Via Trading Corporation — Local services in Lynwood

OK so went to Lynwood and met with Mike Stambouli of Via Trading on Monday. Our business has shifted it's model currently and we are attempting to move into liquidation based items, etc. etc. Had emailed Mike back and forth so he could get a feel about what we were interested in getting for our store. So we made the trip to Lynwood to meet with Mike on Monday and I gotta say we were met at the door by Mike and he proceeded to spend a huge amount of time with us answering questions showing us loads from pallets to truckloads from Walmart to Shopko and everything in between. He was knowledgeable, patient, and best of all was not high pressure at all. Being new to sourcing merchandise from liquidation type places was whole new territory to us. Mike did a great job introducing us to it all and letting us take it all in. All we can say is thanks again for truly taking the time to walk us through the process of it all.

All that said A+++ review for Mike personally. Now onto the product we purchased. We knew going down we wanted tools and that was a priority for us. We had wanted to potentially buy a truckload of general merchandise to have shipped back. We saw many Walmart loads and all seemed to be good enough to turn profit at the price they were selling for. The best truckloads we saw were the shopko loads they are huge and have a huge variety and outside impressions were extremely good and after getting all googly eyed about them and nearly pulling the trigger on one we decided to wait purely because of space restraints and help to process that size of a load. Logistics on our end stopped us from making the purchase not any doubt as to the return we could make on the load. They had 5 pallet lots of Harbor freight tools as well as a truckload of harbor frieght tools we ended up buying 2 of the 5 pallet lots of tools basically to get an idea of how this would all work. We were nervous but they were decent looking pallets very little obviously broken items actually only 1 battery charger was the only item there was no doubt was beyond repair. Today we started processing the load of 10 pallets of tools. We were expecting a solid 20% loss and am extremely happy to report we at about 80% to 90% processed we haven't even filled a large tote with the items that haven't worked or were broken and in need of repair. On top of that the items that have been bad were items that would have retailed between 20 and 50 bucks and honestly I feel like most can be repaired with minor work ( Switches, brushes etc.) We got a ton of compressors the small pancake type like 20 of them all of them except 1 worked with the issue that most likely got them returned being gauges that didn't work well at the price point we have them at nobody cares ( we sold 6 of them today ) have had 4 items that were clearly well used and returned but still functioned and with cleaning will be easy sells. A few items maybe 5% will take a long time to sell like shallow well pumps things like that but it's of no concern because given what we saw today and what we've seen in the past with tools we will have a vast majority sold within a week. Very exciting! It was a great mix of items with very few hand tools. Mostly drills Sawzall compressors 8 welders all working only 1 with a missing tip, 3 winches, bandsaws, mitre saws ( sold 2 today already and every one we got worked fine) small hand held power tools to large shop tools. So long story short and I know that every load is different and another may be the complete opposite but in this load and in our case we can't say enough good things. From Mike as our sales person to the goods we bought. We will in the end double our money and then some. Seriously was a top notch experience top to bottom. I read some bad reviews about Via Trading and we were nervous but we all know everyone is quick to give bad reviews but the good ones aren't so frequent I told Mike I would give an honest review of the experience and the merchandise and...

i used to go to this place a lot to source product to sell online. i am not sure what happened but the quality of goods has really diminished. i thought hey maybe they are just getting in some bad truckloads so i waited and years have passed at this point and the quality never changed or went back to what it used to be.

To make things worse the company started to mark up prices way to high on product. if target/walmart/homedepot/amazon could not sell it what makes you think that charging 30% retail on a $20 item is going to be good for your costumers when you know at one point target/walmart/homedepot/amazon probably had these marked down 80% to 90% off and still could not move them when they were like $2-$3 each item. which means you want me to pay 6$ an item which again for a liquidation company makes no sense since we all know you got them for way cheaper than the $2-3$ per item usually pennies on the dollar. Then as a online seller i have to ship the item which is not cheap and most of the time you are either breaking even with calculations or in the red by quite the bit.

They used to have auctions and they were usually filled with decent items but now you are lucky if you find 1 or 2 pallets or cases you actually want to buy. it seems like they are now mainly using there auction to get rid of pallets/expired product they just can't move inside the warehouse that no one wants.

They also used to do raffles but those are now also far and in between maybe 1-2 a month now as before used to be 8-10 a month. which is now also being used as an auction more than a raffle these day they also use this term "nore" which used to mean good product in there terms but it is not longer "nore" it is more like amazon junk mixed with target/walmart with no real value and now they are also forcing you to buy a hdx pallet along side it which usually has bulky big items. You used to be able to just get the pallet you liked or have a chance to with the raffle.

Also i should add the pallets & cases are skimpier than what they used to be and are marked up way higher than they used to be and back then again it was for quality product now all you see is brands no one knows for the most part hard to find a quality case.

if you are an older buyer who used to come here a lot you can tell the quality is not what it used to be the crowd for the place even at raffles/auctions has thinned out this place used to be packed sometimes you could not even get a seat for the auctions now a days you have a choice of were you...

4/1/2020: After dealing with them a few more times, things seem to be normal now and they are responsive to questions and requests. I updated my review to reflect my experience. Will update if anything changes.

Feb 2020 Review:

BUYERS BEWARE!! This is the second time I ordered from them and it has been over a week since I made the payment but they still haven't shipped yet. I tried to contact the account manager David Seyhun but it was impossible to get hold of him. I called the main line and they kept transferring me around to random people who never pick up the phone. I still don't know what to do at this point and wonder if they just took my money and I never hear back.

UPDATED: The shipment was finally shipped but with no tracking information nor notification. The worst thing is I paid a few hundred dollars for FedEx Home Delivery, which is an available option when I checked out from their website. However, I got a call from a freight delivery company wanting to deliver a 240-pound pallet to my address which is residential (condo) and is indicated as such in my account with Via Trading. I called the mainline (apparently my account manager David Seyhun was not reachable neither by his cell phone nor office phone) and someone told me they converted my small parcel FedEx Home Delivery (which I selected and paid for) into a big pallet freight delivery WITHOUT asking me nor notifying me. He simply asked me "What do you want me to do?" I told him to call the freight delivery company and fix it and make it into small parcel delivery and he said okay and promised he would call me back the same day. No one called me on that day. They also never talked to the delivery company because I asked the delivery company the next day. I am stuck without knowing what to do. I called the owner at the number in his response and will see if he responds to...