top member FOR Years... not once reported or complained about. Today this wacko kicked me out of the site after I sent her proof of her bias and targeting! I will continue to share her name and will go to the media about this. I've kept screen shots... its beyond pathetic for a so called free sight. I think the Founder, a mom like me, would be cringing in disgust over this womans behaviour to members. Clearly we need better administrators and frankly a head office members can reach to resolve such matters.

Keswick admin. Staci B has the worst attitude it seems her admin job has gone to her head. She literally stalks people for minor issues, she's overly annoying with her rule enforcement. Maybe a hobby would keep her busy

It's next to impossible to sell anything on this website/ app. One thing I liked about it was the bump up feature every 2 hours or something, but that turns into to a game with hardly anyone to look at the ads. One person messaged me once and told me to use facebook marketplace as I seem to post a lot. I told her that I do have marketplace and it works really well for me but I also do happen to have some ads on varagesale. One thing I noticed also about this site is that people are way more cheap on this than all other buy/ sell sites. They love to bargain and never buy anything, but there lack of people on the site makes it useless and I am surprised Letgo fell apart and this one didn't. I see a lot of ads here, so even though it's hard to sell anything here, and also most of the things I bought here were not as described, so people here (mostly housewives) are the most cheap and shady, the site constantly shows ads to you. Letgo also was bad and one person stole a porch pick up item, but Varagesale is bad for it's own reasons. You can hardly sell anything big on this site. Most sales will be of $5 items. The worst part of this website is the rude and intrusive moderators. They will remove your account for no reason and will never respond back as to why. A simple criticism to a buyer who keeps cancelling or isn't interested in buying in the first place and saying such a word as "flaky" will get your account removed. This is what happened and I think it's good riddance, since it was a real waste of time. Most of the things I have sold recently are on facebook marketplace and kijiji. I didn't know that kijiji was still being used, but as it so happens, more men tend to use kijiji and they are often busy and don't waste time negotiating or being catty. I have had that one person who got my account canceled because I called her flaky, then find me on facebook and leave me a long rant. I am surprised how so many of these white women have such low level of tolerance for criticism and will stalk you and to other social media/ sites and leave long rants in a strongly defensive and rude manner. I did not read her comment, but it just goes to show what kind of people are often pretending to be interested but they can't buy because they are cheap and aggressive people. This person also had an argument with me before because she kept postponing and negotiating while another person quickly picked up the item from facebook without negotiating. I want to sell my items not make life long promises to shady people. There are also those you take forever to reply and then pretend there was already an agreement when they did not reply to confirm. These are the kind of ridiculous people that dominate Varagesale and as others have pointed out, the housewifely moderators are on a power trip, not considering that the site/ app was made to make money off of people clicking on ads. I hope it also ends soon. I was sorry that Letgo ended, even though I got ripped off of from that site but Varagesale is just a useless waste of time.

It's next to impossible to sell anything on this website/ app. One thing I liked about it was the bump up feature every 2 hours or something, but that turns into to a game with hardly anyone to look at the ads. One person messaged me once and told me to use facebook marketplace as I seem to post a lot. I told her that I do have marketplace and it works really well for me but I also do happen to have some ads on varagesale. One thing I noticed also about this site is that people are way more cheap on this than all other buy/ sell sites. They love to bargain and never buy anything, but there lack of people on the site makes it useless and I am surprised Letgo fell apart and this one didn't. I see a lot of ads here, so even though it's hard to sell anything here, and also most of the things I bought here were not as described, so people here (mostly housewives) are the most cheap and shady, the site constantly shows ads to you. Letgo also was bad and one person stole a porch pick up item, but Varagesale is bad for it's own reasons. You can hardly sell anything big on this site. Most sales will be of $5 items. The worst part of this website is the rude and intrusive moderators. They will remove your account for no reason and will never respond back as to why. A simple criticism to a buyer who keeps cancelling or isn't interested in buying in the first place and saying such a word as "flaky" will get your account removed. This is what happened and I think it's good riddance, since it was a real waste of time. Most of the things I have sold recently are on facebook marketplace and kijiji. I didn't know that kijiji was still being used, but as it so happens, more men tend to use kijiji and they are often busy and don't waste time negotiating or being catty. I have had that one person who got my account canceled because I called her flaky, then find me on facebook and leave me a long rant. I am surprised how so many of these white women have such low level of tolerance for criticism and will stalk you and to other social media/ sites and leave long rants in a strongly defensive and rude manner. I did not read her comment, but it just goes to show what kind of people are often pretending to be interested but they can't buy because they are cheap and aggressive people. This person also had an argument with me before because she kept postponing and negotiating while another person quickly picked up the item from facebook without negotiating. I want to sell my items not make life long promises to shady people. There are also those you take forever to reply and then pretend there was already an agreement when they did not reply to confirm. These are the kind of ridiculous people that dominate Varagesale and as others have pointed out, the housewifely moderators are on a power trip, not considering that the site/ app was made to make money off of people clicking on ads. I hope it also ends soon. I was sorry that Letgo ended, even though I got ripped off of from that site but Varagesale is just a useless waste of time.

