Sellers Beware of John Franco!

What you have to decide for yourself is how much hassle (and potential impact) holding onto the $150 or $300 is worth to you.

I do understand where you are coming from, but the (possible) victory may prove Pyrrhic.

Buyer deserves a full refund no questions asked. If you were not sure 100% it was a female you shouldn't go around making it sound like it is. It was a mistake on your part and you should learn from it. The buyer shouldn't have to ask if you are 100% sure if you call it a girl/female on multiple occasions.

I can see where both of you are coming from and personally I would just return the money to avoid the headache but part of me thinks his comment about having gotten out of chewies and doesn't need her could be the reason why he pretended he never read the add which specifically says probable female to use the fact that she didn't repete that in any of their messages to get his money back. It really seems to me that he decided he didn't want it anymore and the sex thing seemed like a good way to get out of the contract. Id probably feel a little torn between giving it back to avoid the drama and not letting him out of the contract simply because he changed his mind.

Wait I see the AD now....it does say possible female.

Still I think it was bad judgement to call it her/she/female with such confidence in your conversations. Personally I don't think it is worth the trouble, but I see where you are coming from now.

He even cuts and pastes the text from her ad that says POSS female and sends it to her. He had to have read what he copied and pasted.

when I consider the term "deposit", I picture money sent to hold an animal so no one else can buy it. The deposit reserves the animal for me. What he sent you was payments towards the purchase. About 40% of the total cost of the lizard, in fact. If he thought he was buying a female, and you cannot guarantee the sex, you should simply cut him a check and sell to someone else.

Yea I'm not sure why you're so stuck on keeping his money. You referred to it explicitly as "her" or "she" multiple times. It's easy to skim over a "poss" in a block of text when every other word stated implies that it is a definite.

To me you seem very adamant about keeping the $150 when you should have stressed the fact during the sale that you are not 100% certain it's a female. I really don't care what your terms of service are, you referred to it as a female in every single correspondence and never once mentioned that there's a chance it's not. If he was excited about getting it I completely understand him not noticing until after a bit of time has gone by.

Why can't you do a refund if he opened a claim again? Or is it just that you don't want to?

The first payment when a payment plan is established is the deposit, usually 25% of the price plus shipping. Everything after that is a payment towards paying off the animal. Most sellers i know including myself have the rule of a 25% non refundable deposit, imo it's pretty standard. Now since we all write our own tos the terms can be changed if we decide the situation warrants it. Like this case, it's up to the seller to decide if she wants to bend her own rules to make the buyer happy. When the first money was sent the buyer agreed to her tos.

It looks like the buyer was hasty and didn't slow down to ensure this was truly a female. However, constantly referring to the gecko as "she" is potentially misleading. I do not think the buyer is in the right here, and you are entitled to some compensation for him wasting your time, but keeping the $300 seems like a bit much. From the conversation it sounded at first like you wouldn't refund anything, so maybe that is why the buyer filed a claim. I'm not trying to criticize you, really, just point out the many "she" descriptions could get a buyer off track.

I don't know, keeping even $150 seems wrong to me - although I'm not a seller and I realize I might feel differently if I were. I personally would just refund the whole amount and chalk it up to lesson learned: be super meticulous about always saying "unsexed" or "probable" female.


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Originally Posted by juliasara

The first payment when a payment plan is established is the deposit, usually 25% of the price plus shipping. Everything after that is a payment towards paying off the animal. Most sellers i know including myself have the rule of a 25% non refundable deposit, imo it's pretty standard. Now since we all write our own tos the terms can be changed if we decide the situation warrants it. Like this case, it's up to the seller to decide if she wants to bend her own rules to make the buyer happy. When the first money was sent the buyer agreed to her tos.

Even in the money is all sent at once I completely agree with this. Part of the payment is always considered non-refundable in the case of buyer's remorse or some other unforeseen circumstance, just to prevent seller's from wasting their time and holding an animal for nothing. In this case however I don't think a deposit applies, the animal was misrepresented in my opinion.