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Tony Miller (bill?): non-reciept of payment / deposit withheld / credit issued.

esoteric-lizard

esoteric-lizard

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Help Please... deal could go sour, need advice.

hello, my name is Brian Watkins. i live in washington state... i breed reticulated pythons.

about 2.5 months ago i was selling a 0.1 2003 yellowhead het for albino on reptibid. someone contacted me about the snake.... they waited till the auction ended, and told me they wanted to buy her, i agreed. i told the person that i would take a NON-REFUNDABLE deposit, and payments every two weeks until the balance was paid ($1650 shipped - very good deal as i was needing money to pay for tuition).

i recieved a $300 deposit ($100 less than he told me he would send) i then didnt hear from him until today... as he want to send another payment. well the thing is - he hadnt sent a payment for about 2 months, didnt email or call. now the snake is pregnant, and my tuition is paid.

another thing... this guy has two different names, or at least is using someone elses email... the person in question is Tony Miller. but he says his name is bill.

what should i do?

thanks.
 
That's a very easy answer.... You made a deal with him that he would give you a $400 NON-REFUNDABLE deposit, and the balance to be paid off every two weeks.... He only sent you $300 of the NON-REFUNDABLE deposit, and not another word till today, two months later....

KEEP HIS MONEY AND THE SNAKE!!!....

He KNEW the deal, and he didn't keep up HIS end of the bargain.... you held the snake for an extra two months and now it's gravid.... He's SOL....

Don't even THINK that you're doing the wrong thing.... HE did the wrong thing and now it's too late....

Neil
 
I would have to agree. Especially if you have copies of the emails that were send back and forth, to clearly indicate that he knew the terms. If he didn't abide by the payment plan HE agreed to, too bad for him. Plus it sounds fishy with all the different addresses and names.
 
thats what i was thinking.... i am new at this kind of stuff, and i didnt want to end up with a bad guy thread about me. i want to do good business and make a good name for myself...

he did agree to our terms... and left me hanging. too bad for him then.

thanks for the advice :)
 
My 0.02
Sounds like you are perfectly OK, keeping the animal AND the deposit if that was the agreement. I can assure you he's not going to be happy about it, but as you have documentation of the agreement, you should be fine.
Did you e-mail or call him in this time period to ask him where the payments were, or if he still wanted her?
 
Yep, that it is why it is called a "deposit" instead of "payment"...as long as that was clear from the beginning, you are right in keeping the 300.
If it was muddy, it might be best to send him back the initial payment.

greg
 
You hvae to stick to your terms in a deal.. If you do not, you will be walked on! If he did not keep his end of the deal then its your choice of what to do. I personally woulf offer him the snake but now at an (super)inflated price. If he says no, than you win both ways:)
-Matt
 
esoteric-lizard said:
hello, my name is Brian Watkins. i live in washington state... i breed reticulated pythons.

about 2.5 months ago i was selling a 0.1 2003 yellowhead het for albino on reptibid. someone contacted me about the snake.... they waited till the auction ended, and told me they wanted to buy her, i agreed. i told the person that i would take a NON-REFUNDABLE deposit, and payments every two weeks until the balance was paid ($1650 shipped - very good deal as i was needing money to pay for tuition).

i recieved a $300 deposit ($100 less than he told me he would send) i then didnt hear from him until today... as he want to send another payment. well the thing is - he hadnt sent a payment for about 2 months, didnt email or call. now the snake is pregnant, and my tuition is paid.

another thing... this guy has two different names, or at least is using someone elses email... the person in question is Tony Miller. but he says his name is bill.

what should i do?

thanks.
Click to expand...
Do you have written (e-mail or otherwise) documentation of all of this? If the deal was struck over the phone then it becomes a he said/she said argument and you may wind up in a precarious position. Assuming that you do have written documentation then you are certainly within your rights to keep the non-refundable deposit.

On the other hand (there always are at least two and maybe three sides to a story), is there a justifiable reason for his lack of payment and communication? Is he in the Guard, got called up, sent overseas? Did he have a heart attack and emergency bypass surgery? Or was he just tying up your time? We've all heard every excuse in the book, but he may well have a legitimate one. You can decide to be a "good guy" and let him off the hook if he provides reasonable documentation of such a situation but you are not obliagated to do so. The choice is yours as you have the snake an the money.

If the communications were written then you should post them here as documentation. And you should e-mail him and send him a link to this thread so he can tell his story as well.
 
An excellent out, one which I have used before, is just to give him a credit towards something you produce, NOT a refund. He can use it or not as he sees fit and you are not out anything.

This also generates a little goodwill.

Of course, you could, as was suggested earlier in this thread, simply flip him off as you pass him by, but not everyone wants to be that kind of person.

You are within your rights to simply keep it but is that what you really want to do?
 
I agree with Wes.

You definitely have the right to do whatever you want according to the agreement.

BUT...there is a difference between "Not being a Bad Guy" and "Being a Good Guy"...

