Can I get in trouble for stopping payment on a check? ( Read details)?

Question

I decided to buy a bedroom set 3 weeks ago from a woman who was selling it on craigslist.org. The asking price was $750. My boyfriend and I rented a truck and showed up there to pick up the furniture...it didn't look anything like the pictures, it had paint, nicks, scratches....so I told the woman I would give her $500 cash and she agreed. About a week later I realized that I gave her $500 in an envelope and a CHECK for $250. ( I forgot to take out the check!)

Now she is emailing me saying she deposited the check and it was stopped, now her account is overdrawn and she is calling the police. My question is, can I get in trouble for this misunderstanding??

I made the check out to "cash" don't know if that makes a difference.

If she calls the police, what will happen? Will detectives come knocking at my door, or can she sue me?

Answer 1

quick answer - lemon law.

if you purchased a product and are not happy with it, you can return it within 30 days and get a full refund - period.

i believe the lemon laws (designed to protect people from getting products that were not made properly) are now national.

return the bedroom set, and get a full refund - take copies of the pictures and tell her you are completely willing to settle the issue in small claims court if that's what she wants.

Answer 2

Depends - do you have a receipt that says you agreed upon the $500 price, and that you paid her $500 in cash. If you do then she had no right to the check in teh envelope and was trying to get more than she agreed to take.

If you have no receipt then you might be screwed because she has an ad that says $750 and you stopped payment on a portion of that amount. If she sued you she would have a shot to win.

As they say - cash never leaves the right hand without a receipt in the left.

Answer 3

Once the matter gets into court, things might actually work out in your favor. Unless you promised that you would not stop payment on the check, she has no claim against you for that alone. Actually, it looks like the check is more of an unstated bonus than anything, because the two of you had only agreed on 500 dollars cash. If I were the judge in this case ---which I'm not--- I would say she has no claim on the check.

Answer 4

I would call her and ask her why she deposited the check if she KNEW that you were only paying $500 for it. It seems like if you don't have a receipt you're out of luck. But if she has that little money in the bank, she probably doesn't have enough to sue you either. (Attorney fees, court fees etc...) small claims costs more than $250 to go through.

Who was the check made out to anyways?

Answer 5

Regardless of any agreement verbally that you were to pay $500, the stopping payment is a separate issue.

Yes, she can call the police. And yes, the district attorney can file felony charges against you if the amount of the check fits the statute or a misdemeanor bad check charge.

Answer 6

My opinion is that you were both in the wrong! You should have contacted her when you realized your error, and she had no business depositing the check when she realized there was more money than agreed upon.

I would recommend offering to pay the fee that the bank charged her for your check not clearing - my bank charges $15 per deposit item. Any other fees are her own payback for her dishonesty!

Answer 7

Write to one of the big newspapers. The Times has a financial troubleshooter page on Saturdays, and they take up problems just like this in order to embarrass the financial institutions which get too big for their boots and make small people's lives hell by their incompetence. You might even get compensation and a BIG apology by the time the Troubleshooter has finished with them. The Times loves this kind of publicity. The banks really hate this kind of publicity.