A guy, from DP whom I had added on Messenger, asked me to write 100 Acne articles and 117 Tax articles for him. He offered 2$ per 100 words for acne and 1$ per 100 words for Tax, as He needed them Within 48 hours (ALL 217 Articles). I did the work on time. When It came to selling it, I asked him to make a small Advance, for security reasons. He Refused, but Upon Insisting, he paid me 20% (200$)advance. I then Sent him All the Articles. He was then supposed to pay me $830. But, when I asked for money, he signed off from MSN, replying that he will pay the next day. The next day, I didn't receive any Money, and He had Lodged a Case of Transaction Dispute on Paypal. He says I HAVENT GIVEN HIM ANY ARTICLE. Now the 200$ are also on Hold. I can prove that I have sent the articles to him, as I did it through E-mail. I have to pay a lot to my writers, and I dont have much money, as I was expecting $1030 from him. Please Advise me what to do. Also, this all happened Only Yesterday. He hasnt sold the Articles till now. If some one is willing to buy the Articles, please PM me, I would Be Very grateful. Regards, Kunal
Sounds to me like you have just learned a hard lesson. There are a lot of scam artists out there who know the ropes better then we do and you really have to be careful with who you deal with. Next time set up an excrow and beware of anyone who need something like a couple of hundred articles in 24 hours.
If you can not get your money out of him the nice way, guess what, you own the articles! Spread them around before he can use them, better yet submit them to article repositories free of charge so that he gets no use out of them. And make his name public!
Ouch... I can't believe there are people that do that. I definitely feel your pain though. I don't know which country you're from, but in the USA we can report fraud, even if it originated from another country, and have them investigate it. If you're both in the same country, is it possible to file suit? Again, I'm in the USA, a country generally thought of as being very litigious. YMMV.
There is a lot of outcry even if a transaction is worth a few dollars here on DP. In your case, the amount is rather large. However, it won't help you if we go about telling you what you should have done (such as take his postal address, phone contact, etc; all verified). Since there will be no way for you to recover the money, I also suggest that you take steps that will make the articles loose its value. You could create several temporary blogs and put all your articles there in multiple copies on each blog and submit to search engines so that it becomes a duplicate content all over the net. Also submit them to article repositories as falsealarm suggested.
You may NOT start threads to accuse people of being a scammer here. You may ONLY leave these bad transaction claims in iTrader comments or as a response in an actual sales thread you took part in. User's name has been deleted. Do NOT publish it again, or take it up in an appropriate place. We do not get involved in private member disputes. It's between the two of you and the payment processor.
I advise using freelancers' websites such as Getafreelancer, Scriptlance, etc. They have an escrow system and dispute resolution system to keep things fair for both buyers and providers.
^So true. 1) Like someone already mentioned, saturate your articles on public zines. Also pitch your articles to websites, and magazines. If he is a publisher (web publisher / web master) go to other sites that have reputable journalists and editors-- he won't live another day. The site is: mediabistro.com. It sounds as if the guy isn't going to give you the money. But, at least you can let others know how terrible he is. 2) getafreelancer.com is a fairly good system after you sort through the bad programmers/providers. I am on there as a buyer. It allows the provider (employee) to check people's ratings. If you see a rating: buyer won't pay and etc...then you stay clear. oDesk - a system I hate is truly PRO EMPLOYEE. You really can't dispute if an employee doesn't do their work or not. But, blast him/her on mediabistro.com. Their ezine or brand won't live another day.
But, if this board is to allow service providers and buyers to exchange products/goods and funds -- then wouldn't it be only right to share the gripes to warn others?
No. If you want to publicly call someone out on a bad deal, you may not start new threads about it - we don't need that he said / she said crap. Keep it in the sales threads and iTrader system where it belongs. We give you two options - you don't need new threads in other forum areas.
that's very unfortunate, the least you can do right now is call paypal and send them all the proofs that you can, and maybe get that 200 good luck
And that's really why such threads aren't necessarily helpful, even though the intention is sometimes understandable. There have been various cases where such turn out to be untrue, and it's unnecessarily hurt a lot of people. For instance, folks, do we know if the other party possibly saw the articles in another place and felt he or she has been "scammed" of their $200? I'm not at all saying you're a copyright infringer or plagiarizer, Kunal, but are you able to accurately verify if any of those articles aren't taken from some other source? Also, is it possible the other person put that reason in because s/he knew it's not possible to get their money back stating their actual reason why? It might not be "ethical" or not honest, but some people resort to such things to try to get their desired results with arguably the "best" of intentions. The point is there's really no way of knowing unless all parties involved are all willing to speak up. Then again, sometimes they can be tough to determine if it's true or not, which is really best resolved in (gasp) a court of law. You pretty much know what to do next time, Kunal. In the meantime, do your best to dispute that dispute with PayPal, and hope it works out.
and if you have not already noticed...if he intended to scam you from the beginning then the 200$ he sent you might be from a fake credit card...and since he knew what he was doin he must have used a proxy ...so he is safe and the transaction was made to you soo..your really fu**** if my story is true...its just a thought.
That really sucks dude, I hope you get it all worked out. I can't really give you any advice on the matter, but as long as you have a copy of the emails that should do you some justice.
The best way to conduct business.. is to require a deposit upfront to start the job.. and YOU NEVER send the finished product unless you are paid in full. If you choose to send the files, make sure you password protect the zip/rar and give the pass when you are paid in full. Their are a lot of scammers, if you follow what I said above, you can weed out the scammers jhmattern is right, imagine the amount of threads being made by people who got scammed.. lol
First off, start collecting the proofs, take screenshots of the IM messages and emails, take screenshots of the thread and give a link to the deal thread also. Once you have these, then send "request money" of $830 to the paypal email id from which you got the $200. Then, give all the details to the paypal dispute claim. if you win this claim, likely NOT then you might be able to recover all the money. Sometimes it works out, so atleast try it. Also, keep copyscaping your articles, if any website is using those articles then contact their hosts to get the site down!
You can't hide things like this from members, you may think it ok to delete all the evidence but what about the person who lost his time and money, the scammers will just come back under a new name and do the same again and again.