The following description of the various ways that cruise ship art auctioneers and associates trick the auction attendees and clients and rip them off for their own profit and the profit of the art gallery they work for, was sent to us by an auctioneer who has worked for three years with Park West at Sea. The auctioneer read other material on our website and wanted to contribute information. For fear of retribution, the auctioneer has asked to remain anonymous. We felt the cruise going public should be aware of this information so that they can avoid being scammed and ripped off at cruise line art auctions - Editor.
"I have been an art auctioneer with Park West for more than three years, and everything you guys are talking about is on the money.
I have a lot of rip-off stories about this company.
Couple of bits of info:
- Park West Gallery pay anywhere from 30-40% of gross sales, depends on cruise line. They pay a royalty rate of 30-40% on the ship's weekly sail, or however long the cruise was for, including buyer’s premium, just not shipping.
- Auctioneers that get caught in lies and problems just get moved to another cruise line
- Park West Gallery tell auctioneers on record to not sell on investment, but encourage it off the record... ALL TOP AUCTIONEERS sell on investment, you just word it properly and its easy
- We prey on the weak! The guest will be told whatever they want to hear to buy the art; we will get you on the Park West Collectors card, and milk it for every cent it has
- ***NONE of the art is a good deal, the sales teams on these ships are good. They know how to suck you in and get you to buy on emotion.
- Auctioneers and associates are paid purely on commission; I've had weeks where I lost money... and weeks where I've made $20,000+.
- It says right on the invoice, YOU CANNOT TRUST ANYTHING THE AUCTIONEER (ART DIRECTOR) has said to you... in all my years doing checkout, THIS NEVER came up once... guests were either afraid to bring it up or just played it off..... or too stupid to figure it out.
- And lastly.... ALBERT SCAGLIONE is a bible freak, he doesn't talk about art once when you meet him, it's all about GOD. He sends every new associate a bible with their name on it. If you heard him speak during the training class you would be freaked out. We all get a good laugh from it.
Returning art when dissatisfied
Dealing with returns (dissatisfied customers returning the art they had been sold) about two years ago I had a good conversation with Mike McHorney - I think he's a fleet manager for Carnival or Royal Caribbean now. He would laugh about returns, saying, "Not too worry, we will do everything possible to make sure the client doesn't get a refund no matter what the situation..." then he would continue on about how they just give people the go-around, never getting any issues resolved. He also talked about how they had a system to make sure no refunds were offered. The whole time he was smiling and laughing while talking about it. Myself and a couple others thought "Wow, this guy is a horrible person," not to mention I heard he's completely useless as a Fleet Manager. Hey big Mike, can you spell incompetence?
The Park West Collector’s Card
The whole point of the PWCC (Park West Collectors Card) is to first get people signed up, get their credit limit maxed without consent of the client, and then max the card!
"Ohh you can’t afford it? Don’t worry... just put it on the PWCC, no payments for a WHOLE YEAR!"
And you would be surprised how many people would fall for this. PEOPLE IF YOU DON'T HAVE THE MONEY NOW, you most likely won't have it later, use your heads! That being said, the PWCC was your ticket for doing well during the week.
I'm not proud of this, but I've had clients who didn't come to sign for their purchase so we would just apply it to the card, forge their signature and take the sale. They wouldn't even know what happened until the art was sent or they received the bill in the mail...good luck getting a refund. Every auctioneer I know does this: you bid on something and don't come to pay...we just apply it to your PWCC card. If you don’t have a PWCC card, we hound you on the ship till you do come and pay with another method.
(Some comments on individual artists.)
SALVADOR DALI
One little story about the Dali works: my team was moved to a different ship on Carnival. As we were doing a inventory check on the works, an associate of mine noticed something wrong with one of our Divine Comedy works. Each work should have the blind stamp of Les Heures Claires (publisher) as part of the provenance, as we always talk about it when mentioning Dali's works. This one didn't have it, so I sent an email to Mr. Shapiro about the situation, He told me to call him... during the phone call he mentioned just to send it back and HE'LL STAMP IT!!!!! I started to laugh and said, "You're joking right?" He said, "No, send it back with your next offload and I'll take care of it." Then he started talking about how they had purchased these prints for around $35 way back when. The stamp issue seemed fishy to me, but you would probably know more about it than I do. [We have heard from another source that Park West Gallery owns the blind stamp for Les Heures Claires, which is the embossed imprint usually on the bottom left of the prints they sell.]
I was aware that the Sacra Bibla Dali works were offset lithographs as well, pretty much posters, and I've sold some for $25,000-40,000 on ships.
PETER MAX
Peter Max is the big seller on any ship. As an auctioneer, if you can't sell Peter Max you're not going to do well. Any seminar or presentation on a ship is custom tailored around what THEY ARE TRYING TO SELL YOU! The seminars are full of lies to make the artists we have on board look good, plus we want the works to appear as an investment opportunity! Auctioneers will talk about how Peter Max is the best artist from the POP ART movement, how when he's dead he'll be bigger than Andy Warhol. How his paintings/prints are going up $1000-$2000 every year (BULLSHIT). Maybe the Park West Price goes up $1000 a year, but in the real world where the market is flooded with his prints they aren't doing much of anything.
If you ever bought a Peter Max on canvas on a ship, there are probably 500-1000 that look exactly like it (series 14, number XXII..or however they label them). Hand painted by Peter Max? Ha ha, I doubt it. He probably has a group of students doing all the painting on his PW multi-mixed paintings/canvas works.
