Paid $2,500 Never Received Service

[OurLLife]

We entered into a contract with a web developer in January, who by contract was suppose to have the site completed and functional by mid-March.   He asked that we make payment through PayPal.  We made two payments of $700 in January, a payment of $700 in February, and then held off because in March he was AWOL for a few weeks. Come to find out, he had a personal tragedy, and was kept away.  We gave him another chance by not holding him to the mid-March completion date, and he kept asking about more payments.  By the end of April, he promised he was nearly done with the site (having given us one example of it in February), and so we sent a payment of $400 over on May 6th.  The whole cost of the contract was $3,500.00.

In any event, I felt safe providing payment through PayPal.

However, it has been almost a month since we last heard from the web guy, and we have been making several attempts via different ways (Email, Skype, and the Personal Message system through a website he had given technical support through).  It seems he hasn't been active on that site at all either.  I did come to trust this person, and so that is why I held off filing a complaint with PayPal, but now I have no choice in the matter.

I may indeed need to take legal action beyond what PayPal can do for us, because the $2,100.00 was over the time frame allowed to dispute the transaction - obviously, because at the time we made those first three payments, he was in touch regularly via Email saying he was "working on it."

This person lives in Ireland.  I live in the U.S.   I wonder now how I take legal action internationally, or what my other choices may be.

Thank you in advance for any guidance that can be given.

[readuseragreeme]

Since it is an intangible item you have no protection through Paypal.

If you payed with a credit card, contact them about filing a chargeback is your only hope

[OurLLife]

That is unfortunate that PayPal offers no protection.  I suppose the lawyer/legal route I shall go then.

[BigKahuna97]

You need to understand that PP is not singleing you out and washing their hands of the situation.  The two problems here are the fact it was a service and it is hard to prove that the engineer never e-mailed something and it's hard to prove you never received the service.  The second problem is the timeline itself.  With PP you have 45 days to file a dispute which could have been outside the original contract.  The other side is if you paid by a card you could find out how hard it would be to file a chargeback through them.  Even at that point it is a guess if all charges are within the allowed dispute period as it's over 5 months from the date on one of them already.  

My best advice for you is to research and find an escrow service which tailors to the website engineer industry and capable of deciding disputes before any money is released.  You may pay a little more for such a service but paying a $250 or less insurance policy (escrow service) on a transaction over 3K is an ok risk in my book.

You are right with the last post, this would turn into a civil matter and need to be filed in the home county of the defendant.  I would say your cheapest route would be a local lawyer who can work with affit-davits to assist the case.

Sorry to hear about your problem and do hope you are able to get it sorted.

BK