posted on April 11, 2001 08:44:27 PM new
I am one of those people that seems to trust everyone, and I always pay the price. Just before Christmas I bid on an auction for a notebook computer that had a teriffic price for the product. I contacted the owner and he said I could just send him the money and he would send the notebook right away, that we didn't have to work through the auction, and that would save him money. He also did not take credit cards. He only accepted Western Union and Cashier's checks. Well I asked him if he had the portable base that went with this notebook and of course he did, for $400. more. Well I sent him $2500. by Western Union and $400. by a Cashier's check. After that I did not get any notice that he had received my payments or when he was going to ship my notebook. I never heard from him again. I definately think someone should introduce a law that makes this illegal and punishable by fines and jail time. If someone did this to you from a store at least you would know where to go to fight to get your money back. I tried all the online procedures to get my money back but I never heard anything from them either. I described my situation and they didn't know what to do either. There should be a law that we buyers, that get ripped off can retaliate. We need a group of people maybe from the internet that we can process these fraud charges through and have action taken on them before they get to be old and never looked into.
I have also been on the sellers side of this fraud. I had a person purchase programs from me and charge them to a credit card. I processed the order like usual and the credit card was approved by my merchant service, so I went ahead and sent the products. I sold this person a lot of things and just charged them on the credit card that he had given me. At one time he changed the credit card, but I didn't think anything of it because it was still going to the same place. Anyway the bottom line is now I am getting chargebacks to my merchant account for these charges, with the card owners saying they did not make these purchases. The merchant account just returns their money to them, you hardly have any defense unless you have a signed delivery slip for everything you ship. I never thought of that because I really didn't see how anyone could just say they didn't charge something and get their money back. Obviouly this person that was making the orders was using credit cards that he got from customers of his shop. He just chose a person that had charged things from him and charged the products that he wanted to their accounts. All the charges were approved by my merchant account, but I guess that is no proof that this person isn't going to come back a couple of weeks later and place a chargback on you for not ordering the products, and says they don't even know who you are.
We that buy and sell on the internet need some kind of organization that polices buying and selling on the internet. I'm not proposing government I'm proposing an internet program where you can insure your charges, which includes going after the seller if they don't send you the products, and on the other hand go against the people that use other peoples credit cards, and then claim chargebacks. There are a lot of unneeded laws enforced on the internet but there is nothing that really helps the buyer or seller that are getting taken. Please send replies to me and tell me what you think about an organization to protect buyers and sellers.
Thank you for listening, and I would really appreciate your feedback. Email your comments to: [email protected]
posted on April 16, 2001 01:17:17 PM new
Sorry about your problem. We don't need laws to make this illegal, it already is. The problem is that it's hard to track down the guy afterward. What should be made illegal is folks trying to get a good deal by buying off auction from unknown sellers and sending them money orders. When blind trust in strangers becomes illegal, ripoffs like this will also decline. What you are asking for is an organization set up to protect people from their own foolishness. The government is already too busy dealing with drug addicts, alcoholics, smokers with cancer, etc to take on another group of irresponsible people.