UPDATE: Dec 28th:
Firstly, I have been harassed by some of these women, who I block but they find me on facebook and leave nasty messages. That just shows the level of their manners and upbringing.
Recently, a woman who had kept messaging me with no interest to buy, because no one buys anything on this site, happened to misspell my name and I politely pointed this out. In return, with not a word of apology, she got aggravated and became confrontational/ defensive as can be seen in the screenshot. Her response is obviously rude and entitled, caring about her own Christmas instead of a simple apology. In response to this, I wrote to her that she should have humbly apologized, that she was a racist and that she doesn't know the meaning of Christmas! She should have checked her messages before sending. On later reflection, there is no spell check that will changes someone's name to Amba or even Ana, I am sure! Someone who only lacks decency will go ahead and send messages with typos and that too misspelling someone's name!
In response to this, LeeAnn Mathews, the admin messages me, banning me from the community saying that I was rude and that this woman had offered an apology! Please check the screenshot below. This is beyond ridiculous behaviour! It reminds me of signs that bar black and brown people from white restaurants in segregation and colonial India, not to mention the Karen's who love to get POC kicked out from stores, restaurants, etc. This is classic Karen behaviour for calling someone rude for being rude, inconsiderate and for lacking manners yourself. Notice how LeeAnn uses caps to address me. That just shows that these two women have no idea what internet etiquette or general manners are, and they love to school POC as if we are savages, that need to be taught manners! Ridiculous! Only use this app if you are giving away things next to nothing, white or a glutton for punishment for getting harassed by LeeAnn, in exchange for wasted time, emotional distress from non-serious, rude women and a barrage of commercials!

Too many unreasonable rules to follow and they kick people out suddenly without any notification or any reasons given... I would recommend you not to use. Some sellers never replied messages. The app has problems frequently. Not user friendly at all. Search results are not what you're searching. Admins are not checking messages. You need to wait for membership approval. You cannot change your name even your name is legally changed but you can't change on varagesale. Very stupid..

I emailed the main authority to tell them live animals were for sale and they said, "Yes, we allow that." I then pointed out that animals are often code for children being sold--DUH! This site is totally clueless and useless--use at your own risk! E. Denning

The concept of VarageSale is wonderful however the app is horrible. This app has daily and weekly issues. Anything and everything from notification issues to booting you off the site.

It is touted as a safe place to buy/sell with real people with real names and real profile photos. One only need to look add any community membership to see that this is not true. Each community has its own rules with no continuity. Individual admin are overzealous or apathetic.

VarageSale has strayed so far from what it first was.

Tasha Penner Dery - Calgary worst admin. This is just clips of what an admin should do:
Community Managers may remove content they deem inappropriate, illegal or against VarageSale's Terms. They may not, however, remove Items because of how long they have been listed for, the level of or the status or past behaviour of that member in the community.
Clearly Tasha does not abide by any admin rules. As if you screwed up once you're flagged in her black book for life and you bet she takes it personally, and she will delete all your postings with no warning or delete your account altogether. Her fave email intro line is this is your ‘final warning' - when a member like me had one warning because I just didn't know the rules to a tee!
She is one to abuse use of her admin privileges and power and she doesn't foster a happy or safe buy sell environment as she is the problem to this site and a huge reason varage has crappy ratings. Her along with hungry power tyrant administrators!
Yes enforce the rules, ensure it's a safe site for all to use. Have some class with your threatening emails lady - you are going to get yourself into a lot of trouble. You will need to use softer and more polite and professional tone when you work With spying on so many members. You are clearly not suited for this job or your work needs to be audited 24/7 as well. VarageSale you need better protocols when hiring and screening your admins. Your site would be a lot better with more competent staff.

