Frequently Asked Questions
Q:How do I list my sale with you?
A:
If you want to list a private sale, you'll start here:
www.estatesales.net/private-sale/price.aspx
Once you set your sale's location by putting in the zip code, you'll be directed to the sale form, where you'll fill out all the requested information.
Q:How can I edit my private sale after I submit the sale form?
A:
Once you submit the form for a private sale, you won’t have access to make any changes directly, though changes can be made by us through emailing support@EstateSales.NET. You’ll want to make sure that everything appears the way you want it to appear before you send the form. Any changes to your sale listing must be made via email request.
Q:Where do I upload pictures for my private sale?
A:
After you submit your private sale form, we begin to process it so that it’s ready to be published to our web site. Upon submission of your sale, you’re directed to a page with a link to upload your pictures and to make payment for your sale. After your sale’s been processed, we will also send you an email with a link that will take you back to the upload and payment pages, just in case you need to make payment or upload your pictures at a later time.
Q:There’s no “Upload” button on my picture upload page. What do I do?
A:
You’ll want to make sure that you have the most current version of your internet browser (i.e. Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, et al) and the most current version of Adobe Flash installed on your computer to use our Flash Uploader, as this is the preferred method of uploading pictures to our site. You also have the option of downloading and installing Microsoft Silverlight, which works much the way our Flash Upload does. If you’re made sure that Flash and your browser are updated, and you’re still having problems, you can give us a call or send us an email for further help.
Q:How do I pay?
A:
As soon as you submit your private sale listing form, you’re directed to a page with a payment link, as well as a link to go to your sale’s picture upload page. We will also send you an email with links for each of these pages as soon as your sale has been processed.
Q:Why isn’t my credit card working?
A:
We accept all valid Visa, MasterCard, and American Express credit and debit cards. If yours isn’t being accepted, double-check that you’ve typed the card number and expiration dates correctly. If they’re correct, you might want to check with the bank or card issuer, that there aren’t any issues with your balance or the account, and that the card has been activated long enough to be able to be used.
Q:Can I choose not to display my sale’s address until the day before the sale?
A:
Yes! Our system will automatically hide the address until 9am of the day before the sale begins. Your sale’s address can be displayed as late as three hours before the sale starts, or as early as you want. If you have a preference, please provide this information in the “Special Instructions” on the sale form.
Q:What information should I provide in the sale description?
A:
It’s best to provide as much information as possible in the sale description. We have no limit to text (like the newspaper), so more is always better. This can only draw more interest in your sale, as people are able to get a good idea about what you have available. Be as descriptive as possible; if you have furniture, what type of furniture is it? What is the brand name? What is the color? Etc.
Also, we have a search feature that will allow someone to enter in key terms to look for sales that include a particular item.
Q:When does your email blast go out?
A:
System wide, all notifications go out the day before the sale starts. Each subscriber has the option of changing his or her Subscriber settings, but the default time for notifications to be received is the day before the sale. This means that your sale needs to be published no later than 9pm Central Standard Time, two days before your sale begins, or 48 hours prior to the beginning of the sale, per our site. Many of our subscribers still receive their notifications the day before a sale begins, around 9am, but some have chosen to receive notifications two, three, or more days before the sales’ starting dates. Some subscribers (though we don’t recommend this setting) have specified to receive notifications once a week. Unless you’re submitting and paying for your sale listing a week before it begins, your sale may not be in every single subscriber’s notification, though it will be in a majority of the notifications, as long as it’s been published before our deadline.
Q:What’s the cut-off time for uploading pictures?
A:
There isn’t a deadline for uploading pictures like there is for making payment for your sale listing, however, you’ll want to try to upload any pictures you have for your sale before people receive notification of the sale.
Q:I’m having an outdoor/garage/yard sale. Can I list that with you?
A:
You would need to physically move all or a large portion of the sale items indoors in order to be able to list the sale on our site. We specify that your sale must be inside the home, but of course, we realize that not every item of an estate can be inside - we wouldn’t ask you to make room for a lawn mower or a motorcycle in the living room.
We do our best to keep yard/garage/tent sales and other types of outdoor-only sales off of our site.
Q:In which city will my sale be listed?
A:
To see which where your sale will be listed, you can visit our home page, click your state on the blue map of the U.S. and enter your sale’s zip code into the search box. This will direct you to the metro area in which your sale will be listed.
