Yes, I was scammed on Digital Point Forums (DP) for the very first time in my life. At the moment, the case is still being reviewed by PayPal and the outcome has not been resolved yet. Anyway, this all began when I saw this thread advertising a vBulletin license for sale at the price of $75 — which is really very cheap — considering that the original price being sold by Jelsoft, the creators of vBulletin, is $180.

I sent a private message (PM) to the seller as soon as I saw that and I sent the payment almost immediately after confirmation. It did not occur to me to check his iTrader or posting history because he mentioned TriPHP Forums, which is a webmaster forum that I used to hang out and I assumed that he must have been the owner (now that I come to think of it, maybe he never really did owned TriPHP).

After the sale was confirmed, we exchanged PMs for a couple of minutes, and he asked me to which e-mail address he would like me to have the details sent to, as he prefers not to use PMs as a method of communication.

I replied asking the DP poster to send the details (even though I’d already stated that previously) to my e-mail, repeating the very same e-mail address that I already gave him earlier.

All the above happened on 3rd January 2009.

After this last PM, all communications between him and me went to an abrupt halt. I was wondering why was it taking so long for him to send me the details? I waited for at least another 24 hours before sending this next PM. This was sent on January 4th 2009.

I waited yet another 24 hours and seeing that he did not reply, I opened a PayPal dispute, hoping that this was all merely a mistake and he simply did not have time to check his PMs on DP. Note however, that I made a PayPal dispute, not a claim for the payment made. This explanation from PayPal should make it clear the difference between a dispute and a claim.

This was on 5th January 2009. The next day, I received a notification e-mail from PayPal stating that the seller escalated the case to a claim. I was stupefied when I realised what was happening.

In the dispute form, I have made all effort to be civil by requesting the seller to provide me with the vB license details or just refund the money if he is unable to do so. I was still hoping that this was just a mere miscommunication when I opened the dispute and the purpose of a dispute is to resolve any issues between the buyer and the seller, as stated earlier by the PayPal description above. However, as you can see below, the seller was the one who escalated the case to a claim and at the same time claims that I am lying and that I had received the “script” (actually license) but simply want to cheat him out of his money.

I really wanted this license and I thought maybe this guy really was honest, so I tried to clear any misunderstanding between us by sending a rather long PM explaining why I opened the dispute and requesting that he sent the vB license in return for a cancelling of the claim in PayPal, but all I got was a very rude reply.

This person has the cheek to say this after ignoring my PMs on DP for all this while! And he even gave me a -iTrader out of spite and try to cast blame upon me by claiming that I was the one who is trying to cheat him!

Excuse me, sir….who is the one actually paying here? I have nothing to gain if I were the one who is scamming this person. Like his -iTrader is going to do anything to me, since I already have 33 iTraders! Needless to mention, I gave him an iTrader that he truly deserved.

Anyway, I really hope that PayPal will decide the claim in my favour. All I want from the exposure of this debacle is for the truth to be clear from error and may God Almighty repay him with what he deserve for trying to cheat me for a pittance of a gain in the Hereafter.