Gunnink & Co Business Brokers

*Solid 1-star review: The funny thing about Google Reviews is that even though some individuals or businesses provide a shockingly poor service, they still contact you afterwords and ask for a 5-star review. Have they lost all awareness of how valuable they actually are? ...this is what happened to us shortly after we settled on the sale of our small business. Jan Gunnink sold himself as a smooth-talking broker who can 'sell anything' and he has the suits & the car to match. Although he might be involved in selling anything, please take note that when the sale eventually goes through it may be due to 95% your efforts and 5% of Gunnink's efforts. However, he will gladly take 100% of his minimum $16,500 fee. The whole point in hiring the services of a Business Broker is that they work on selling your business so that you don't have to. If you have to sell it, then why would you need to pay someone for the work that you do yourself? Our experience in a nutshell: When Gunnink initially listed our business, we noted to him in writing that we may also have potentially interested individual buyers in mind for a sale, and Gunnink said that any shared efforts would be split 50:50 in terms of his $16,500 commission. This conversation occurred numerous times, and again when we discussed his upcoming European holiday (where he was away for multiple weeks) and he said that while he was away WE were in the best position to contact any leads and that the split commission would allow us to save money ($7,500 + GST). He told us we had over 356 enquiries, yet we only showed the business to less than 10 potential Buyers. Gunnink found the eventual Buyer through a listing he put up on the net, WE were asked to follow up the Buyer after a basic first inquiry was sent in to him, WE answered & explained specific details over another 100+ emails with financial & operational questions from the Buyer and WE arranged to meet the Buyer at our business for multiple walk-throughs (Gunnink never attended at the same time as the Buyer - he was always "in another meeting"). When it came time to ask the Buyer if he was in a position to 'pull the trigger' on an offer, Gunnink asked that WE make that call to the Buyer and ask him for a price to buy our small business (shouldn't the sales broker do this?) This process took another few weeks of phone calls that WE made to the Buyer before securing a verbal offer. We could tell that the Buyer was genuine and serious, so it was worth our efforts (if no efforts were being expelled by the Broker). The only time Gunnink met with the Buyer was when he swooped-in to get his signature on the O&A -- and then after having reviewed that hard copy agreement, he had missed multiple places for signatures (so the document had to be passed around again for another 7+ days between all signatory's, adding unnecessary delays to settlement). He also missed inserting our most important condition on the offer, which we had discussed with him over the phone and sent to him in writing. Once documents were finally sent to his settlement agent, Gunnink emailed all parties that he would not be contactable for a week (this is a very important & stressful week leading up to settlement), a time when much admin effort should be required by the Sales Broker to contact and meet with the Property Manager of our leased premises, secure documents from the Seller/Buyer and assist in answering questions with clients (those same clients who will soon be paying your commission!) Once our settlement summary was produced, we noticed that the full commission fee was listed as a negative sum in the calculations of our final payout amount. We attempted to phone Jan Gunnink multiple times, however no call was ever answered nor were our phone calls returned during that period. When meeting with his recommended settlement agent, this gentleman also noted that similar issues have occurred in the past and we should 'expect to pay his (Gunnink's) full commission'.