Can a buyer back out with no penalty?


Hi members,

Last week I got an offer for a preamp on Audiogon which I am selling. The buyer offer cash local pickup and he required an audition before taking the preamp. It seems fair to me so I accepted his offer.

Yesterday he came to my house with another guy. They spent almost an hour to play through my system. Then finally they said they don't want to buy it with the reason "I don't like the sound". I tried to explain to him that after the buyers' offer is accepted that is a commitment to buy. Unless the product was not as described in the ads, he has to take it. They just left without saying anything.

My question is: what do we do with that kind of buyer, how to deal with this situation correctly?

Thanks,

Calvin

dangcaonguyen
Also, I'm fairly confident that I can sell the item in question to someone else. I always price my items to sell so I'm really not worried.  If someone changes their mind after accepting the listed price and then coming by to hear it, so be it. Someone else will buy it. 

Enjoy
"Breaking contract on a small scale is wrong but not terribly wrong. I believe, negative feedback would violate the principle of adequate reaction in this case."

Sorry, I didn't get the impression from the post that the transaction was small scale. A small scale to you may be huge to someone else and what is huge to you may be small to the next guy. It doesn't matter what words you use or don't use with the word wrong, there's no varying degree of being wrong. When someone breaks a contract, this is total disrespect to the other person. IMHO, they deserve a negative feedback.
He offered and listened and didn't like it. Did you lose anything more than your time? If not, just move on.

Back in the day when you responded to ads in the newspaper you might work out a price before going over and viewing the item. When you arrived to view, test drive or whatever, you could change your mind if you were not satisfied. That was all part of trying to sell your item and understood.

Now, I have no problem with the offer system on Audiogon but when I am looking for a particular piece and the seller has two days to respond, for which I'm stuck waiting the 2 days to hear back and in some cases the seller never responds, thus wasting my time, that irks me. Also, if the same piece comes up elsewhere for a good price I am stuck waiting for the first seller to respond and can not move on the second piece, which more often than not I end up losing. 

I really think that if the seller doesn't respond in 8 hours the bidder should be released from any commitment to buy.  Sellers play games and often wait for the last hour to respond and at times just let the clock run out.

Sorry to slightly high jack this thread but the system here is not perfect on a number of levels.
Tls49, your prosecutor's presentation is overruled. There are and should be the degrees of wrong. The tricky part is who decides. In this case, it is obvious - the one who started the thread.
I agree with Raymonda's tone - take life easy. People are too uptight these days and demand guarantee. There are no guarantees.