Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have an animal pending sale. This was supposed to be a 2 week thing. ½ up front, ½ in two weeks. Well here it is 5 weeks later. Very random email contact (on his end) and NO hey man, can you give me another week please (insert reason or excuse here).

My question is have any of you ended a sale while NOT issuing a refund to the seller? I am pretty sure I know the answer but I interested in the “exception to the rule” if there is even one.

Thanks in advance.

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Dave
Phila, PA

www.DNReptiles.com
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I would say you have 3 options.

1. Give him more time. You have half the money so at least you know he had some real interest.

2. Offer to send him a lesser valued snake equal to the amount he has already sent you (if that works for both of you).

3. Offer to refund him a portion of his downpayment. Unless you specifically said "no refund" during the deal, I would at least give him 1/2 his money back, with you keeping 1/2 for your time/trouble/missed sale opportunity.

John C.

If it is a $190 male Pastel, and they sent you $100 up front, and have yet to follow through with the rest, I would send them an email stating that they have 3 months to complete the transaction. The agreed upon time was 2 weeks, you will double that to 4 weeks, and anything after 6 weeks will increase the sales price by $10 a week, for feeding and housing their snake, up to 3 months. After that, they forfeit their deposit, or you send their deposit back, and resell the snake.

If it is a $10,000 snake, and they sent you $5K, I would let them have up to a year to pay off the extra $5K before I would start complaining.

At a few shows were there are lots of people and depending on the animal if someone asks to hold the animal in question with a deposit, i let them know that it is non-refundable, and i have had people not come back or come back and say they found another animal eslewhere and they want there money back. If i told them no -refund i stick by it but tell them it is transferable, i have had a few pissed off people but you also need to watch your end at shows. I wouldnt however tell someone i am not refunding their money if i didnt make it aware before the transaction, if you never told him that the deposit would be non-refundable i wouldnt do it. In the past though i have had people back out of a deal b.c they couldnt afford the snake but asked us to keep the deposit for a later time and a different animal in the future which i have had no problems doing, but i think that may be a different situation I would email him and say hey look i have other people interested and i never recieved the rest of the money, i will hold him or her for one more week, if the rest of the due balance is not recieved then i will send your deposit back to you on (insert date here) See what type of response it gets you, maybe then he will give you an exscuse or agree,...
Good luck

If its an animal you really want to sell, readvertise it. If you get another buyer, take the second deal. Give the original guy a full refund. You get exactly the money you wanted, and the original buyer does not get screwed. I would send him a courtesy e-mail letting him know your plan...

jp is the only one even close. you have nothing to gain except bad blood by treating customers that way. [notice there is not a boi for dishonest buyers] despite the best intentions, peoples money situations change every day. the hardest thing [and the best thing] to gain is a loyal repeat buyer. i understand that you may no longer have that deposit money sitting around, and refunding it out of pocket would create some hardship, that's where jp is right on the money. if you and the buyer can't agree on a reasonable timetable, just sell the snake to somebody else and refund the money at that point. i'm not taking the side of the buyer at all, he is the one who has failed to meet his obligations. but as a business person, in this or any business, one disgruntled loudmouth can be a very expensive problem to create. think of the big picture, and try to wrap it up as quickly and fairly as possible. good luck, kurt d.

when arranging any kind of payment plan.

You leave a deposit, and commit to an amount of time.

If you decide you can no longer pay for the animal, no longer want it, etc., and it is BEFORE the time is up, you get a full refund of your deposit and any additional funds paid, if it is AFTER the time is up, the deposit is NON-REFUNDABLE. Period.

With this, i've encountered many situations where this happened, but they've always ended simply. No complaints.

NOW, if it is something really low end, and you are asking me to hold a $100 snake for you for 3 months or more, then I simply won't do that deal. Wouldn't make sense to me.

Because if he backs out before the due date, I have to refund his meager deposit, and have held and fed and cleaned this snake for months... doesn't make much business sense...

Hope that helps...

Joe Rollo 'Bci Joe'
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Thanks and take care - Joe Rollo
'Tis not the stongest of the species that will eventually survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change' Charles Darwin