Backstory makes it worse…
Come on now…what trainer trains and shows a sale horse for nothing for months and just says I’ll tack it on to the sale price? What, like 3k for every month it’s there with the show costs? More if it’s Ocala or WEF. Is this the kind of horse that will double in value in 90 days and command enough of a price to get that trainer paid back?
Nope. Trainer is going to put a series of kids on the horse and charge them for show training and lessons and use horse to make money off of. Trainer won’t try that hard to sell it or will lose an income generating fancy school horse.
Season in Florida ends, business drops, trainer says “sorry, couldn’t sell him. Come get him”…“oh, he’s been showing alot and lost a little weight. And there is this vet bill and and farrier bill”.
Nobody works for nothing and there is no such thing as “it will cost you nothing”.
Just LEASE the darn thing for a decent sized fee if you want…but don’t send it to somebody you don’t know for a teenager who isn’t going to sign any checks and a bunch of unknown other “hot buyers”. If that trainer really had any buyers, she’d sell them horses-I hear they have some in Florida that don’t need to come 400 miles sight unseen.
Lastly, shame on that trainer for saying he has done it before…he is a mature adult and Professional horseman, not a kid right out of college like OP and friend. Young adults-or older ones-that do not regularly buy and sell are sitting ducks for ill thought out deals like this.
While I don’t see it as a deliberate scam, if this Fla trainer can really sell this horse, she’d buy him right now and make more resale profit when he steps off the trailer down there then she would carrying him for months-unless she is looking for that seasonal fancy school horse she can teach on and take to shows under the guise of “training” while billing her clients for all the “training” then send him back at the end of the season.
NO.
Seriously… run like Heck!! There ARE other buyers out there… I promise!!!