The Real Real Claimed

The Realreal staff members cancelled a fully completed online transaction to enable a staff member to take a sold item from a customer for the purposes of reselling to another customer and/or for their own profit. This has occurred to me twice this week. My order number R336105046 was canceled on 10/2/23, and the item was sold to another customer. Today, 10/5, order number R557818362 was also canceled, and the item was taken from my completed transaction list and sold to another customer. I immediately contacted The Real Real’s customer service and spoke with Gabriel, who confirmed that my purchase had been canceled because another customer in their physical store desperately desired the item, so they canceled my order and sold it to her. He acknowledged that this was wrong but provided no solution. Upon speaking to another member of their support team, named Carson, he investigated and found that it wasn’t for another customer but a purchase by a member of staff, which he stated was against RealReal’s policy. It’s evident that these policies are not being enforced. After items are paid for and transactions are concluded, taking items from a customer amounts to theft. The RealReal staff members have no right to take them back or resell them without the permission of the customers who had completed their purchase. This practice is appalling and fraudulent, in addition to undermining the trust and credibility for those purchasing items from RealReal.

I purchased a Brunello Cucinelli leather puffer coat item number BRU192940, order number R772266521. I returned the coat due to the sizing error. The coat was delivered to TheRealReal on May 20th 2022 ( UPS tracking number 1Z15F5099097213505), it appears the item was added back to the RealReal inventory on May 25th (item number BRU194668) but they haven’t issue a refund to me yet. I contacted their customer service department multiple times to enquire on the status of the refund and I was told that my money will be refunded within 48 hours, then additional 24 hours, then I received an email from a customer representative Nancy M stating that my money will be refunded within subsequent 5-6 business days. Today is June 9th and upon communicating with them again, they are continuing to push the waiting period out and not resolving the issue. They acknowledge that funds are owed to me (which I have in writing) yet they do not process the payment, despite spending several hours on the phone with them, they are intentionally delaying the refund process or making it extremely difficult to obtain my refund. I have asked to escalate the matter and they fail to make any effort to resolve this. I feel this is in violation of their refund policy and is clearly an intentional way of withholding monies that are owed to me.

Employees of TheRealReal Melrose CA consistently remove RESERVED items from cards of online customers and sell them to their “in store” customers so they can earn their commission. I contacted the store manager and TheRealReal customers service regarding this issue but they failed to resolve it.