Okay I've been reading on this site for awhile, and I have a a problem. I run a small car lot and expanded the bussiness a few years ago to accomidate to online sales (as in a small town sales are slow), times are very tough right now, and its got to the point of just trying to make ends meet. I try the best to be honest with everyone (despite the reputaion no doubt dubious car dealers have given every other lot).
I sell mainly on eBay under eBay motors, I'm a registered dealer and so I use there dealer only service.
The problem is 9 out of 10 people don't follow through with their bid, causing us to pay fees (some sometimes get retuned but not all) and hold the car for a period of time and causing outside fees to promote the listing like Google Ad services. This is hurting us majorly we spell out that the bid is a legally binding contract to buy (and we state that by bidding buyer agress to all terms) and even state a $500 fee applies to everyone who doesn't follow through with the transaction, honestly 3/4 of the $500 goes to recover money lost, the cars listed go cheap and of course selling and making money only works if they sell quickly.
I added the $500 fee to make people more serious about bidding. Hasn't affected anything and of 28 deadbeats since then none has paid, and we are losing big, and we want to conintue selling online to help pay bills but this is a problem. We have recently decided to send the buyers to collections if they don't pay the $500 fee, and they never pay. And recently a buyer that caused us some much problems and left bad feedback when he found a scracth and he didn't even buy the car that was a 2000 model.
I'm really going to run into the problem of the judge siding with the bidder because of the car dealer stigma that is around, what can I do to collect on these people that don't pay, bidding on a car is no joke it costs us good money and we can't sell it to anyone else for a period of 14 days, even if we have a cash offer.
Apparently this is a huge problem with sites like eBay. I know most peoples answer is just don't sell online, but right now its try doing that or go out of business, you can say it goes with the territory, but we are losing money due to someone else actions, WOULD a judge see it this way??
