McTear's Reviews 500

First time we have sold at auction. Staff amazing, very professional and valuation process great. Stewart Atkinson provided one of our valuations, very accurate and kept us up to date with process and outcome. Excellent experience .

Excellent service and ongoing communication. Reserved prices well placed and smooth sale.
Would visit again!

McTear's organised an auction of items for me.
They did it with kindness and professionalism, guiding me through the process with excellent advice.
All the Lots were successfully bid for and the items have been bought worldwide, thanks to the hard work of McTear's in Cataloguing the Collection.

If you want to avoid severe disappointment please avoid this company like the plague, the plague would be more enjoyable. Absolute no care taken or given over my items, I packaged them well & approx a third were unopened yet supposedly all reviewed & valued. One silkscreen print in mint condition is now wrecked because it was heavily handled & stuffed back into packaging, creased & folds everywhere on it now. I thought you had to go to the circus to see clowns but apparently you just need to visit McTears. Very poor & disappointing experience.

Excellent communication and information regarding my lot.

I can highly recommend McTears. All my purchases have been managed in professional and accommodating way. They were responsive to my requirements and eager to please.

I was very impressed by the professionalism shown by all the staff at McTear’s Auction House. This was my first experience of selling through auction and the process was found to be easy and straightforward especially with the assistance of Stewart Atkinson and Hannah. From the initial valuation through to the final payment, McTear’s kept us fully informed. I especially enjoyed watching the live auctions on-line.

Bought earrings in their January jewellery auction for £150 + commission, unfortunately they did not suit me, as they were too big for my ear lobes. I therefore thought I cut my losses and take them back to Mcteers for their next auction, in the hope I might recoup some money, you can imagine my surprise when I was told they wouldn’t enter the earrings in one of their jewellery auctions! Only a general auction without a reserve price! Very confusing! Feeling cheated!

Excellent advice and communication from beginning to end of process. Stuart proved himself to be extremely knowledgeable about the Chinese vase we were putting into auction and his valuation turned out to be accurate.

Purchased a small antique knife from that outfit and the whole experience was awful. They completely refused to cooperate with packing the item for a courier collection even though I offered to send the box and packing materials. So I had to use expensive side kick shipping company and when I received the item - several major damages were not even on their lot description. What a nasty outfit delivering mediocre service.

From start to finish my experience with McTears has been very good. The McTears people are all very easy, pleasant and helpful to deal with. A special thanks to Stuart who handled the items we were selling, he was excellent at dealing with us, and explained everything that we needed to know. All in all a very positive experience, and we won’t hesitate to use them again.

Put in quite a few lots for sale after loft clearance. My fault I suppose!
All the lots were very poorly displayed and the listing theme seemed to be "in as few words as possible". Items which I'd carefully packed were dumped into boxes on top of each other then photographed, resulting in most of them being unseen. The descriptions were short, vague with not much detail. To me it seemed unprofessional at best, bordering on plain lazy. It was pointed out to me that bidders could "request a condition report"....why don't you just do the condition report and add it to the listing anyway? Take too much time?
Achieving best price for sellers doesn't seem to be a priority. I also had the pleasure of paying "loss and damage warranty", not sure what this covered though as one of my items was slightly damaged but that was "glossed over" when I mentioned it. Overall the prices achieved for the majority of lots was below expectations and in my opinion was purely down to poor presentation on the site.
After paying sellers commission, lotting fees-charged dependant on sale price,(correct me if I'm wrong),so basically just an additional form of commission, the aforementioned loss and damage charge and VAT, McTears took almost 30% of the total selling price.
Now I'm aware that higher sale prices means more commission for them, but it seems if you don't spend time trying to present lots at their best, you can push more lots through, each one with it's own lotting fee, you'll make up any shortfall easily enough.
Overall very disappointed with their minimal effort/maximum charge theme which is about all I took away from the experience unfortunately.

