ok, so lets say you're selling your car.. you make a nice FS post on your favorite honda forums, and it gets a lot of attention. some kid starts talkin to you on AIM about it and is really interested. you tell him all about the car, all the known issues and stuff like that. send lots of pictures. he's still interested and makes an offer. you accept. you live in maryland, and the buyer lives in north carolina. he cannot meet you for 2 weeks due to prior obligations, and offered to send a $200 deposit via paypal to ensure that you don't sell the car to someone else. during this two week period you recieve numerous emails, IMs, PMs, and phone calls about the car. you tell the interested parties that the car is tenatively sold. once the day to meet comes around, the kid decides 'the car wasnt what he expected' and doesn't buy the car. later that day after the kid gets home, he IMs you and says he wants his 'down payment' back. what would you do?

keep in mind that you're selling this car due to your financial situation, and couldn't really even afford the tolls/gas money to drive 2 and a half hours to meet the kid.. let alone the fact that now you have to go back and try to find all the people who were interested and hope they havent found another car.

:wiggle:

 

that's a toughy, down payments are usually non-refundable but if it wasn't stated in the beginning then there may be grounds for legal action.

 

Did you guys draft any sort of written agreement about what would happen with said "down payment"?

 

keep that ****ign down payment. shit i'd make him give you more. thats really ****ed up that someone would even think about doing it. I'd say you buy the car and you can have the down payment back...

 

I would not sell the car. How much are you trying to sell it for anyway?

 

i make it clear, that downpayments are non refundable.

if you said it's non refundable, then you owe him nothing.

but if you didn't make it clear, then it's half your fault and half his, so i'd give back half of it.

 

Most of the time the deposit is non-refundable, sometimes 50% is. It's people like that why the deposits are non-refundable. I wouldn't give it back because you lost potential sales due to holding the car for him.

 

This is why you should always put stuff in writing. Now if you don't give the money back you have someone potentially hassling you to great extent to get it.

I also wouldn't have driven a long distance to meet the person. Hold out for local buyers.

 

just keep it, what's the worst they can do? go to small claims court for 200$?!?! and they would still have to send you a letter saying that they are taking legal action and blah blah blah... Worst comes to worst if they do start taking legal action then maybe(i still wouldn't) give it back. But certainly giving it back right now would be ridiculous.

 

So he gave me 200 bucks to not sell the car for two weeks.... and I didn't sell the car for two weeks... hell no I wouldn't refund it, unless of course there was something totally wrong with the car that I failed to mention or something. If he knew exactly what he was getting the thats his loss. I would not expect someone to refund me my money if it happened to me.