What are the actual rules on the selling sites?

If he had the firearm up for advertised sale on a live website with the ability for someone to buy it immediately, then he would also be bound by the website's rules to honour the online order and payment. So two sale "agreements", but one binding one if consideration (ie payment) had already passed.

In most cases, an agreement is not binding until consideration (ie payment or payment of a deposit) has passed hands.

Corbin,

None of the that makes it easier for you of course. You honestly made what you thought was a binding offer on you, and on him. Maybe he should have taken the advert off immediately but it is probably reasonable to wait for money to arrive to ensure the purchase is serious. The guy can't sell it twice.

Nothing to stop you making a complaint though if you feel you were wronged out of a firm deal however.

Of course there may be other aspects to this seller that none of us know about.

***

I know the feeling. On another internet forum a joker in Australia advertised two Sako Finnwolfs in mint condition for sale. The price was very good. I spoke to him on the telephone and it was rifles of his brother-in-law. He gave me a better price if both were purchased together.

I said, "Yes, I will buy both at that price."

In the meantime I think the joker did some checking on prices on the net, which I must say were much better than he was asking.

I sent a few emails to see what was going, remember I had committed myself to buy at his price as well.

Eventually I got an email back saying, "the price you offered me was way too low."

Got him at his work phone number and said "That was YOUR price, that YOU WERE offering for sale, and I accepted it. What is going on?"

He replied with all sorts of other crap, including some insults. Obviously nothing was going to happen and he was trying to put me off.

I was actually willing to pay more, but the fact we had an agreement on price, I'm not that much of a sucker to just cave in immediately. Plus he never named a new price probably because the new price he was after was a MULTIPLE of what he originally named.

I had also asked for photos of the firearms, plus photocopies of firearms licences etc. Who knows what the true story was, as one has also to be careful of sending money to complete strangers. Some of these jokers seem to think someone is going to send them several thousand dollars without any verified ID!

I have been waiting for this joker to reappear one day. Too many people here think you can screw people on deals and its just another fact of life to get over.

Corbin, so I DO know where you are coming from!