Deposit on MH purchase?

Yup ugh, learned my lesson too. I ordered a $10,000 piece of equipment for my shop a couple of years ago. Guy wanted $1,000 deposit on it. No problem I'll put it on a credit card. He emailed me back asking to send a check because he didn't want to have to lose the 2.5% credit card processing fee. I told him I'd pay extra to cover the fee because I don't write checks for a deposit. He took my credit card and didn't charge extra for it. That company went bankrupt a year later.

msmith1199 wrote:

PhilipB wrote:
When we ordered our 5er we were asked to give 10%, which we did. In our case we had viewed similar units. Dealer let me know that once the unit is ordered from the factory it is theirs. The deposit was to make sure we didn't later back out.

Rest of story. It arrived and was not ordered correctly, which the dealer acknowledged. We were refunded our deposit and subsequently ordered correct unit from another dealer as this one was going out of business.

You put down 10% and they were going out of business!!! Yikes! I once ordered a $2000 wall unit for my bed in my master bedroom. They wanted 50% down to order it. No problem and normally I would have put that 50% on a credit card, but not this time, I wrote them a check for $1000. The wall unit was ordered with a shipping time of 3 weeks. Two weeks later the Company went bankrupt. The order never shipped because the company wasn't paying it's bills.

Some of the company stores, including the one I bought from, even stayed open for many months as they tried to reorganize. But even though they were still open the fact that I was a "creditor" to them when they filed for bankruptcy put me on a list of creditors and I was stuck. In the end I never did get my $1000 back or my furniture. If I had charged the deposit on a credit card I could have potentially recovered my money.

Valuable lesson to learn here. I will never write checks again for something like this.

PhilipB wrote:
When we ordered our 5er we were asked to give 10%, which we did. In our case we had viewed similar units. Dealer let me know that once the unit is ordered from the factory it is theirs. The deposit was to make sure we didn't later back out.

Rest of story. It arrived and was not ordered correctly, which the dealer acknowledged. We were refunded our deposit and subsequently ordered correct unit from another dealer as this one was going out of business.

You put down 10% and they were going out of business!!! Yikes! I once ordered a $2000 wall unit for my bed in my master bedroom. They wanted 50% down to order it. No problem and normally I would have put that 50% on a credit card, but not this time, I wrote them a check for $1000. The wall unit was ordered with a shipping time of 3 weeks. Two weeks later the Company went bankrupt. The order never shipped because the company wasn't paying it's bills.

Some of the company stores, including the one I bought from, even stayed open for many months as they tried to reorganize. But even though they were still open the fact that I was a "creditor" to them when they filed for bankruptcy put me on a list of creditors and I was stuck. In the end I never did get my $1000 back or my furniture. If I had charged the deposit on a credit card I could have potentially recovered my money.

Rwake901 wrote:
We had to leave $2000.00 on our first motorhome and $3000.00 on our current one. I was told that the money was non-refundable on both Motorhomes. If we canceled the order/deal for any reason our deposit would be lost.

I would have walked out the door and said no thanks. Even if they are ordering the motorhome for me I want the ability to walk away from the deal if something comes up that I don't like.

Trackrig wrote:
What's the purpose of a deposit if it's going to be 100% refundable for any and all reasons - why should the dealer bother asking for one?

Bill

Read my post two up from yours. It's just a sales game. The same concept as why when you go to Vegas do you play Blackjack with colorful plastic chips instead of real money? Because it's much easier to set a stack of plastic on the table and lose it than it is a stack of $20 bills.

Trackrig wrote:
What's the purpose of a deposit if it's going to be 100% refundable for any and all reasons - why should the dealer bother asking for one?

Bill

Good question but they do.

When we ordered our 5er we were asked to give 10%, which we did. In our case we had viewed similar units. Dealer let me know that once the unit is ordered from the factory it is theirs. The deposit was to make sure we didn't later back out.

Rest of story. It arrived and was not ordered correctly, which the dealer acknowledged. We were refunded our deposit and subsequently ordered correct unit from another dealer as this one was going out of business.

Trackrig wrote:
What's the purpose of a deposit if it's going to be 100% refundable for any and all reasons - why should the dealer bother asking for one?

Bill

To demonstrate that you are serious and you have the money, well, at least some. Not many tire kickers are going to put down 1K + even if it's refundable. The houses I have bought have been similar. And at least in CA, you have a certain number of days (might be 3) to back out of the deal once its signed and get your money back.

We had to leave $2000.00 on our first motorhome and $3000.00 on our current one. I was told that the money was non-refundable on both Motorhomes. If we canceled the order/deal for any reason our deposit would be lost.

What's the purpose of a deposit if it's going to be 100% refundable for any and all reasons - why should the dealer bother asking for one?

Bill