Author Archives: Guest

Getting Your Money Back From PayPal: Take ‘Em To Court!

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This guest-post by Drew is a followup to our “How to get your money back from PayPal“.  Drew is currently fighting to have his funds released by PayPal.  You can read Drew’s first entry here: Getting my money back from PayPal

After I sent PayPal the formal letter asking for them to release my funds, etc., Paypal called me this morning, and said So What, give us documents between my vendors and their wholesalers. I said it’s not legal, so on and so on, and informed the person I will go ahead and start the legal process, first by filing all the complaints.

These are the basic steps I took to file my lawsuit against PayPal:

  • Write up a brief, 2-3 pages in length, outlining the case being filed, points of interests, legal issues, damages, rectification being sought. Once all completed, make 4-5 copies of it all.
  • Go to county courthouse, or federal courthouse. Go to Clerk of Court’s office
  • File lawsuit brief in small claims, or other appropriate offices.
  • Have clerk of court notarize some of the copies, to deliver a copy to the defendant or their legal representation. In Paypal’s case, 1 copy to legal dept in California, 1 copy to legal representative of the state residing in (in my case, Overland Park Kansas, even though I am in Iowa)
  • For Iowa, the filing fee is $35.  Federal court, filing fee is $85.
    Filing fee’s for each jurisdiction are different.
  • Although not required, make Lawsuit Public – Paypal will hate that tremendously.  Plus it will cost them much financial resources, just for the initial presence in court.

I am quite sure that Paypal got my email this morning after i finished all the complaints with the FTC, SEC, federal reserve, California attorney general’s office, and the California justice dept.  A lot of stuff, but i am ready to play the hard ball game, that will cost them a lot more than it is worth.   I am seeking 72 hours for their representatives from 1 state away to appear in court or face default judgment.

My legal points are as follows:

  • Paypal voided their TOS & agreement when they asked me to conduct criminal activities to get what they want.
  • Paypal is operating as a financial institution with power of seizure, without legal authority to do so.
  • Paypal is committing felony fraud (possible laundering activities going on as as well, since it seems to be widespread and ongoing), but just my own money is $2,253.36
  • Paypal is refusing to release funds, not belonging to themselves, which is called grand theft.

If they would not have ask me to commit a crime, then their contracts are legal. but once they asked me to commit a crime, their contracts became null and void. That is law.

*note, by asking for me to commit a crime, I can also ask for punitive damages. When they did that, it opened them up to being liable

Get Your Money Back From Paypal : Drew’s Story

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This guest-post by Drew is a followup to my “How to get your money back from PayPal” post.  Drew is currently fighting to have his funds released by PayPal.

I’ve been using paypal as my transactions processor for 3 years or so, and have been pretty active the entire time, since I sell a lot of stuff on multiple sites.  Anyways, During January 2010, i sold 150 items for under $20 on ebay… not one single issue and apx 130 of the 150 had already left positive feedback. not a single negative feedback, chargeback, or problem whatsoever. Everyone’s happy. … Except me.

I wake up Friday morning (January 29, 2010), planning to transfer the funds to my bank account, since all sales for the month had been completed… Low and behold, my Paypal account is frozen.  Paypal is asked for inventory descriptions, vendor invoices, and receipts.  I sent Paypal my vendor invoice (sales agreement), inventory listed of all the details.

Nope…. After providing what PayPal wanted, now PayPal wants more, and stuff there is no way I can provide, like written rights for being a reseller of the products by the manufacturer and even copies of my vendors contracts and sale agreements with their supplier (illegal as sin).  What? I don’t need rights to resell what i purchased wholesale from a distributor and Paypal sure does NOT have the right to require me to get a copy of my vendors contracts with their supplier.

Needless to say, it’s now a paypal horror story on the tune of $2,455.63. It took them 1 whole day to say they will hold my money for 180 days.. Great way to start off 2010….If you are a merchant and use paypal, this WILL be you soon. AVOID. Paypal is a scam, and is operating a criminal organization.

Me, most likely my online business is going to be annihilated, unless i can get back up to par fast. The entire amount in my paypal is what pays for my vendor balances. If I can’t get that paid, i am through. No job, no money, etc. I have signed up for moneybookers as a merchant, but am still awaiting a response for a few days now.

