So I have a Party Zone that I put up for sale over the summer, had a buyer come look at it and agree to purchase it but asked if I could hold it for a month until he moved into his new place, he provided a $200 deposit so I agreed to delist it as I wasn’t really in a huge hurry to sell. After several months he’s now stated that plans changed and he can no longer take it, but asked for the deposit back. Is it standard to refund this, seems like that would almost be lost money for me to hold it or am I off base?

Just some clarification, he came and looked at the machine twice before providing the deposit so it’s not an issue of condition not matching expectations. I did continually ask him if he was still interested in the machine after the initial month past and he ensured me that yes he still intended to buy it and even offered to start paying me weekly, which of course never happened. I’m not necessarily out anything directly, but I did purchase another machine with the knowledge that I had this one sold. Seems from a karma perspective I should return the deposit, but possibly not until after I resell the machine as some have mentioned.

Thanks everyone for the feedback, it seems pretty ridiculous that he would even ask for the deposit back, but at the end of the day it is only $200 and not worth the hassle of any kind of dispute especially in court and knowing that the guy knows where I live. I’ll likely return his money, but make it clear that I don’t appreciate the way he handled the situation at all and he’d be wise to avoid this type of behavior in the future. Lesson learned by me to just take the first buyer with cash upfront and be done with it. I was trying to do the right thing by the guy and hold it for him as most people in the pinball community that I’ve come across have been honest and really helpful and I wanted to do the same.

We had agreed on $3200 back in August if interested, I’ll be re-listing it this week