Following my phone call and then my visit I can advise that McTear's especially Stewart Atkinson who was my contact throughout my dealings always acted in a cordial and knowledgeable manner.Following the auction I received a telephone call to update me re the outcome. I would not hesitate to recommend McTear's to anyone who wishes to use an auction house. John

When I went to have my item valued in May, I agreed with the staff member that I would have an asking price of £200 with 10% discretion. 1received 3 pre sale notices with that valuation. There was another pre sales advice on August 1st which I had missed reading that had changed the value from £200 to £100 - £200 Discretion (10%). If this had been explained to me at the time, or in a telephone call I would have not put this item in auction. It sold yesterday for a hammer price of £130 which is way below the agreement I made on the day. I would have kept the item & passed it to my 14 year old grandson. When I queried why this happened all I was told repeatedly that this is company policy, it is in the terms & conditions & I should have read the pre sales advice. Wish I had read the reviews before I presented my item. Totally disappointed in their lack of customer support. I would advise anyone to go elsewhere, rather than be duped by their sales agents.

Consigned two lots for auction (estimated at quite a high value). On day of auction both lots sold “to the room” (for far under their value). After auction was over, received notification that one lot was going to a “timed auction” as it had not sold. Strange because I watched the auction - in fact I recorded it and still have the footage - and bids went through. I then found out that this was in fact a lie - fake ‘ghost’ bids by McTear’s themselves - to make a lot look much more popular than it was, told to me by a staff member. Other items which “sold” at the same auction also ended up being enrolled in the “timed auction”. Didn’t they sell(?!) This is clear deception!

Withdrew my “unsold” lot from the timed auction much to the annoyance - or should I say arrogance - of the staff member who I spoke to. I have found on the few unfortunate occasions of dealing with McTear’s, staff are cold and there is a very uncomfortable atmosphere around the front reception. Often rude and abrupt and the air of pretentiousness reeks. My experience in the item gallery has been just as bad. Staff in need of a customer service course and badly.

I am really annoyed that I did not properly vet this auction house but I will not make the same mistake again. Please do yourself a favour and go to an auction which values customers and speaks to you as if you are a human being. McTear’s just want your money and that is obvious from the very first moment of contact. They really just live off of their name while their auctions are packed with ‘ghost’ bids like what happened to me. Highly disappointed, please do your research and look elsewhere.

I've been a regular at McTear's this year and have really enjoyed the experience. Auction Rooms are handy to get to and well laid out. Staff are really helpful when viewing and then picking up purchases. Special mention for the tearoom - cheesecake is highly recommended and customer service is great. 5 stars

Submitted for auction a Skovby dining sideboard, a dining table and 8 dining chairs which in my opinion were all in excellent condition. They valued the items at between £100 to £200 which I thought was an under estimation. Imagine my total surprise when they contacted me to say they had sold for £20. initially I thought a zero was missing. Sadly this was not the case. After they deducted their commission and vat I received the grand total of £10-04p. Someone is laughing all the way to the bank sadly it is not me. Given I paid £90 for the rental of a van plus petrol it has cost me about £85 for me to sell these items.
PLEASE AVOID THIS COMPANY AT ALL COSTS>

Michelle Henderson's behaviour was unethical, unprofessional and malicious. A toxic auction house that should not be permitted to trade.

Terrible auctioneers. Conveniently underselling items. There are far better more reputable auctioneers through out the United Kingdom other than this mob. If I could give less than 1 star I would.

So I bought a bracelet with McTears recently and unfortunately the whole experience has just been toxic.
Clearly they don’t have a good specialist department for jewellery on staff as it wasn’t until 30 minutes before the auction that they realised they’d incorrectly catalogued a lot. they never bothered to check the serial number of a Cartier piece to correlate it to the certificate.
I left my bids directly with McTears prior to the auction but they never bothered to notify me of the amendment to the cataloguing. A lot without certification can be worth significantly less but they didn’t think it was important to notify their bidders.
Since then they still won’t admit they miscatalogued the piece. I was happy to proceed if they just made a gesture of goodwill but they wouldn’t do that. They insisted I pay for the lot as if it was correctly catalogued and pay for shipping on top!
The girl who runs their jewellery department, Lucy, is clearly very junior and can’t speak with any authority.
I really wanted what I bought but was left feeling like a chump by the whole experience. So disappointing. I gave them so many opportunities to just make small gestures of rectification but they flat out refused. Clearly customer service and retention not important to them.
Very disappointed. Not at all like dealing with a proper auction house.
Amateur across the board. Buyer be warned!