While I do love dealing with VarageSale, the admins are nightmares. The Richmond BC admin, Sarah Margaret, is a power tripper and the South Delta admin Shannon Alicia is just plain elitist and mean. The worst part is that there is no recourse- there is no way to appeal any of their unfair decisions. I don't dare post this review on any community sites because I know I will get removed from the VS- as the admin are basically able to do whatever they want.

Denied access to sell on VarageSale for lack of personal photo.

To protect my identity from being copied or stolen it is in my best interest to not include personal pictures or photos of myself.
VarageSale doesn't think so.
I think that's suspicious. Especially after other internet "For Sale" sites have had newsworthy serial stalkings.
I'm not trying to be a stalker, I'm just trying to sell outdoor furniture!

Slightly worn lingerie with a photo sounds disturbing to me!

When you ask questions and point out policies not being followed, Admin doesn't care (Meredith, Amy). The community I was a member of had three Admin leaders and one seemed fake. No matter whether you went by the book, Admin had their favorites and played like good cop(Meredith), bad cop(Amy). One would take it as far as she wanted then the other would step in and be condescending and harrassing. Even though I had good member status and good praises, it didn't matter. I hadn't reached top seller status. Once they play their game long enough, they revoke your membership and give their reason. And it's not totally the whole story. Once they revoked mine, I could email questions to the third Admin who seemed totally fake. Needless to say, I never heard back. It's a circus. Admin is the ring leader and you are the poor animal getting mistreated. Run and don't look back!

I've had good luck mostly using this site over the last 6 years in SK. Recently they hired a new admin, Lynn Gray, who is on a crazy power trip. She jumps to conclusions and is very one sided with sellers only. Erika Lee is not much better, but she is a lot more lazy about doing the work altogether. Can we please get some better, local admins... less nobodies that are too high up o n their horses??? It's too bad...

Also the "praise" system is a joke.. if someone no shows, leaves not enough money, etc and you "praise" them... they can just delete the praise so no one would ever know they were a $#*!ty buyer/seller. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Erika lee ruined varage sale, shes the perfect example of what happens when you give power to lonely housewives. Unless you live in that comunity (and no being a 5 minute drive away doesnt count because reasons) and instead of doing what admins are supposed to do which is delete adds where people are clearly selling garbage all she does is run communities with an authoritarian style of her way or out. In conclusion not even mentioning buying and selling youll have a hell of a time just trying to get added to a community, be prepared to either have answer questions about where you live and your daily schedual as if thats any of her business or be you can use the app and once the interoggation is over youll probably be denied without explanation anyway. 0/10 dont pass go, dont collect 200$ and most importantly dont download varage.

We have a great VS community. From time to time like anything we get a bad member but they don't last long.
We tend to get impatient when VS is having app issues but then a member will remind us how great VS's platform is compared to others and then we find patience.
I will say I have noticed more app issues since VS was sold BUT we are still happy with VS.
Besides meets and ppu's we meet weekly on Fridays to exchange our sales/purchases and we have annual an Christmas Party, Easter Egg Hunt for our little ones & end of summer party.
A pic of our Christmas Party Gifts.

I joined varage sale years ago when I was looking for something unique and found it in my area through a google search. Joined so I could contact buyer only to be told I couldn't contact the buyer until I was approved which took weeks, at which point the item was no longer available. A few years later I had forgotten the experience and went back looking at something else, couldn't contact the buyer except by the public forum which seemed weird. Used the public forum and arranged to meet but the seller was a no show (typical - I use Kijiji a lot and this is common, not really a big deal). Flash forward about a year I was looking at an ad someone was looking for vintage tools, I didn't have any I wanted to sell but knew of a place in the area that sold estate items and had just got a whole workshop from a woodworkers estate and the prices were crazy low. I like to help someone out if I can, so I tried to send the buyer a note about it, but because I had recently moved to a new city, again couldn't contact the buyer until I was "approved" (which I never was because I forgot to update my profile with my new address - an insane amount of work just to contact an online classified ad - besides by the time I would have been approved there would probably be nothing left - vintage tools go like hotcakes). That was two months ago, today I was again on varage sale and wanting to contact someone about an item, but was denied before and waiting again for approval. This is ridiculously insane, I don't know why I keep forgetting how non-functional this community is and keep going back. I get that online scams and people from out of the region wanting items shipped is annoying, but Kijiji makes it work without being a complete unusable disaster. I actually can't believe people waste their time trying to sell on a community that so vigorously and effectively keeps people from buying from that community. I've never seen a more difficult and insane sign up / change process, and all this for something that should be dead plain simple. Also I can't stand that the search is non-functional, you basically have to manually search through categories for specific items, then you find something your interested in, login to contact someone and you get sent to some random landing page, can't go back, and have to hunt for the item all over the place (then find out your not approved and can't contact them anyways).

