In today’s article I’ll write about something that wasn’t exactly a scam, but just bad business practice. Still, I feel like it deserves a mention.
Read about the other scams I wrote here:
Part 1 – https://onmoneyline.com/selling-online-paypal-and-scams-part-1/
Part 2 – https://onmoneyline.com/selling-online-paypal-and-scams-part-2/
Part 3 – https://onmoneyline.com/selling-online-paypal-and-scams-part-3/
Part 4 – https://onmoneyline.com/selling-online-paypal-and-scams-part-4/
Part 6 – https://onmoneyline.com/selling-online-paypal-and-scams-part-6/
Scam? What happened?
A while ago someone registered on a website that I own, where we offer a $1 free balance for users to be able to test the services for free. The person registered and was given his $1 free balance. He used it to buy a service, which was delivered within 24 hours.
The next day he contacts me saying that my service doesn’t work, and offering me his service instead. This was a fairly new service I started providing, and I hadn’t tested it thoroughly yet. And it seems this person was providing the same service, and wanted me to start selling his service on my website, paying him X and pricing it higher and keeping the profit.
Testing the service
At this point I quickly started checking to see if my service indeed was not working. But after some looking into it, I discovered that the service worked fine. So I contacted this guy and told him that my service works fine, and I asked him if he is sure that it didn’t work?
After a little back and forth, he basically told me, “I don’t know.”
Basically, this genius figured he’ll get the free balance, order a service that he also sells, then tell me that my service doesn’t work and offer me his service instead. I don’t know why he thought this approach would work, but there you go.
Son of a bitch!
Here is a video I made talking about this:
Summary
Sometimes when you sell things online, you run into, well, idiots. By doing what he did, this guy basically ruined his chances of EVER doing any business with me. This is such a dishonest way of trying to acquire customers. And the reason I got very upset was because I got very alarmed and spent time and energy making sure the service actually works. I wasted my time and energy over a situation that should never have happened in the first place.
At the end of the day, it’s all good. Nothing gained and nothing lost.