Site Sale possible Rip Off, next steps?

I've recently bought a site off a fellow DP member, I will not mention a name (yet) as I hope problems will resolved amicably. I'm after a bit of advice on what steps to take if problems are not resolved.

History so far is:

Saturday - Agreed on price for site content and domain name

Sunday - Received invoice which I paid in full using PayPal. The seller provided me with hosting and co-op passwords and also changed the site to use my AdSense ID and channel. We agreed to do a hosting swap where I would give them space in one of my accounts in exchange for them hosting the sold site. The domain has not been transferred to my name but should be
.
Wednesday - I check the site and notice all Co-op ads have disappeared, the Adsense ID is no longer mine and I can no longer log in via cPanel or FTP. I changed the Co-op password so I can still log into that but without ads on the site is pretty useless.

I contacted the seller 12 hours ago, no reply as yet. My question is what steps should I now be taking, my plan is to email the seller again and ask for a very good explanation to why this has happened. If I have still not heard after 24 hours (from my first email) I will then contact Paypal and see what they can do, I was also considering contacting my credit card company to see if they can help.

Has anybody had any similar experiences to this and how good are Paypal at dealing with cases like this, any other advice would also be appreciated.

 

In my experience Paypal isn't great if it isn't product you can touch. This is a bti more fuzzy of an area as they would have to prove delivery and if the domain wasn't transferred to you, they would have a hard time proving that.

I bought a script last year with Paypal and when I got it, the code was so bad it didn't work. I tried to settle things between the buyer and he told me too bad. He proved to Paypal that he had given it to me and that was it. They couldn't care less if he had sent me a an empty file.

Enough of the tangent, does this seller sell a lot of domains here at DP? Certianly if you have PM'd them and they have not responded AND they have logged in during that time, if you post the issue in full it may shame them into fixing it. As long as it is all facts it may actually help your case.

I would definately give them a reasonable amount of time to respond in all fairness but if you are in the business of selling sites, you should be more responsible.

 

That's bad. Do you have the guy's telepone number by any chance?

I doubt PayPal can do much. Maybe peole should consider a 60-40 split pre and post the deal. If it's a member who sells a lot I guess it will work out soon enough.

Is all correspondence over PM or e-mail? E-mail would be better IMO so you can better prove who said what and when.

I hope this guy fulfills the deal now, else there will be a lot of industry professionals after him and we are known to be an ugly bunch mwuahahaa. But seriously though, make it happen whoever you are!

 

They do sell quite a bit here on DP which is one of the reasons I paid in full upfront. I also can't understand why they would transfer it to me initially and then take it away, which is why I'm hoping there is some genuine mistake going on.

Must commuication was done via IM, which is probably the worst way of doing it. The one good thing to come out of this so far is that I've learnt another lesson in business, its cost me money but this lesson in a years time would cost me a lot more.

 

DCT, I appreciate you keeping the names private, but let's make it public. I do not mind, being known as the seller.

Check your PM. As I told you in PM, the hosting company, e3servers had some problem, and restored the backup copy, which ofcourse did not have your adsense ID, and possibly no coop because of old backup.

Everything is restored now. Confirm please.

 

Hi, sorry to hear of the trouble. A lot of us here buy and sell sites all the time, I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to know who did that to you so to avoid dealing with that person in the future.
thanks

 

Thanks Honey, I can confirm ftp is now working.

I am relieved that this is a genuine error and also that I didn't come on here with all guns blazing. Hopefully I'll have got a free lesson out of this after all

I'm meant to be at "work" now but will continue this via email (not IM) with Honey.

I'll also do a followup blog entry

 

This is a really good thread. Cooler heads prevailed and everyones happy. Nice way to handle it for bothe DCT and Honey!

 

It's great to see everything worked out and we can all learn from this thread... that yes, sometimes there are errors and mistakes and we shouldn't always assume we are 'getting screwed' AND that people are (for the most part) reasonable and will work to correct a given situation.

 

Well done. Glad to hear it was sorted out.

 

Thankd DCT and thanks everybody else