Casey Harlan, eBay seller ID iknowauctions, posted an eBay auction in September for his training course. The auction promised that the winner of the auction would be making 200 to $300 per day within 30 days or a full refund would be given.
Quoted directly from the auction:
"Day 1 - We will put all of the necessary tools into place for you.
"Week 1 - We'll likely make you over $1000 during this 1st week.
"Month 1 - After this 1st month, we will easily have you making between $200 and $300 dollars per day, each and every day.
"As you can see, mine is a very aggresive income-producing system.
"I offer a 30 day pro-rated refund. For example, let's say that for whatever reason... It just isn't working for you. If after 30 days you have not recouped your investment using my systems, I will refund the difference between what you paid and what you made. For example, let's say you pick this up for $2000 and after 30 days you have only made $1500... I pro-rate the refund and issue $500 to you... The difference between the 2. PLUS, you'll still get to keep my information."
The "course" was not really a course at all. Mr. Harlan sent me some tips and snippets of information that were helpful, but definitely were not on par with a $6000 training course!
I caught Mr. Harlan in several lies, to which he responded by making implausible excuses.
By October 27 it had became obvious that there was no way I would be up to $200-300 per day in the first 30 days (as guaranteed in his auction), I asked him to honor his refund policy.in an attempt to safeguard myself (by this time I had multiple reasons to distrust Mr. Harlan) I filed a dispute with PayPal and contacted my credit card company on October 27.
On that same day I sent an email to Mr. Harlan requesting that he "provide me with the pro-rated refund offered in the auction. I paid $6,056.78 and have made $47.72 with your techniques and [website].com as of today. I therefore request a refund of the difference of $6009.06, to be adjusted by any additional income that [website].com should make between now and October 29 (30 days from the date of purchase). I will be happy to provide proof of my 30-day earnings from [website].com."
Even though Mr. Harlan's auction explicitly stated that "you'll still get to keep my information, " I wanted to be as fair as possible. I had spent a lot of time advertising the website Mr. Harlan had included with my training, so I set about editing all of the ads and redirecting them to my other websites. On October 31, I returned the domain name he had pushed into my account and deleted the associated website from my web host.
At first it seemed that Mr. Harlan would follow through on his promise to refund, and I would have been happy with a partial refund, but on October 28 I received a snide response to my refund request from Mr. Harlan, which I ignored. On October 29 I emailed him to let him know that I would be returning the domain name he had provided me. His reply was: "Actually, what you're trying to do is to 'wait out' the Paypal dispute so that you can try to keep the domain too. Well, I just hope that doesn't backfire in your face." He sent a couple of other nasty emails over the next few days accusing me of being sneaky by trying to get as much "knowledge" out of him as possible.
On November 1, I emailed Mr. Harlan: "I just discovered that you made a statement to PayPal disagreeing with the dispute I filed. What's up with that? You were supposed to refund after 30 days if I didn't make back my purchase price. It's as simple as that. I have kept my word and returned the website and the domain name to you as agreed. Why haven't you just gone ahead with the refund as agreed? Come on, you know full and well that the small amount of information given isn't worth anywhere near $6k. What's the point of trying to drag this out? I'm sure you have better things to do with your life, so let's just be done with it and move on. Lessons learned (hopefully) on both sides."
In the meantime, PayPal emailed me on October 27 about the dispute I had filed with them. The email stated: "We will make every effort to resolve this claim within 30 days although we may require additional time to complete our investigation.
"You will be contacted by email and asked to provide additional information. If you are filing a claim because you believe that you received fake or inauthentic merchandise, you may be asked to submit a letter of inauthenticity from a reputable expert who can substantiate your claim. You are responsible for any costs associated with this appraisal. This letter should be on official letterhead and include contact information so that we may discuss your case with the expert if necessary.
"Your participation is essential to the investigation and it is important that you reply to requests for information within the specified timeframe. Failure to do so will result in cancellation of the claim and you will forfeit the possibility of a refund."
When I filed the dispute with PayPal, I was not given any opportunity to provide details about the transaction or to provide supporting documentation. After receiving the email from PayPal, I logged into my PayPal account several times over the next couple of weeks to try to provide this detail, which - according to PayPal's email - "is essential to the investigation." I was not given any options within my PayPal account to provide this information; no online form, no email address, no telephone number - nothing! PayPal's email also stated that "it is important that you reply to requests for information, " so I kept watch for further emails from them. Nothing. I was never contacted to provide information about the dispute!
On the other hand, I received an email from PayPal on October 28 that stated: "The seller has submitted an explanation describing the disagreement with this claim. We will evaluate all available information including the original listing, and both seller and buyer statements. A final decision will be made on this claim per our User Agreement. We will notify you if further action is required." Obviously PayPal had allowed the seller to provide his own story, but I was denied the opportunity to do the same.
On November 21, I received an email from PayPal stating that they had miraculously been able to conclude their investigation without 50% of the information necessary to conducting an investigation. Their email stated: "Based on our definition of significantly not-as-described, this claim does not qualify for a refund. We found the seller to have accurately represented the item (s) in question. For more information about the claims process, please review the User
Agreement. Https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/? Cmd=p/gen/ua/ua-outside." They even had the nerve to thank me for my "cooperation."
Gee, I wonder if PayPal was just a little biased toward the seller? After all, if they did a real investigation, they wouldn't be able to keep the fees they made from my $6,056.78 transaction.
ScammerSlammer
Phoenix, Arizona
U.S.A.
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