"Out the Door" = Seller Pays Sales Tax?

[lee n. field]

OK, here is my plan.  My employer owes me $1800 in back pay (long story).  I should get it soon.  The store in question still has my Makarov IJ-70 on the shelf, which I sold a few months ago but instantly regretted it.  On Monday I will go buy it back, and after explaining the whole issue, offer $20 more than the tag price.  Hopefully this will have a positive outcome.

Thanks again for everyone's feedback.  It was embarrassing, but I would rather do right by the store than earn a reputation as a crappy customer.

Honestly, that sound OK to me.  If you do it soon.  If you can't, go in with a $20, soon, before everyone forgets.  It will leave a better impression.

You wanted to drop by the gunshop anyway, right?

[zxcvbob]

"Out the door" = the tax, title, and license fees are baked into the final price already.  The buyer still pays it but it's hidden.  Or you could say the seller pays it if he forgot to mark the item up, or he's discounting it a convenient amount to get it to move.

Pay the $20 and get it over with, IMHO.  Everybody will feel better, especially you.  Unless you are counting on the manager refusing the extra $20 when you buy the Mak.

ETA: not trying to insinuate anything, that's just the only reason I can think of to *not* just return the 20.  If you wait too long, any good will is lost.

[Devonai]

I just want to do right by the employee and the manager.  I have to disagree with the finer points that Skid and Hawkmoon made, but we are in agreement about the basic issue at heart here.  I am planning on going back soon, though I forgot that Monday is Labor Day so I will have to wait until Tuesday.

The other side of the story, which my co-workers wondered why I didn't mention at first, is that my asking price was $525... the pistol was there for so long that I agreed to $400 for a quick sale.  Then the buyer put it on layaway for 30 days, which I have to be honest kinda pissed me off, but I rolled with it.  That's why I complained about the extra $20; I felt like I'd been through the wringer with this guy already.

[Hawkmoon]

The other side of the story, which my co-workers wondered why I didn't mention at first, is that my asking price was $525... the pistol was there for so long that I agreed to $400 for a quick sale.  Then the buyer put it on layaway for 30 days, which I have to be honest kinda pissed me off, but I rolled with it.  That's why I complained about the extra $20; I felt like I'd been through the wringer with this guy already.

I don't see any justification for punishing the gun shop because a buyer was a richard cranium. You didn't have to accept an offer of $400, but if you did so for a quick sale ... a 30-day lay-away is not a quick sale, so you also didn't have to agree to the lay-away.

I don't know what the sales tax is in your state. For discussion, call it 5 percent. The "out the door" price was $400. If that included (which it did) a 5% sales tax, then the actual selling price was $380.95. If the commission on a consignment is 15 percent, the shop should have gotten 15 percent of $380.05, which is $57.14. You beat them up for $20 out of that $57, so their commission was reduced to $37.14 ... which is less than 10 percent. That's less than most shops around here charge for just doing a transfer.

[Devonai]

That's definitely a valid point, but the shop called me on a Friday with "$400 out the door" and told me to come get my check on Monday.  When I called on Monday I found out the buyer had put the pistol on layaway for 30 days. 

They did not call a second time to ask me if the layaway was OK with me.  I realize this does not necessarily shift the blame to the shop, as I did not object to the first 30 days.  When the buyer put down another $50 and the shop agreed to extend the layaway for another 30 days, I finally objected.  Then the manager told me I never had to agree to the layaway in the first place, and if I didn't want to wait another 30 days he would call the buyer and ask him to $%&@ or get off the pot.

Two days later, he finally paid in full, and I went to collect the check.  I want to be fair-minded about the whole affair, so I'm willing to chalk it up to miscommunication on both our parts.