I've had a client who bought a canvas Peter Max Statue of Liberty for around $3,000 on land, and on a ship we sell them for around $25,000 - $32,000... AND EVERY SHIP WILL HAVE one or two of them! Hahaha, we call them 'original' paintings, and it's very rare to see one on a ship, but most ships would have one with slightly different color schemes.
Now talking about the 9/11 series - it's a series of 6 mixed media paintings (lithograph with slashes of paint scattered throughout) - I know for a fact most auctioneers have been saying for the past three years that Peter Max isn't painting them anymore! Yet we've never run out. This is a complete lie, and I'm sure you were told this if you bought one. Like I mentioned earlier I don't even think Peter Max paints them (based on the volume of Peter Max we sell, Max would have to paint +350 mixed media painting alone to meet the amount PWG would sell every week). These sell for around $7,000 each, and PWG pays under $500 each. I've had clients who bought whole sets for around $35,000 thinking it's such a great investment, and now they might be able to sell them for around $10,000 on eBay if you can find a buyer (YOU WON'T).
REMBRANDT
The Rembrandt etchings are a joke. Yes, I'm sure they are pulled from the plate. But who cares? They are worth next to nothing... I would say max maybe a couple hundred each, not $5,000!!!! They are in editions of 2500.
DALI - DESTINO
Just another inflated set of works, lithographs signed in the plate.... worth maybe a couple $100 each, we sell them for $2-5,000 each.
PICASSO / CHAGALL / MIRO
Anyone who sees our prices of these works on a ship who is involved in the art market knows right away they are overpriced. I've had one Picasso work from the Vollard Suite on one ship for $168,000 and then on another ship for $78,000. How in hell do they pull this off? (both signed, regular edition number).
I wouldn't even waste my time as Auctioneer trying to sell to knowledgeable guests; they knew from the start it was all overpriced.
Headquarters
One aspect you have to understand is that myself as auctioneer rarely see or converse with the higher status people at PW. Only at conference (once a year) or when I make art selections before joining a new ship do I actually meet face to face. This is same for all of us, we get our ship and are sent off. The person back in Michigan or Miami that pushes the sales is Vanessa McGovern (she assigns all auctioneers/associates to their ships). She moves you around if you're not doing well, or for other reasons. Fleet Managers as well push hard for volume. They get commissions on your sales. Each cruise line has a different Fleet Manager. They all know what's going on with the sales techniques. When auctioneers are caught on tape selling on investment or just plain lies...they will get a phone call from the main office telling them to keep it off tape.
Albert and Marc know exactly what is going on: they have their finger on the pulse at all times. The only reason they can sell in volume on ships is by lying - they understand this. If guests knew they could buy the same piece on land much, much cheaper why in HELL would they buy on a ship?
Buying art for investment
All auctioneers are stressed not to sell art as investment, BUT are taught in Michigan the tricks to get guests come to that conclusion on their own...by saying things like Marcel Mouly has gone up from $200 a litho to $2000 in only a couple years, or fine art on average has been a better return than equities or real estate. Or, the BIG ONE, 40-60% off land gallery prices. How is that not selling on investment? The whole point is to get the guest to see it as a investment, without saying investment.
Cruise lines
I know Albert is good friends with most of the cruise line CEOs. For example, on Holland America they don't even have a contract with PWG; it's just a verbal agreement. (Just a rumor I heard, might not be accurate)
Carnival Corp. seems to be figuring out what is going on and are getting angry with PWG. Carnival will send mystery shoppers for the week and look for problems with the art sales department. I've heard that Albert is getting his ear bitten off lately, but most of what I hear is through other people.
Learning to lie and deceive
Another part is you have to understand that Auctioneers make up their own lies and deceit. We are pushed into it. They tell is if we can't make the sales target, then get off the ship. Like I mentioned before, if we sold art honestly at auction, I wouldn't be hitting over $100,000 every week; it would be more around $3-5,000. They know all the lies we say, we get calls about them all the time... but of course they do nothing about it. If an auctioneer gets too much heat on one ship, they just move him over to another to continue his lies! Happens more than you would think.
Auctioneers talk with other auctioneers to find out how to work the system, to refine their presentations and every aspect of their program (selling techniques, etc.) then they move around associates from auctioneer to auctioneer to get the associates learning how we run the program and then the associates get their own ship. It's a cycle which PW encourages.
Sales slumping
Sales are also slumping or they were last time I spoke with Maria Marsh (head of operations in Miami). She had mentioned sales are down I think around 40% for the year, that was in 2007, and I know it hasn't been getting better.
The bottom line
In the 21st century, these large multi-national corporations only seem to care about one thing, PROFIT. A CEO cares about his shareholders, not the little cruiser. Park West Gallery has given hundreds of millions of dollars in profit to these cruise lines. Not until the little cruiser becomes a gang of frustrated complaints will change happen.
In summary
I have no reason to lie about what I have stated above, it's my experience with PWG over the past years. Take from it what you like. I could have written countless events of guests being ripped off in detail; if you read this article carefully you would understand that it's not only the large buyer but anyone who buys art on cruise ships.
Please don't use my name. I don't want to be sued by the Jesus freak... Oh, and his son, Marc, is just as bad! The company makes everyone sign a confidentiality agreement, and it's very strict. Park West will sue over the smallest things, so I would like to keep my name out of it.
That NY TIMES article that just came out has caused a lot of problems for the company. I know several auctioneers that have lost huge sales based solely on it.
There's just a certain time when you need to cut your losses from this company.
I have a conscience, and what they are doing is wrong. I would like to applaud your determination to expose the truth on this company... good for you guys!
- Park West at Sea Auctioneer
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