Q:How do I sign up my company?
A:
To get started with the company signup process, you’ll want to be here:
www.estatesales.net/signup/
Once you’ve selected your company package, simply click on that package’s graphic. You’ll be prompted to enter your company information. Once you’ve finished the signup process, you can click the “Add New Sale” button on your My Sales page to start the process of listing a sale.
Q:How do I list my company’s sales?
A:
Once logged into your company account, you’ll simply need to click the “Add New Sale” button and enter the appropriate information along all five steps of our Sale Wizard. Depending on which package you chose, and whether or not you’ve added any Featured Slots, extra pictures, or extra cities to your sale, you may or may not need to make a payment to publish your sale on the last step of the process - the PUBLISH step.
Q:Why can’t I get into my account?
A:
First, double-check the email address and password you’re using to log in. Passwords on our site are case-sensitive, so you’ll want to be sure that you’re typing everything correctly. After you’ve made sure that everything is being typed correctly, you can use the “Forgot Your Password” link provided. If you have any problems with receiving or using the reset code that our system will automatically send you, you can send us an email from the email address on file for your company with your password reset request, and we will manually reset the password for you.
Upon attempting to log in, if you receive a message that says:
“Successful Login...But There Is a Problem!
We were successful logging in your e-mail address, but your e-mail is only
associated with organizations that have been removed from the site
(either by you or by us). If you feel this is a mistake, please call or e-mail
us so we can take care of it: (888) 653-8468 or support@EstateSales.NET.”
… You had your login information correct, but your account is no longer available. This is either because you’ve requested to have your account removed, or we’ve had to remove it. You can email or call us for more information and/or to have your account made available again
Q:Why isn’t my sale showing up?
A:
There could be more than one reason that your sale isn’t on a City page. Double-check that it’s been published by looking at the sale on your company’s My Sales page. If you see a red square that contains the text “No - Publish Now,” your sale is not currently published, either because you have made a change to the sale dates, or because it is pending a payment. Click “Edit This Sale” and go to the sale’s PUBLISH step to find out.
You might also be looking on the wrong City page. On your My Sales page, click the “Edit This Sale” link and go to STEP 5 of the Sale Wizard to double-check which metro area is the home city for your sale. Look for the text “Home City:” under the heading “Extra Cities” to see which is your sale’s home metro area.
In rare circumstances, your sale might have had to have been unpublished or removed from our site. Check your My Sales page to see if your sale is on your sale list. If it isn’t (and it hasn’t just ended), check your company’s listed email to see if we’ve sent you a message in regard to the sale. If we have to remove or unpublish a sale, we will send you notification as to why via the email address you’ve listed as your company’s contact email address on our site.
Q:Why is my company at a certain place on the company page?
A:
Companies on the Find a Company city pages on our site are arranged alphabetically, by package, with companies in a certain city listed before companies that are not in that city, but are advertising in the city. Out-of-town companies that wish to advertise in a city are listed alphabetically in a group below the companies that operate primarily in the city
Q:Why isn’t my credit card working? (For company accounts)
A:
If the card on file for your account hasn’t been able to be charged for your monthly fee (if you’re on our Bronze, Silver, or Gold package) you won’t be able to publish any sales until it’s been changed to a working card. Check to see if you’ve been issued a new card with a new number or expiration date. You’ll want to update your credit card information whenever it changes. You can change your card information by clicking My Company, then the “Update Your Credit Card” link. Be sure to click the “Submit Changes” button at the bottom of the page to save your changes. If there is an issue with the new card information, you’ll receive an error message above the cardholder information fields on the Update Credit Card page.
We accept all valid Visa, MasterCard, and American Express credit and debit cards. If yours isn’t being accepted, double-check that you’ve typed the card number and expiration dates correctly. If they’re correct, you might want to check with the bank or card issuer, to see if there are any issues with your balance or the account, and that the card has been activated long enough to be able to be used.
Q:I’m having a certain type of sale, but I want to mark it as a different type of sale so it can receive more exposure. Is that okay?
A:
Each sale listing you publish to our site must be marked correctly. If you’re conducting a moving sale, you must be sure to change the Sale Type in STEP 1 to “Moving Sale Inside Private Home.” Auctions, must be marked as “Auctions”, an online auction must be marked correctly as an “Online Only Auction.” When we find that a sale has been marked incorrectly, we will notify you of the issue via email. If you haven’t corrected the mistake in a timely manner, we will need to unpublish your sale (depending upon the sale type) until the appropriate changes have been made.