Any amount of goodwill towards a deal like this that got fouled for whatever reason will help your reputation shine...especially just starting out.

Personally I wouldn't give any refund...but future credit is definitely something I would do...it could be the difference between a drawn out he said/she said BOI post that will leave people indifferent and a GREAT GUY post that will draw people to purchase from you in the future...besides...even though it was part of the deal...it was "free money" to you...and I like to earn my keep.
 
If it was known to be a non-refundable deposit and he dropped off the face of the planet for 10 weeks, I would keep the money and the snake as well. Don't enter into a deal you can't keep even if you are the one sending payment. Had you sent the snake and he had not sent the money for 2.5 months, the view would be much worse of him to most people, however a deal is a deal. Maybe he will learn from this experience.
 
well i have kept all email transactions.... everything is in writing.

i thought maybe out of curtisy i would give him $300 credit on a baby retic.

thanks guys :)
 
jimO...

he never even called me to tell me he was going to be late on payments or anything.... i am getting a little spooked - cuz of the different name on his email. maybe this is someone who is testing the water and seeing what he can get away with....

i am a sympathetic person.... but i also believe in being responsable and taking care of business.

i have told him to call me so we can work things out...

one thing though... he emailed me today asking for my address so he could send payment.... but the thing is my address(and phone #) was on the reply he sent me. so i am guessing this person is either a kid... or a scammer of some sorts.

we'll see how this develops... thanks for the replies guys.
 
Be leary of phone conversations.

If I were you I would refuse anything other than emails. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. As far as written records go in instances such as this it is particularly important that you have as much as you can in a form that cannot be questioned.
 
I would keep it. Refunding a non-refundable deposit just proves that you'll let people slide on stuff and let them out of a locked down deal after jerking you around. You took a deposit because you didn't want to hold it and have the deal fall through, especially if you passed up other offers to take his offer. Unless something bad happened to him I'd keep it. Like someone said above, if he had heart troubles its one thing but if there isn't something major like that he could have sent an email or dropped a dime.
 
Hey Brian, all the advice seems sound ...

.... but there was a statement by you in your second post that caught my attention:
i am new at this kind of stuff, and i didnt want to end up with a bad guy thread about me. i want to do good business and make a good name for myself...
Click to expand...

Short of a complete refund, you may not be able to avoid a "bad guy" thread. That doesn't make a refund the right thing to do though, it only gives credence to the age-old adage that "you can't please everybody ...", and more than one misplaced bad-guy thread has found its way to the BOI in the past ...... maybe even a couple :>poke2<: . Others would certainly come to your defense should someone initiate a negative thread, providing your documentation is as you say it is. My vote is with Wes' advice, already seconded by others, which is to offer future compensation. You did hold the animal off the market pending payment at an agreed upon rate and schedule, and there is a cost involved in that. As a hypothetical, had the buyer been on schedule, and you then found out the snake was gravid, you would be considered by many here to be ethically bound to still ship the snake, although there would be ways to avoid being legally bound provided you refunded the deposit in full. Hope it all works out.

Jim Flaherty
The Chameleon Company, LLC
 
thanks for the advice... i have a sneaking suspicion that this person isn't who he claims to be.

... also i noticed that his excuse for not contacting me was that his "computer crashed".... BS!!! go to the library, its free to use the computers there... or better yet - call, or give me a number where i can contact the person.

i know if i were in his shoes... interested in a snake, and putting a deposit down, i would have at least contacted the seller, just to get to know the person - or just to shoot the shXt.

i, like i am sure of so many others, have been burned way too many times.

kind of weird if you ask me.... :bolt01:

although i will not refund the deposit... i will issue credit to the person, if he even contacts me.
 
This thread will be locked to allow you to cut and paste your original post into a new thread in the correct format. The person's name must be in the topic line. After that is done, the threads will be merged.
 
hello, my name is Brian Watkins. i live in washington state... i breed reticulated pythons.

about 2.5 months ago i was selling a 0.1 2003 yellowhead het for albino on reptibid. someone contacted me about the snake.... they waited till the auction ended, and told me they wanted to buy her, i agreed. i told the person that i would take a NON-REFUNDABLE deposit, and payments every two weeks until the balance was paid ($1650 shipped - very good deal as i was needing money to pay for tuition).

i recieved a $300 deposit ($100 less than he told me he would send) i then didnt hear from him until today... as he want to send another payment. well the thing is - he hadnt sent a payment for about 2 months, didnt email or call. now the snake is pregnant, and my tuition is paid.

another thing... this guy has two different names, or at least is using someone elses email... the person in question is Tony Miller. but he says his name is bill.

what should i do?

i am new to posting on the boi... i'll get the hang of it. :)

thanks.
 
i was told to include the person's name in question in the title of the thread... i think this issue has been resolved - at least on my end.

thanks to all that have replied.

out of respect to this person's privacy, i will not post emails unless i have to.

thanks.
 
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