Dilemma reg. a business deal, what would you do?

[Markul]

I've bought a lot of sites (adult and mainstream) over the years and fortunately I've never been ripped off. Until now it seems.

I made a deal with someone to buy a bunch of adult sites with X amount of organic traffic. As it turns out, the total amount of traffic coming is around ½ of that and only 5-10% of that is organic. The rest is from other sites like thehun.

I've paid 2/3rds of the money, the last third is pending until some work was done.

My question is this, would you pay the rest? I never asked for proof of traffic sources since I basically trusted the seller and we're not talking about a ton of money anyhow. But based on principle, I'm reluctant to pay for something that's ultimately worth NOTHING other than potential domain value.

[DWB]

If they were not straight with you about the details of the site, I would not pay the rest.

That is the fair thing to do and if you point out where the reporting / statistical flaws are, any honest person should understand. Maybe the agreement could be re-worked a little.

[Jakez]

Of course not. And you should consider getting a partial refund also, after talking about things.

[Markul]

Thanks for the input.

As it turns out, the sites was originally said to have around 20K monthly organic visitors. When I saw a stats screenshots the total traffic was at 80K for first half of march.

Yesterday the total traffic was a little over 300 visitors and most of that was referral traffic and that pretty much matches the daily average since I added my tracking script.

[AllAboutCams]

fuck that is a big difference

[Rothstein]

lol who sold them to you?

[lagcam]

Originally Posted by Rothstein

lol who sold them to you?

Please wait.

A "Markul is a scammer because he didn't pay me my last instalment thread" will no doubt be along shortly.......

Looks like a lesson learned to me. Sellers sometimes lie, but it boils down to how much you and he value your reputations.

You said "I never asked for proof of traffic sources since I basically trusted the seller and we're not talking about a ton of money anyhow"

Personally, I would probably speak to the guy concerned and tell him that I feel he has conned me, and that he can choose between either accepting what I had already paid as full settlement, or I will pay the balance owing in full but name him in this thread and make sure that I warn others to check every detail when dealing with him.

[Markul]

Originally Posted by lagcam

Please wait.

A "Markul is a scammer because he didn't pay me my last instalment thread" will no doubt be along shortly.......

Looks like a lesson learned to me. Sellers sometimes lie, but it boils down to how much you and he value your reputations.

You said "I never asked for proof of traffic sources since I basically trusted the seller and we're not talking about a ton of money anyhow"

Personally, I would probably speak to the guy concerned and tell him that I feel he has conned me, and that he can choose between either accepting what I had already paid as full settlement, or I will pay the balance owing in full but name him in this thread and make sure that I warn others to check every detail when dealing with him.

Well I actually did ask for proof (I just forgot when I made this post) and I did sort of get it, but I couldn't see what sites it were from and asked - just never got a reply. I've exchange A LOT of mails with him about this, we are talking about $1400 here for 20+ sites. In the end I just said fine let's do this and didn't trust my gut feeling. I sure am to blame here.

Roth: I'll post that here once I figure out if he wants to come to some agreement.

I've told him that he can refund me everything paid and reimburse me for the domain renewal costs and I'll hand him the auth codes to the domains and point them back to his server. If he won't do that or offer something resonable, I'll just have my bank do a chargeback.

[Markul]

One note, I've decided that no way in hell am I going to pay the last installment. People can think what they want but I've done many deals and never ever fucked anyone over in a business deal.

[Markul]

Originally Posted by Rothstein

lol who sold them to you?

This guy did and here is the thread.

Since the dude decided to threaten me with going to the US embassy in my country so they could get his $350 back and refuse to even talk about a partial refund or even realize that he fucked me, I've given him one last offer: Refund me the full amount and I'll ignore the $200 I spent on domain renewals and once he's refunded me, I'll point domains back to his server and send him the auth codes.

He fucked me good and proper and though he could get away with it, I asked several times about the lack of traffic and was ignored. He promised 160K of monthly traffic where 20K was organic. What I got was (estimated based on 6 days) 9K with 1K TOPS of SE traffic from bing lol.

Well there's always a first, so I guess now I belong to the group that got fucked over by someone looking to make a quick buck.

[porno jew]

you didn't do your due diligence. pay the man his money.

[Markul]

Originally Posted by porno jew

you didn't do your due diligence. pay the man his money.

I asked numerous times about traffic and offered him to cancel the deal, he gets the property and I get refunded what I paid. He refuses and claims the deal is valid and it's just too bad that there's no traffic.

Traffic was a MAJOR part of the deal and since it's not there and he knew it, I will have to ask for my money back. WTF am I supposed to do with a bunch of shitty sites that has no traffic. I saw screenshots and he even pasted raw numbers. That's fucking people over, intentionally.

[MasterBlow]

markul,where are you from?

[Markul]

Denmark

/8char

[MasterBlow]

Originally Posted by Markul

Denmark

/8char

I will give you simple advice: don't fuck with american guy's wallet.

Seriously,you got that sites,so pay him.

