Advice and/or opinions needed

[dancce]

I would like some opinions from any and all TBNers, on how you feel I should handle a sales situation.
I am a dealer, who sold? an older tractor to a gentleman about 1000 miles from our dealership in February. I received $500 as a deposit on a sale of about $2000. He was to come pick the tractor up in March. He kept postponing the pickup date, but I had taken the tractor off the market, and told him I would hold it for him. Then,around early April he tells me he has purchased a similar model locally thru ebay---(turns out it needs a lot of work)---and asks if I will split the down payment with him---in other words send him $250 of his money back.
What do you think?

dancce

 

[yooperdave]

This does not sound too much different than a real estate transaction.

The buyer presents earnest money to the seller. If the buyer does not follow thru, then the seller has the right to keep the earnest money (or deposit).

The buyer has already shown you that he had other intentions than to follow thru with your deal. You now have to relist and sell all over again.

To make a longer story shorter... I would kindly tell him to buzz off /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif.

Yooper Dave

 

[LarryRB]

I don't know what the laws are out your way, here, the dealer can keep the deposit under most conditions. For sake of sanity and no hassle, I would reimburse his one half, jsut so there are no arguing that can pursue. I remeber my first ractor trailer unit, had a CB and even acquired a CB license back then. The argument at the time was a particular restaurant. I told the lady, you'll never out run a CB radio, especially when truck drivers are mad at you. She wasn't open much longer. I think today, the same thing applies only in computer, e-mail form. Whether deserved or not, legal or not, a computer can do your dealership and or reputation, a lot of damage, warranted or not.. Take the little loss and send back the half.

 

[SnowRidge]

I don't know what the law is in your location, but I would suggest that whatever you do, stay within the law. Beyond that, he made the deal and broke it. There doesn't seem to be a hard luck story. I say do what you feel is right.

SnowRidge

 

[BillG_in_TX]

Dan,

I would probably offer to send him the $250, after I sold the tractor for the $2000 I originally hoped to get for it.

 

[fishman]

I'd send him $250 back and count it as a cheap lesson. Then, I'd make sure that I structured future deals so that it never happened again. Perhaps a time limit?

Tough deal, but at least it's not a $20k tractor. You sure don't want your business reputation harmed as someone already mentioned. It's not worth the hassle.

 

[rockyridgefarm]

So what is it? Do I want to take it off your hands?

 

[OkeeDon]

Well, the "buyer" has indicated he understands that his actions cost you money. Now, the question is "how much". Using whatever reasoning, he's indicated to you that he thinks $250 is a fair amount. I don't know the laws where you are, but, as has been said above, you probably have a pretty good legal case for the entire $500.

When I operated my business, I tried to be fair and practical at the same time. If I wanted to maintain the goodwill of the customer, I would try to figure out what my actual loss was. If it was $250 or less, I'd accept his offer. If I could justify more, I'd explain my reasoning and make a counteroffer. If I didn't give a rat's patootie about the goodwill of a small-time purchaser 1,000 miles away, I'd tell him I wasn't sending him a dime, unless that brought me to the point of not being able to get to sleep that night.

I'm sure you know as well as I do what your costs were -- the opportunity cost of the capital and the possible loss of value of the tractor in the intervening time. The opportunity costs include what you could have done with that capital if you had it to re-invest. If you could have earned $500 with that $2K in a couple of months, then you're entitled to the whole thing and can get a good night's sleep.

 

[Poppa]

OPINION.

Wanted to make that clear. I believe that if the guy really thought he had a claim to the money he would have asked, demanded the whole deposit. The fact that he didn't makes me feel like he is just trying to get something back.

Regardless, the other posters are probably right in that in this day and age it is very easy to get your reputation trashed and much more difficult to build it back up. Safest, though not right, would be to refund what he asked for and like someone else said, try and learn from it.

I do not think he is entitled to any refund what so ever.

END OPINION

Good luck

Mike

 

[GerardC]

Do you have any kind of policy that states "about refunds"? Was it all verbal? Either way, I would keep the money and not lose any sleep over it.
He backed out of the deal after you went out of your way to store it for him.
He must have forgotten about the storage fee(s) in the amount of $500.00 /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif G