Horrible experience with this car dealer
Summary: Horrible experience with this car dealer (Scott). Beware! I would not recommend doing business with them or believing what they tell you around deposits and conditions for refund.
Background: It all started with me asking Scott to keep/reserve a car for 3 days for my partner and I to come to the Isle of Wight to view and test drive it. Having to take the ferry over to the Isle of Wight, we believed this would make sense in order to avoid buying the ferry tickets and the car selling in the meantime.
Scott said he can do that if a £200 deposit is paid. He made it clear the deposit is non refundable if we simply change our minds over the weekend and do not come to do the test drive. I accepted this and clarified that we will definitely come over to test drive the car, however purchasing the car would be subject to the inspection and test drive being successful (i.e. us liking the car and not discovering any issues with the car). Scott said "That's fair" and proceeded to give me his bank details.
The test drive: Upon seeing the car we discovered multiple age related issues with stone chips in the paint and scratches in the interior, missing bits of trim such as retractable door protectors, cracked and mismatched tyres and mould inside the car (Scott said the car got a full valet before). The test drive itself was OK, however the car felt underpowered (this was the first SUV car with a 2.0l diesel engine that we test drove and it felt underpowered). Scott also sent a video tour of the car before us even arranging the test drive and none of the age related marks or missing bits of trim were highlighted.
The outcome: I told Scott that we would like to test drive a few other cars before deciding on which one to purchase, in view of the small issues observed during the inspection and the test drive where the car felt slightly underpowered. I said I completely understand if the car sells out in the meantime. I expected the deposit to be refunded as per our written agreement, however Scott said that the deposit would only be refunded if we found a technical issue with the car. He was unde the impression that we were coming to buy the car as long as it had no mechanical issues during the test drive. This is obviously different from what was discussed over the text messages, where he made it clear that we would lose the deposit if we changed our mind over the weekend, which we did not.
Scott is now £200 richer and I've learnt to be careful sending any money to strangers even if we agree on refund conditions in writing...