Two BC residents involved in a used car sale needed to turn to a tribunal hearing to determine the fate of a security deposit.
According to the publicly posted tribunal decision, the buyer paid the seller $1,000 to hold a vehicle until he could view it in person.
He claimed that the seller misrepresented the vehicle’s condition, which changed his mind about buying it. The buyer alleged that the seller agreed to return the deposit and turned to the tribunal for $1,000 in compensation.
The seller had a different view of events and told the tribunal that the vehicle was not misrepresented and was exactly as advertised. He also argued that the buyer chose not to buy it for other reasons and was entitled to keep the deposit since he had turned down other buyers.
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The vehicle in question was a Suzuki Samurai, a standard Jeep-like vehicle, and it was listed on Facebook for $10,000. The buyer paid the seller $1,000 to hold it until they could travel to view it.
According to the decision, the tribunal first had to look into the legal definition of a deposit.
“When one party pays money to another party in advance of a sale, in law that money is considered either a true deposit or a partial payment,” the tribunal said.
The buyer believed the $1,000 was a holding fee, while the seller considered it a standard deposit. The tribunal sided with the seller on this point. It added that the buyer essentially forfeited the deposit when they chose not to buy the vehicle.
According to the buyer, the two parties had a conversation in which the buyer asked, “What if I don’t want to buy the vehicle after seeing it?”
They claimed that the seller said, “Don’t worry about it,” which the buyer took to mean that it was just a holding fee. The buyer added that this was a common practice on Facebook, and he didn’t expect to incur any expenses to look at the car. The tribunal did not see this as sufficient evidence that the seller agreed to return the deposit.
The buyer also had no evidence that the seller had misrepresented the vehicle.
At one point, the seller agreed to return the $1,000 once he sold the vehicle to a new buyer. It is undisputed that the seller did indeed sell the vehicle to someone else. However, the tribunal determined that the buyer never agreed to that deal.
Later, in an email, the buyer said, “I will get my money back from you one way or another. You should do the right thing and pay it back now. Retribution starts today.”
In the end, the buyer wasn’t able to prove to the tribunal that he was entitled to the deposit’s return, and the case was dismissed.