scriptlance.com PLEASE READ

[csmaster2005]

Hey,
I do freelance work at scriptlance, and have an issue and was wondering what you guys think can/I should do.

I recently had a job that I won for the sum of $3750 for a certain script. The agreement was for 50% of viewing a demo and 50% after he recieves and verifies it.

Everything seemed to go fine, yesterday he sent me the first 50% ($1875) via SCRIPTLANCE's payment system (not escrow, real payment, as in I could of withdrawn it into paypal or any other method if I had wanted to once I recieved it).

This is the email I recieved:

This message has been sent automatically by the ScriptLance.com system. If you need to contact us, go to http://www.scriptlance.com/contact.shtml
--------------------------------------------------

The Webmaster **** has just paid you $1875! The money has been added to your account.

I blocked out his account name as not to reveal who he is.
Anyways, I send him the script, and then about 40 minutes after I sent it to him yesterday, I get another email saying:

This message has been sent automatically by the ScriptLance.com system. If you need to contact us, go to http://www.scriptlance.com/contact.shtml
--------------------------------------------------

The Webmaster **** has just paid you $381! The money has been added to your account.

So I wonder hmm he only sent $381 instead of the whole 50%, so I email him back.
Today when I got home, I got an email from scriptlance saying:

The funds you received from the user **** have been reversed due to fraudulent credit card use. It's possible it's a mistake, in that case tell them to contact me to resolve this.

-Rene

And I get on my scriptlance account and of course find that they have subtracted the amount of money that I previously recieved.

Now, my question is this:
Shouldn't scriptlance of verified the money was legit before even having it enter their system?
Thus, isnt it their mistake and thus they should provide me the money, because all my hard work has just gone to waste.
I believe that it was their fault they didnt check if it was legit beforehand, and thus they should provide me compensation.

Please let me know what everyone thinks about this, and what everyone thinks I should do about it...
Thank you,
Feras

 

[Auction]

I would agree with DNA. You fulfilled your obligation to the buyer. You should have some kind of recourse. If nothing else this should be on the CC issuer for issuing a card to a fraudulent buyer. If it was a stolen CC than it sound more like it should be on Scriptlance for not verifying everything themselves.

 

[csmaster2005]

I sent them an email late last night, and they responded with:
"Credit card fraud is almost impossible to prevent.
We verify orders, but that doesn't gaurantee we catch everything."
LOL

 

[silversurfer]

Unfortunately, I don't think that you can hold Scriptlance liable.

Once a credit card transaction goes through, it can take some time before the credit card owner or the cc company can identify it as a fraudulant transaction.

For scriptlance to verify every cc transaction would slow down the whole buying/depositing process by days.

Not sure what the way forward is for you. Perhaps, next time use the Escrow service and wait a week after the funds have been deposited to make sure they remain in the account. Alternatively use Escrow.com

Best of luck with it.

S.

 

[Riceman]

Sorry to hear about this

 

[dna]

It seems to me that Scriptlance could have easily verified the
the credit card and its credit limit when the contract was initiated.
Scriptlance was clearly negligent.

 

[csmaster2005]

they're being gay. The responded the first 2 emails but have stopped responding

 

[rb]

cmaster2005 wrote:

they're being gay

To quote coolhost.com:

Be cool. Be proffesional

That's definitely not professional.

 

[johnn]

CSMaster

I've been on both side (developer and buyer) and here is how I would handle the situation as a developer.

Put some kind of security in the script so that the script won't work after certain days. There are software out there that you can encrypted that program so they can't find out.

Release the final version only when you get your full amount of money.

John

 

[csmaster2005]

heh, yea I woulda done that if I knew it was bs

 

[Blackpanther]

Originally posted by csmaster2005
Well, the way scriptlance's payment system is:
You have a scriptlance account, and you can deposit money into it from your paypal account and a few other things.
I think the guy did it with paypal.
Anyways, once he has actual money in his scriptlance account, he can send the money to me.
I know the person that originally did this is corrupt, but scriptlance still should of verified the money was legit before EVER having it sent to my account....

Am not sure how easy it is to verify the money, The thing is if you hijack someone elses paypal account, this account has already be verified its not until the user of that account reports it to paypal that it will become under investigation. And of course if you have the persons paypal account chances are you have their email accounts aswell so you could confirm any emails from scriptlance to verify the paypal account...

This is a serious problem, especially with paypal somthing simlair recently happened to me with a paypal transaction and i had to give a refund only a few dollars thoe so i was lucky..

And of course theres no seller protection of non-tangible items with paypal!

The only other option is register yourself self employed and get insurance to cover loses...

Just onther note, its quite alot of money you should be using escrow, also its worth making a phone call to the buyer.. you have thier phone number that way *landline only mobiles are easy to clone!* this aids in investigation, phone companys have all info on landline phones.

-=BP=-