Quote:
Originally Posted by pylon
When I was on the sales floor, and someone made me an offer on a car, I would word it exactly like this ,"So, Mr. Smith, your telling me that if we accept your offer, you are prepared to put a deposit on the car today?". If the answer was yes, I would take his credit card in with the offer, and if it was accepted, I would run a $1000 deposit. If we could not take the offer, I wouldn't take the deposit.
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That's way more reasonable than what you said before.
Taking a deposit to secure an offer is VERY different than taking a deposit before you deign to negotiate with someone. Every car dealer does that, and the reason is obvious.
I actually bought a car at auction once, and they would only take part of the deposit by visa/mastercard/interac. The rest had to be cash or certified cheque. It turns out my bank wasn't open to get a certified cheque at 8:00 on wednesday night, so I had to hit the ATM 3 times to scrounge up the rest of the deposit.