Refund of deposit

Deefitz

We wanted to buy a trike and found a dealer who had a trike gathering dust in his workshop which he had taken in part exchange for a trike he had built. We handed over a £500 deposit for the trike which we were told would be made roadworthy, MOT'd and cleaned up cosmetically and the engine would be overhauled.

On the day of collection we were disappointed with the appearance of the trike as very little seemed to have been done cosmetically. However the engine was running and sounded OK so we decided we would take the trike and clean it up ourselves. We handed over the rest of the money to the agreed price plus 6 months road tax.

On the way home we started having problems with the engine cutting out until, 20 miles and 3 hours later, it stopped completely. We contacted the dealer who said he would come out with a recovery vehicle immediately. As fate would have it we had broken down outside the home of a guy who used to build trikes and while we were waiting for the dealer to arrive to recover the vehicle, this guy pointed out several faults with the trike at least one of which could have been quite dangerous to the rider.

When the dealer arrived he offered to repair the trike or give us our money back. Of course, we chose to have our money back and he handed us the payment plus road tax which we had given him earlier, but said he could not give us our deposit back until he found another buyer for the trike.

What we want to know is can he keep our deposit until he sells the trike that was sitting neglected in his workshop until we approached him.

bingo_bango

Absolutely not. The contract has been rescinded. Both parties should be in the same position they were prior to entering the contract. He has his trike, and you have your money. All of it!

Contact him in writing giving 7 days to pay or you will instigate a small claims hearing. He's chancing his arm and hasn't a legal basis for what he's saying. And he'll know that.