gazumped – learn from our sorry tale

Hi All,

Thought you might like to know the sequel to our sorry tale.

As I wrote earlier, we phoned the vendors directly to get their side of the story.
The agent had told us that he had not contacted us (to give us a chance to counter offer) because the vendors had told him they definitely did not want to go with our inferior offer.

 The vendors told us that they NEVER instructed the agent not to come back to us to give us an opportunity to counter offer. Indeed, they believe we should have been given that opportunity.

Anyway, at the end of my conversation with them I left them with our number and said that if this other guy failed to settle – AGAIN (making it the third time) – to give us a call.

We got that call a couple of weeks later. The other guy had failed to secure finance in time, again. We immediately faxed an offer matching the terms and conditions and price the vendors wanted, and they accepted.

My husband drove down and met the vendors and agent at the vendors' place. The contract was there, ready to be signed, together with a termination notice for the vendors to sign to end the contract with the other guy.

Then the agent called this guy to let him know what was happening and he hit the roof, threatening legal action including a caveat on the place. He apparently did have some legal right to the place.

The end result is that he's had to get bridging finance (to cover him until the place he's selling – to buy this place – settles), which was what he was hoping to avoid by moving the settlement date yet again on these poor, long suffering vendors.

We plan to lodge a formal complaint about all this, though don't have much faith in it achieving anything.

I stick with my original advice – DO NOT sign a contract and just let the agent walk out the door with it while telling you "I'll fax you a copy once they vendors counter sign. I'm just on my way to see them now.'  In our case, he was blatantly lying and we were just pawns to get the first guy to commit.

My guess is that this scenario is happening all the time and consumer watchdogs should be alerting people to it.

Still angry, but we are moving on now. Not an easy one to get over losing though as it was a rare opportunity that we missed through misleading, unethical and unfair treatment.

cheers,
Carlin