[Markul]

Originally Posted by MasterBlow

I will give you simple advice: don't fuck with american guy's wallet.

Seriously,you got that sites,so pay him.

I got some pretty worthless sites so no. He can pay me back and get his sites back.

[Markul]

Originally Posted by MasterBlow

I will give you simple advice: don't fuck with american guy's wallet.

Seriously,you got that sites,so pay him.

I saw you bid on the sites, so would you buy the sites now knowing that they generate no real traffic and thus no income.

Mostly of blogs are 5yrs old, traffic is SEO, getting around 20k unique hits per month with average sale ratio about 1:1500. This is because traffic comes from mostly from North America and western Europe, not from China, Russia or Turkey.

March 14th:

Month Unique visitors Number of visits Pages Hits Bandwidth
Jan 2012 76925 81940 87382 1947213 52.79 GB
Feb 2012 72950 77835 84726 1733176 38.23 GB
Mar 2012 88037 94256 101835 2364879 94.05 GB

[3xmedia]

LA_quince, JuicyBiz, MasterBlow, Emma = same people

[3xmedia]

Originally Posted by MasterBlow

I will give you simple advice: don't fuck with american guy's wallet.

Seriously,you got that sites,so pay him.

[sperbonzo]

Originally Posted by MasterBlow

I will give you simple advice: don't fuck with american guy's wallet.

Seriously,you got that sites,so pay him.

If the seller is dealing in good faith, he should have no problem taking the sites back. I don't see an issue there.


.

[Markul]

Originally Posted by sperbonzo

If the seller is dealing in good faith, he should have no problem taking the sites back. I don't see an issue there.


.

Exactly, all I want is what I paid for or my money back. I have no interest in trouble or in screwing people over. Bad for business. But I also do not accept not getting what I paid for.

[LA Crew]

I did my part of deal but he still owes me $350. I've moved all domains and content to his host, spent over a week preparing blogs with his link codes, replacing links, updating rss feeds and now he wants to cancel a deal? That would happen but only in Denmark.

[Markul]

Well my host moved all sites and you replaced links yes, but fact remains, you said there would be a certain amount of traffic and the sites get nowhere near there. Hell if it was half the traffic I'd not bother with all this.

But that you consistently ignore my polite questions about traffic and then, when I finally tell you that I think you screwed me over, threaten to go to your embassy in my country and then lawyers up... well.

As someone said, if you were in good faith you'd take the sites back. Your host can restore whatever files you deleted (if any) and you'll have gained a whole free year of renewal on all domains.

Nice video, you need to learn the difference between Denmark and our former colony we send $100,000,000 each year called Faroe Islands

[TubeSubmitters]

Replacing links in the database takes a minute...

Good luck at the embassy loool first time I heard that threat on gfy.

[signupdamnit]

Originally Posted by Markul

My question is this, would you pay the rest? I never asked for proof of traffic sources since I basically trusted the seller and we're not talking about a ton of money anyhow. But based on principle,

You then took a risk and figured it wasn't that important to minimize your risk. Unless you can prove he outright lied (and even then you should have did your due diligence) I think you should absorb the loss. Anything can happen to organic traffic. If I sell you a site getting 10k a day from Google but three days after you buy it Google penalizes it and you get zero then that is the risk you take because in the reverse situation where it suddenly started getting 100k a day you probably wouldn't let me take it back at cost either. That's the risk you take.

[Markul]

Originally Posted by signupdamnit

You then took a risk and figured it wasn't that important to minimize your risk. Unless you can prove he outright lied (and even then you should have did your due diligence) I think you should absorb the loss. Anything can happen to organic traffic. If I sell you a site getting 10k a day from Google but three days after you buy it Google penalizes it and you get zero then that is the risk you take because in the reverse situation where it suddenly started getting 100k a day you probably wouldn't let me take it back at cost either. That's the risk you take.

You obviously didn't read the rest of the thread. Also had it been one site I'd agree, but for all organic and almost all other traffic to vanish overnight across 20+ sites is just not something I've seen happen... ever.

Now you need to remember that this was a low x.xxx deal and as such, huge investigations are not warranted. I asked for proof and got a screenshot and two explanations. He said he'd sold hundreds of sites here. I searched his name here and in Google like I always does before I do business with people (unless we are talking pennies) and I didn't find anything alarming.

I also think his reply here, the fact that he can't explain himself, his use of multiple nicks to "bid" on his own auction pretty much shows what this guy is made of. In hindsight, I could probably have checked things out better and if he'd been just a little bit more forthcoming and would answer my initial questions about my traffic concerns or offered something, I probably would've just cut my losses and moved on.

But when people start to threaten me (in any way) the second I point out something is fishy and refuse to talk about things, I take the gloves off... I don't think I'm being unresonable. I've offered him his sites back, with a free year of domain renewals and am willing to take that loss + the loss of all the time I spent dealing with him. I count 160 e-mails.

LA_Quince: This will hit your partner in Belgrade too since she took the money on your behalf.