Back in early April I traded some Pokerstars money for Paypal money with a guy who I met through a friend online. I honestly didn’t even want to do it at the time, my bankroll was kinda low online, but the guy was basically begging me to do it. Anyways, I ended up sending up $386 over the course of a few weeks and he always sent me Paypal money before I’d send it to him on Stars. Everything seemed fine until June when I got chargeback notices from Paypal. Apparently this guy called up his credit card company and disputed the charges.
At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he made a mistake. I was pretty nice and patient with the guy throughout the process, even though I knew he probably did it deliberately. Also, I thought I had a real chance to win the chargeback disputes, since I had facebook messages from the guy admitting to me that he recognized the charges, and I used that as evidence.
Well about a week ago I got the final verdict. His bank decided I didn’t have enough evidence to prove my case. Obviously I was furious, I honestly didn’t even know why I thought I’d win a chargeback dispute. It is well known in the credit card industry that the seller NEVER wins a dispute, since it is decided by the customer’s bank. This is total bullshit, of course they are gonna favor their customer.
Anyways I sent this guy 1 last message giving him a chance to send me the money he owes me. Of course that never happened. Since this guy is a college student, I decided it was a good idea to give his parents a call, maybe they’d talk some sense into their son. Well not only were they unhelpful, they were downright hostile. I was very agreeable the whole phone call too, never said anything bad about their son or anything. His mother actually said to me “What kind of person sends money to someone to gamble with”.. I was absolutely stunned. Her son just scammed me out of $386 (and $180 in chargeback fees), and she thinks I’M doing something wrong when her son begged me to send him money on Pokerstars. Talk about being in denial about the situation. Anyways they told me they would talk to their son about it, and it seemed that it was actually their credit card he used to send me this money.
So I called them back tonight and talked to his father who basically told me that I wasn’t getting any money from them and to stop calling them. He then hung up on me. I understand that they want to support their child over a complete stranger, but I’m not sure what kind of people teach their kids that it’s ok to steal from someone. He also said that they never got the money back from their credit card company, which is a complete lie. I called Paypal twice to verify that they had won the chargeback.
I looked into filiing a lawsuit, but just the filing fee is $125 (and I’m only owed $563). If I decide to go that route, I’m gonna go for the throat and sue their bank for credit card fraud along with them. I sent them pretty clear evidence, and they just decided in the favor of their customer. That’s just not fair, and they shouldn’t be allowed to do that. If I do this lawsuit, it’s gonna be a pretty big thing, I’ll likely sue the bank for punitive damages that will probably amount to something in the 6 figures. I want headlines and all that kind of jazz, so as to get this issue out in the open. It’ll be a big project and I’ve been quite busy lately so I’m not sure I’ll have the time for that.
In the meantime, I’ve registered a website in the guy’s name and plan on posting the story of how he screwed me out of the money, along with all the evidence. I’ll use some SEO techniques to get this site to the top of the search engines when someone googles his name, that way other people won’t be scammed by him. Also, employers and such should know what kind of person they’re dealing with before hiring him. I’m also looking into getting a list of email addresses at his school, which shouldn’t be too hard given my skills. Then I’ll email anyone I can find who works there with the story.
Internet justice FTW.