Cancelled Echeque Payment

[PepsiBandit]

Hi,

I was selling digital goods to someone and had given him the item. He then sent a payment (in the form of an echeque), he also attached a message saying that he had already recieved the item. A few days later I recieved an email telling me that the echeque has been cancelled. What should I do about it? I cant open a dispute about the transaction. 

I have sent a message to the buyer but he has not been on the forum we agreed to trade on. 

[snowshoe · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately you're out of options:

* Digital goods are not covered for buyer or seller protection under the User Agreement.  (You assume all the risk.)  When you opened your PayPal Account, you agreed to this policy.

* The goods were delivered before the payment was received.  (Not a good practice for even physical items.)

* Did you send an invoice, sell from a web page or simply provide your email address to the buyer.   If you did the last choice, that's also bad.  (Also not a good practice for physical items.)

Scammers are well aware of the policies for digital goods and services and know how to use them to their advantage.

Bottom line, PayPal won't really help.

[PepsiBandit]

I know it's not good practise to provide the stuff before but he had an ok feedback history and I had done larger trades with him in the past. I normally take the payment first. This was only a small amount of money but I mainly wanted to understand how he has avoided any type of repercussions.

I sold to him via a forum with a trading section and feedback rating but I did just give him an email address to send to and confirm the payment information in a set of private messages. 

I was just hoping that echeques would have similar rules. I have confirmation of him recieving the good, I can get his IP from the admins of the site to match it with the payment and in the payment he attached a message saying he had already recieved the goods and would not charge back the payment. 

[snowshoe · Accepted solution]

It's still a moot point as it has to with "digital goods".  

[snowshoe]