Can a buyer back out with no penalty?

I've had many very nice knowledgable people visit my home to complete the purchase, listen to the equipment and pay with no problems or worries.

i can understand some people may be nervous having perfect strangers visit tho.

I'm not one of those people. I've been thinking about the previous responses related to a non refundable deposit, and for nervous people that may be a good idea. 

For me, when they accept the offer after we communicate via audiogon, phone or email, I have a pretty good idea about the person I'm dealing with. 

I would thonk honk it very strange that a person would not want me to see or hear the item after accepting my offer for many reasons. 1) it may be a scam. 2) it may not actually work. 3) it may not work or look as advertised and 3) it may be stolen and the seller's home has nothing in it that indicates that the seller knows the first thing about high end audio equipment.

i don't care about the price if it is stolen. I'm walking away. 
Lastly, some equipment is extremely heavy and will cost much to ship. If I'm nearby I would prefer to pick it up myself. 

If if the buyer is nearby, why ship it?  Anyway, just my thoughts. 

Enjoy

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.