Many people facing money problems contemplate suicide as an option for escaping their financial troubles. If you are in financial crisis and thoughts of suicide have entered your mind, please take a moment to read this important page. If you are thinking about suicide read this first

As told by Kathryn Price:

This is my own fault. In 2004 I hired a guy from India to build a website for me. After he was finished building my website he told me he could help me make money by driving traffic to my website.

All I had to pay him was $5000 for a 6-month contract. I agreed. He did what he promised he would do. I made $150,000 off the website in the first year, $250,000 the year after that. So when I was contacted by the same guy 6 months ago telling me he was looking for investors for a big social networking project that was projected to generate 10 million in profit in its first five years, and how he thought of me and wanted to give me an opportunity to get in at $10000 for 10% share of projected profit, I believed, based on some of the emails I’d exchanged with him during the time he was building the site and then marketing it for me, that he genuinely just wanted to give me an opportunity because he remembered how I’d shared with him that I was always on the lookout for a promising start-up to invest in.

I asked for some information about the project and he sent me a professionally done, highly impressive Power-point presentation detailing his plans for the project. I was not only impressed, I was excited about the whole idea. I got back to him right away and asked if I could sign on for a 30% profit share. He told me I was lucky because two of his investors had contacted him saying they couldn’t raise the funds they’d promised to invest so he would go ahead and sell me the 10% shares of profit he was going to sell them.

Never imagining for a moment that I was being scammed, I happily wired $30,000 to a bank account in Texas. He told me he was using the bank account of a relative residing in Texas because it was easier than having the funds sent to his bank in India. I thought nothing of it.

Days after I sent the money I had heard nothing back from him to let me know the funds had been received by his relative in Texas. I emailed him asking him to verify receipt. I did not receive an email back. I emailed again the next day and the day after that. For a full week I kept sending emails; then it started to dawn on me that I might have been scammed. I contacted my bank. They said there was nothing they could do since I’d sent the money voluntarily. It hadn’t technically been stolen. Refusing to accept that answer I went in physically to the bank. They told me the same story, but after I broke down in hysterics the manager agreed to see if there was anything they could do. They picked up the phone and called the bank in Texas, but they learned that the account I wired the money to had been closed 3 days after the money was withdrawn.

There was nothing the banks could do. They told me I would have to go to the police. To this day I haven’t gotten my money back or been able to track down the programmer in India or his relative in Texas.

Jane Burton (not the real name) lost $2500 after PayPal froze her account. I can identify with this story because a few years back it happened to me. PayPal froze my account which had a balance of $1200 claiming suspicious activity. The suspicious activity was just me testing an Instant Payment notification script I was working on for a dating software I was developing. They didn’t have the sandbox testing ground at that time. I kept sending a penny to my account trying to test the communication between PayPal and my server. I can appreciate why they became suspicious, and I’m glad they eventually unfroze my account but it took a while to get my money back. Had to fax them a million and 1 documents first.

Here’s Jane’s story:

I used PayPal to collect a payment in the amount of $2500 for legal services I provided a client. I went to withdraw my payment only to find my account had been frozen for some unknown reason. I called PayPal in a fit. I can admit I probably should have tried to stay calm but even so, just because a customer is having a fit doesn’t make it okay for the customer service representative to retaliate. So I’m shouting at the customer service rep and he starts to get pissed off and starts shouting back at me and hangs up the phone without answering any of my questions.

I called again, this time trying my best to stay calm, but it was as if the first guy had put some kind of notation with my account because the new person was being rude right from the get go. She practically shouted at me that my account had been frozen because of suspicious activity. I asked her what suspicious activity. She tells me I received a large payment to my account. I ask her how is that suspicious? I performed a service for another attorney living in another state and we agreed he’d send the payment via PayPal. What was so suspicious about that? She tells me that I have to fax them my drivers license, bank account statement and several other documents in order to assist them with resolving the problem.

I fax them the documents but don’t hear anything from them so I call them back and they’re still being rude. This new guy starts telling me that the name on my drivers license doesn’t match the name on my bank statement. My bank statement doesn’t have my middle initial but aside from that the names are the same. I’m seeing red by now. I tell him I’m a lawyer and won’t hesitate to sue PayPal. He hangs up the phone on me.

I never did get my money. I got so fed up I told them to close the account. They said they couldn’t close it while there was an investigation pending or some such thing. I don’t know how they resolved it. No one’s contacted me by phone or email and the last time I tried to login to the account I couldn’t get in. I decided to just let it go rather than take on the hassle of trying to sue them. Needless to say I’m one of those who fully agrees that PayPal sucks.

 

**Money Woes is a new category that will publish letters by regular people having money problems. This is the premier post in “Money Woes”. It’s an email I received from an acquaintance. I’ve been given permission to use here.

Hey:
You won’t believe what a mess I’ve gotten myself into. Remember that $3000 sale I made the other day? Guess what? The buyer filed some complaint with PayPal claiming the item wasn’t as described and PayPal reversed the sale. They deducted $3000 from my bank account leaving me with $150. And rent is due in 8 days! Can you believe this? You know I usually have reserve funds in case of crap like this, but guess what? Because it was a pretty big sale and I felt like the buyer was an honest guy, I went ahead and bought the PS3 for Josh and the ipods for the girls that I was supposed to get them last Christmas. I spent all but $150 of my reserve funds. What the hell am I gonna do now? I’ll tell you, not that I would do it or anything but I feel so desperate right now I could jump off a bridge.