I joined. Membership is still pending after 3 days. Meantime I sold 700.00 worth of merchandise on Offer Up and Let go. So far Varage is Garbage.

If you lie, or set up a false profile you can join the groups you want. If you are honest, then the admins powertrip and refuse to let you in. Doesnt matter if you are in the same state and willing to drive to the local area either. When people are punished for being honest, then this is a redflag that this online platform is unsafe. When you are trying to connect with other people, you definitely want a platform that encourages honesty.

As a seller, I would think about the impact of this for you personally. This means you get less buyers because the admins are controlling who you have access to transact with. I certainly wouldnt want to put the time and effort into taking good photos, writing descriptions and waiting on buyers just to know the admins may impair sales. But thats just me.

I'm already being generous for giving them a 1 star. I have no other choice if I need to ensure that I'm able to write this review. I have several issues with VarageSale and they are as follows:

1) According to VarageSale's definition of a Discussion, it says that it's anything you want to just "say" to everyone in the group. The link is here https://help.varagesale.com/article/374-what-is-a-discussion if you want to check it out. It doesn't specify that you can't be posting deals about your products so I posted a deal there about a daily discount for my products. A day later, it was deleted without explanation. I then reposted the deal along with another and again, they were both deleted a day or so later without explanation. When I contacted VarageSale admin, they indicated that I cannot advertise my products under Discussions and it's also based on the rules set out by the Community Admin for my area. When I scrolled through the Discussions, I notice multiple people posting advertisements for their products yet their posts remained. I even noticed that someone posted an ad for his products and he was also in the same buy and sell community as me. However, the Community Admin only wrote under his post that he shouldn't be doing that but did not remove his post. This goes to show how inconsistent the Community Admins can be as they will just arbitrarily delete some posts and keep some according to how they "feel" like even though the posts are of the same nature. Talk about taking irrationality to a whole new level! They also lack the courtesy to tell you the reason for removing your posts. So don't be surprised if you post something under Discussions and it ends up mysteriously disappearing. Mind you, they don't even mention under the definition of a Discussion on the VarageSale help page what you can't post as I had mentioned earlier so you'll be left guessing why your post just evaporated into thin air.

Honestly, it's not even the fact that the Community Admin (LeeAnn Matthews) removed my posts that angers me. It's the fact that she didn't even have the courtesy to tell me why and the fact that she was inconsistent with what to remove and what not to remove when my posts and other people's posts are of the same nature. I would be fine with her removing my Discussion posts if she was consistent with everyone and also told me the reason why. What terrible communication skills she has! She expects people to guess what's on her mind. I wonder if this type of attitude spills over to other aspects of her life because if it does, then I would pity those who would have to deal with her as they would have to constantly guess what's wrong with her as she cannot just straight up tell people what's wrong!

2) Without downloading the App on my phone and only using the browser, it seems like some of the buttons in VarageSale don't work. The Feed works but the buttons to check your own messages or products do not work. When I'm on my computer, however, everything tends to work properly.

3) They don't allow you to attach more than one picture for your products if you don't download the App. So if you're using VarageSale on your computer, don't expect to be able to attach more than one picture to give potential customers a better idea of your products.

4) The rating system is only a Praise rather than a rating in Stars or a scale of 1 to 5 or so. This causes a person to either have no Praises or only have Praises. There is no way anyone can have a publicly displayed negative review. Therefore, this rating system fails to give an accurate picture of a given user as it only shows people their good side.

5) You can have followers but VarageSale doesn't seem to let you see who they are. As for discussions, you can't see if anyone is "watching" your discussion.

These are the top complaints I have about VarageSale. I heard from an insider who used to work there that they were laying off a lot of people and almost went bankrupt. I guess this is why they are full of issues.

Needless to say, I have deleted my account and will never use VarageSale again. It's up to you whether or not you would want to try it out but I would definitely not recommend it.