Virtualpetlist.com p0wned, But Recovering

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The following is a guest post by Carlos Andrade, owner of virtualpetlist.com, who is still recovering from a webmaster’s worst nightmare: a hacked website.

Hello everyone,
Here is a story I’d like to share with you guys and I hope you guys can relate to it and learn a few things as well.

I’ve trusted someone over the years to help me administer our server, however; in June of 2009, this person decided to screw us over. Not only did he wipe-out our backups, he broke into our email accounts, stole our domain names, hacked my PC, and stole our hosting account (with ThePlanet). Taking over our server and website was not enough. My passwords were saved in notepad file on my PC which he was also able to take control of, giving him control of my gmail accounts, one of which was associated with my Google Adsense account. It turns out my PC was easily hacked via Windows Remote Access, no firewall, and “easy” passwords.

After this incident occurred the virtualpetlist.com community thought that we sold out, see VPL hacked?, and we were faced with a decision of getting the site back online or giving up and staying down. I wanted to stay down because my personal life was in a shambles (got in a car accident and lost it all) and things were piling up on me faster than I could handle.

After talking it over with one of my fellow administrators (also, co-owner, EBK) we decided to not only to get back online, but to fight-back. With the help of our user-community we compiled the evidence against our little wanna-be hacker and we submitted the crime to the FBI via IC3.

“Easy” passwords like fjvjvd1kfkw will not work on today’s internet. You need passwords that contain symbols such as; 223jd%%#<>*@sD, the harder the password, the harder it is for someone to break in and steal your information. Also, do not ever give out your server passwords to anyone and be very selective of who you trust to work on your system.

I thought I was safe, but I wasn’t. I thought my website was safe, but it wasn’t. So, remember fellow webmasters: Only trust your real friends and use good passwords!

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak my mind Randy!

Regards,
Carlos Andrade (cpvr)

____________________

About Carlos:
Carlos Andrade (AKA “cpvr” and “ForgottenCreature”) is webmaster/owner Virtualpestlist.com and has also owned other websites such as “Myspace Hun” and “Virtual pets blog”.

If you are interested in submitting your own guest post (and getting some free link-love), send a request via my contact-page.

From Nothing to Something in 30 Days

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If you’re like me, you have a million ideas bouncing around in your head and on Post-It notes everywhere you go. For people like us, it takes a lot of motivation to stick with anything for an extended period of time. I’m going to show you how I’ve taken websites making no money and with no traffic to something sustainable in 30 days.

First of all I should let you know that I’ve never sold anything online, not a get-rick-quick eBook nor a training course. Since I don’t have anything to sell, you have no reason to see if these steps might be able to help you make some money online. Without further ado, make money online using these 7 steps in 30 days.

I’ll be skipping the basics like buying a domain and finding a niche. You should be able to register a domain, get, or have, hosting and write at least as good as a high school student.

1. Content. Content is the bread and butter on my strategy. Good content always beats any form of scam and/or spam. Good content is lasting and creates defensible traffic. Great content on the other hand does everything for you. Marketing, sales, everything. If you can write a great piece of content that other people like and want to link to, the job is 80% done. This great content is commonly referred to as linkbait.

Before you write that great linkbait article, you want to make sure that the foundation of your website is created. To do that, you need to have articles on your website. I would suggest 10-20 general articles about your niche. My current project is related to the call center industry. My first articles that were just filler pieces included, “Why Outsource to a Call Center, “Call Center Supervisor, and “Call Center Basics. As you can see, those aren’t exaclty interesting articles, but they provide filler and content for the website and give Google and the other bots something to look at while you working on your linkbait.

When talking about content, it’s important to consider your method of delivery. Working the way I suggest includes a lot of writing. If you plan to do a lot of writing, nobody wants to copy and paste code into a text editor and upload HTML pages. Not to mention if you want to change something on your website, it means spending a day making manual changes. WordPress can change that. Download and install WordPress, that’s the end of the boring basics.

Throughout the entire month you’ll continue adding content. If you can get 30-50 posts up in 30 days, you’re doing good. For the current project I’m working on, my partner and I are going for 150 posts total. It’s not an unreasonable goal at all, it just depends on who you are and how quickly you can write.

2. Design. Depending on the niche you’ve chosen, a free WordPress template will probably work fine for the first year, depending on your growth and income. As income rises, you should invest in Continue reading →