Quote:
Originally Posted by amurph182
You see customers as either e if the customer can simply call up and say "changed my mind" and the dealership just gives him back his deposit? It's 1 of 3 things...either the purchase agreement is simply not binding or enforcable, it actually allows the customer to walk away whenever they want, or dealers just don't pursue it because they don't care or they see it as not being in their interest. At the end of the day, if dealers aren't willing to assert their rights under these agreements, if such rights exist, then can you really blame people for walking away like this? At the very least they should be keeping the deposit, but I can't think of any of these stories that I've heard where that happened. I can see that you might get some bad press or word of mouth if you go after people and force them to pay for the cars, but keeping the deposit would probably not be seen that badly.
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Ultimately, since these cases are relatively rare, it generally is not worth pursuing, especially if you are a smaller market store. When factoring in the cost of pursuing against the sale it doesnt make sense. We have in very rare cases kept the deposit, in order to offset costs we would not have normally had. For example I once had car flatbedded in for a client. It cost us $600 to have it brought in. The day before scheduled delivery, he decides to purchase a Mercedes. We had $500 deposit, which we ended up keeping to pay for the towing of the car he had agreed to purchase. Needless to say he was not happy & thought we were being completely unfair & felt the towing costs were our problem,not his. He didn't think that mattered that it was brought in only for him & that we should "eat it" as a cost of doing business. But outside issues like that, it honestly is not worth the headache. Honestly I have no real idea the full legalities of these issues, & truthfully I really don't care if I can legally "force" someone to uphold a signed agreement. If some one really wants to back out of a deal I have far more important things in life to worry about than that.