Q:What do I do with my company’s contact list?
A:
If you have a list of email addresses for people you’ve been notifying of your sales, you can upload the list so that these people can become subscribers to your newsletter and your sales. You have the option of adding them as subscribers of your metro area too, so that they’re notified of other sales in their location.
You can upload the list by clicking Tools and Options, then Email List Upload Management. Follow the steps to send your email confirmation and enter the email addresses you wish to upload.
Q:I paid for a Featured slot, but my sale isn’t featured. Why not?
A:
When you purchase any type of Featured slot (Local, Regional, National), you’ve purchased a week of that feature. If you’ve moved the dates of the sale so that the sale is being conducted in a different week from the week you originally had scheduled the sale and purchased the Feature, you would need to purchase the Feature again for the new week. Featured slots don’t move along with the date of a sale; they are permanently fixed to a specific week and are non-refundable.
Removing the Feature you selected will not make the featured slot you took available again, nor will it credit the fee back to the credit/debit card you used to make payment.
If you haven’t changed the sale date(s), un-checked the box to add the Feature(s), or completed any other action that would remove your sale’s feature or unpublish the sale, there may be something wrong with our system. If this is the case, you’ll want to contact us to let us know so that we can research your sale history and amend any issue with your sale or our site.
Q:What’s the difference between Locally, Regionally, and Nationally Featured slots?
A:
Locally Featured slots are limited to two slots per week, per metro area. This is the only feature that highlights your sale on its home sale page - and in subscribers’ notifications - in yellow.
Regionally Featured slots feature your sale in a 250-mile radius from its location. The Regionally Featured Sales show up at the bottom of each of those city’s sale pages and in each subscribed user’s notification. You can see a list of these cities on STEP 5 of your sale listing, under the link, “same region where your sale is taking place.”
Nationally Featured slots feature your sale at the bottom of every city’s sale page and in every subscribed user’s notification in the U.S.
If there are more than three sales featured for a Region or Nationally, three sales will be displayed in the Regionally/Nationally Featured Sales area at the bottom of city sale pages. These three sales are randomly switched out among any sales that are featured for the week.
All featured slots are non-refundable, so you’ll want to make sure of the date of your sale before you purchase a feature. Changing the week of the sale removes any featured week you originally selected, which would require you to purchase a new week for a featured slot, if you still wanted your sale to be featured.
Q:How do I get on your mailing list?
A:
You’ll want to sign up here:
www.estatesales.net/subscriptions/
Once you’ve entered your email address and your zip code in the “New Subscribers” fields, our system will automatically create your new Subscriber account. You’ll want to check your email after you’ve finished, as we’ve sent you an email containing a confirmation link that you’ll need to click to confirm that your email address is a working address. After you click this link, you should start receiving notifications based on your Subscriber settings.
Q:Why can’t I log into my Subscriber account?
A:
If you’re getting the message:
“Login Failed
We were not able to validate your e-mail address and password. If you continue to have problems, please consider using one of the links below the login button to retrieve or set your password.”
… Then, you’re trying to log in with incorrect information. Follow the instructions in the message to set or reset your password.
Q:Why am I getting notifications that include sales that are out of my area?
A:
Log into your Subscriber account and click Delivery Options. Nationally and Regionally Featured Sales are sales that can be 250 miles or more away from your home location. If you don’t wish to be notified of these sales, you can un-check the boxes in front of Nationally Featured Sales and Regionally Featured Sales and click the “Save My Info” button at the bottom of the page.
You can also check your specified driving distance on your Delivery Options page, or the cities you’re subscribed to on your Change Areas page.
Q:I watched a sale and now it’s not in my Watched Sales page. What happened?
A:
You’ll want to be logged into your Subscriber account in order to be sure that you won’t lose the sales you’ve selected to watch. Watching a sale without being signed into your account should be okay - as long as your browser doesn’t automatically delete your history, cookies, or temporary internet files. Our site remembers the computer you used when you Watched a sale, so if you weren’t logged into your account and you’ve deleted your browsing history or if you’re using a different computer, the information wouldn’t have been saved on our site.