Not all peer-to-peer marketplaces on the internet are created equal. Some may have potential criminals lurking to take advantage of them.
SAN ANTONIO – You can find everything on the Internet. That can lead us to online peer-to-peer marketplaces. However, if you buy an important item like a car or a home rental and it doesn’t meet your expectations, you may not be very lucky to get your money back.
It doesn’t look like you are gambling buying on a peer-to-peer online marketplace, but you can bet that the chances of losing your money are quite high.
“I recently saw statistics that spanned around 1.2 billion transactions on these social media sites,” said Michael Skiba, known as Dr. Fraud. “What they found was that a staggering 50% had some level of suspicion about them. About 25%, that’s about a quarter, of new account registrations were almost entirely fake. Consumers should be very, very, very careful when interacting with any of these websites. “
The expensive items you buy are unlikely to hit the jackpot. You may never get it. If you do:
“It could also be a fake or a lower grade than promised,” said Skiba. “It often happens that the picture doesn’t really look the way it was promised, be it in size, color, quality or even brand name.”
You are the loser with few opportunities to recoup the cost. Now there is a new way to get justice and your money back. GetDispute.com will help you take some schemers to small claims court.
“Basically, we’re helping people file a real lawsuit online in 10 minutes or less,” said Mayank Gupta, CEO of GetDispute.com. “We do all the paperwork, the logistics, the bureaucracy. All you have to do is tell us who you are suing, how much you are claiming, and in a few sentences what happened. People don’t know that you don’t need a lawyer to actually get access to the legal system. “
One of the most popular cases filed so far involves people who buy cars from a private party and never got the car or it didn’t work as advertised. He said 70% of cases are settled before going to court.
“What happens is that the other side sees that you are really serious about going to court,” Gupta said. “You see that you have an easy way to get to court and you give up immediately.”
It will cost you about $ 200 to file a case.
“Best of all, if you win your case, you can actually get back most of that money. The other person has to pay all of your expenses, ”said Gupta.
Finding the person who made the sale can be difficult. Gupta said the service is also helping you find the person who has your money.
“We constantly have the problem of finding the person. When you submit the court documents, we will actually do a professional skip trace to find the known address for the person delivering the court documents, ”he said.
However, the person must be in the United States. Gupta also recommends saving all communications with the person who made the sale.
“Take screenshots of all text messages, emails, Facebook messages and all that stuff,” he said. “That is absolutely valid evidence.”
GetDispute.com is also creating an Assisted Purchasing Program to help people complete transactions in the online marketplace to discourage consumers from playing with expensive items.
“In principle, you can instruct us to act as your intermediary for the transaction. What we’re going to do is double-check who the seller is before we send the money, ”Gupta said. “That prevents you from getting into a situation where you gave someone money without knowing who they are and then they just disappear on top of you.”
Make this expensive purchase a much better bet.
If you have a question for Eyewitness Wants To Know, email us at EWTK@Kens5.com or call us at 210-377-8647.
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