[NTF6]

Originally Posted by psychobimbo

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. But I do have training and experience in contract law.

You have (had) a contract. It may not be written, but a verbal agreement also makes a contract.

To have a contract you must have:
* Legal capacity (I assume you are not bankrupt and mentally capable - tick)
* Consideration (you have paid $1000 - tick)
* An offer (I assume that you offered to pay the deposit for something - tick)
* An acceptance (I assume the salesman accepted your offer - tick)

The difficult part here is that none of this contract was written down, especially, in this case the conditions surrounding the Consideration (deposit). It will become a case of he said / she said.

You really need to be sure of what both parties said during the telephone conversation to understand the conditions of the contract.

If you wish to pursue this from a legal perspective, then I suggest you seek legal advice, as they will know best how to deal with this particular case.

Having said that, aside from the legal side of things, from a moral perspective, I think you should be able to get your deposit back. The tell-tale for me is that you have not signed any paperwork aside from the agreement to pay the deposit and were never provided with the actual cost of the item (which would be reasonable to expect when laying down a deposit for an item where the price was unknown at the time of agreement to the deposit).

Further, I'm not sure that chasing this through the credit card company is the right avenue either. That process relates to unauthorised payments. In this case, you authorised the payment (deposit), it's just that the final agreement did not eventuate. Maybe I'm too honest, but I think you'd be having your credit card provider chase something for under false pretenses.

Hope that helps.

Not entirely correct, you can get a chargeback for services legitimately authorised but not received.