At the beginning of last week I stumbled across some Facebook Apps for sale on SitePoint.com.  A collection of 22 TV show club apps, 2 action apps, and 1 win cash prize for earning the most points.  Anyway, I handed over payment to the seller on the 20th and have only heard from them once since then.  Luckily I used PayPal to make the payment, but I am still not real happy about this.  The last time I had to deal with PayPal, it took, I think from memory, something like 2 months to get the money back.  And as far as I can tell if the seller empties his bank account that is linked to PayPal, then PayPal has nothing to retrieve.  I assume in this situation I get the ’sorry cant help ya’ response, and they blacklist the seller.  Doesn’t help me any though.

The annoying part is, I put down this biggish investment, in the hope to make some good revenue off the Apps, after they paid for themselves, which should of been after about 5-6 months, judging by previous performances.  I even started formulating ideas on how to make them more interesting and popular, and even started actively participating on 1 of them.  Now, not only do I have to try and find some spare cash in the short term to fill the hole left in my pocket, but depending on PayPal’s success I may be out of pocket in the long term also.  Bugger, bugger, bugger.

I guess it is a waiting game now…

Tags: apps, Facebook, fraud, investment, PayPal