Be advised when buying on these forums...

[Theorize]

I purchased a license from someone on this website/forums back in December 2019.

I paid via PayPal.

They transferred the license to me through Ableton's transfer process, it took 2-3 days, but was successfully completed.

I marked the item as "delivered" via PayPal, because it was...

Now almost 2 months later, Ableton Support emails me to say that the person who purchased this did a chargeback and so they've deactivated my license that I rightfully purchased. They provided NO support. They provided NO assistance or information to assist me with any investigation. They merely apologize and said we hope you understand.

This is just a warning that there are individuals (some) on these forums that are indeed doing fraudulent and scam activity here. There is no support by anyone else. I just wanted to give a heads up that it happened to me...and be careful.

Thank you

[indosilver]

How did they do a chargeback? Through PayPal? Very worrying. Can you show Ableton the PayPal transaction in order to prove you purchased this? Hope you get sorted.

[[jur]]

That sucks.
I imagine the scammer did chargeback Ableton. (s)He bought a license to Ableton, then sold it to Theorize, and then chargeback Ableton. Am I right?
It's really unfortunate but Ableton can't do anything in such situations. As you can imagine this would easily encourage more scammers if Ableton had to. I'm not trying to defend Ableton, just pointing this fact out.

That might sound stupid, but avoid buying to users with no history on the forums, google their username to see if you can find activities on other forum or social media platforms...

[pottering]

AFAIK, Paypal doesn't have "marked as delivered", you just send money as payment (not gift, if you send as gift you lose protection, any seller asking for gift option is probably a scammer).

Kinda weird people say they got scammed by another user in THIS FORUM, claim motivation is to warn other users of the danger, YET DON'T MENTION THE FORUM USERNAME OF THE SUPPOSED SCAMMER, DON'T SEEM TO MAKE ANY EFFORT TO WARN THE MODS THAT SPECIFIC USER IS A SCAMMER so the mods can deal with it (at least ban the user), DON'T EXPLAIN DETAILS OF THE SCAM SO OTHERS USERS (AND THE MODS) CAN RECOGNIZE IT IN THE FUTURE, etc.

Contrast that with cases where people got scammed on KVR.

In those cases the person always warns the mods of the scam and who is the user, make a thread specifically to warn everyone else "user X is not trustworthy", and also warn others of danger of certain details that giveaway the scam, like only accepting weird payment options without buyer protection.

Also, when they are really investigating, they ask other users if anyone else got scammed too and try to share info, comparing data from the scammer(s), starting with loose info that doesn't characterize libel, like "is from country X?", "paypal email starts with Yy?", etc.

Instead here people give almost no details about the scam, and just keep trying to talk only about Ableton's license transfer system (which is user to user), like it is Ableton's fault (thinking they can get a free license out of Ableton I guess).

Also, CHARGEBACKS ARE COMPLETELY LEGAL (not like a bank would do something openly illegal), so Ableton can't give someone's personal data to you for something they did that was TOTALLY LEGAL, and not like you are law enforcement asking through legal means to start with.

The legal problem is 100% only between you and the user that scammed you, Ableton did nothing wrong.

Offtopic but, IMO the mod that posted in another (locked) thread something like "I'm going to talk to Sales to see what they can do for you" made a mistake, first, it should be "I will talk to LEGAL" not "Sales", second, it shouldn't even be a option for Mods or Sales to dole out licenses out of pity, that should be a straight "mods/sales/support can't do anything about that, period". That post should be edited so people googling don't get the impression you can possibly get a free license from Ableton when you get scammed by a 3rd party on eBay.

[Tarekith]

Pottering:

FWIW, Sales has all the data on the transactions and people involved (not to mention knowledge of the legalities involved in each country), so we need to check with them first to get the facts of what happened and between whom. Once I understood the specifics, it was clear that that particular case was not Ableton's fault. Giving a license out of pity was never an option either, but if there is some other legal way we can help an affected user, I'm certainly willing to look into it.

Anytime there's ever been an issue with something on the For Sale forum the mods have been contacted as well. Please be careful assuming you know all the details about how these situations are handled by the Mods, or by Ableton. We prefer to handle these situations privately with the parties involved when we can, and not drag them out in the public. Sadly, not every claim of fraud is true, the reverse also happens. Much better to deal with the individuals versus possibly falsely accusing someone in public of something they didn't do.

None of this applies to the OP's topic, but I wanted to clear up what happened in the instance you mentioned.

[Theorize]

AFAIK, Paypal doesn't have "marked as delivered", you just send money as payment (not gift, if you send as gift you lose protection, any seller asking for gift option is probably a scammer).

Kinda weird people say they got scammed by another user in THIS FORUM, claim motivation is to warn other users of the danger, YET DON'T MENTION THE FORUM USERNAME OF THE SUPPOSED SCAMMER, DON'T SEEM TO MAKE ANY EFFORT TO WARN THE MODS THAT SPECIFIC USER IS A SCAMMER so the mods can deal with it (at least ban the user), DON'T EXPLAIN DETAILS OF THE SCAM SO OTHERS USERS (AND THE MODS) CAN RECOGNIZE IT IN THE FUTURE, etc.

Contrast that with cases where people got scammed on KVR.

In those cases the person always warns the mods of the scam and who is the user, make a thread specifically to warn everyone else "user X is not trustworthy", and also warn others of danger of certain details that giveaway the scam, like only accepting weird payment options without buyer protection.

Also, when they are really investigating, they ask other users if anyone else got scammed too and try to share info, comparing data from the scammer(s), starting with loose info that doesn't characterize libel, like "is from country X?", "paypal email starts with Yy?", etc.

Instead here people give almost no details about the scam, and just keep trying to talk only about Ableton's license transfer system (which is user to user), like it is Ableton's fault (thinking they can get a free license out of Ableton I guess).

Also, CHARGEBACKS ARE COMPLETELY LEGAL (not like a bank would do something openly illegal), so Ableton can't give someone's personal data to you for something they did that was TOTALLY LEGAL, and not like you are law enforcement asking through legal means to start with.

The legal problem is 100% only between you and the user that scammed you, Ableton did nothing wrong.

Offtopic but, IMO the mod that posted in another (locked) thread something like "I'm going to talk to Sales to see what they can do for you" made a mistake, first, it should be "I will talk to LEGAL" not "Sales", second, it shouldn't even be a option for Mods or Sales to dole out licenses out of pity, that should be a straight "mods/sales/support can't do anything about that, period". That post should be edited so people googling don't get the impression you can possibly get a free license from Ableton when you get scammed by a 3rd party on eBay.

Pottering, I responded to the thread that this whole thing was about, then decided to also make my own in general to help others.

viewtopic.php?f=43&t=237040

I'm not a regular here, I don't know how often this happens, but by your response...you're a gem. I'll just leave it at that.

The purpose of my post was just to inform others that hey...be alert, this is happening here.

I was stupid. I was excited to have gotten my Akai piece of hardware for Christmas...and I wanted to jump in and make music and saw the price of the software and was like oh darn...that's a lot...then stumbled across this community and felt it was secure and I was stupid I guess.

I don't need your pity and I certainly didn't ask for a handout.

Again, I'm not a regular here, I don't know how things work, but in my way of thinking...if this stuff happens, you can at least help others.

Not one person has contacted me to help me (Mod or otherwise). And I gave as much detail as I could.

And yes, you do mark it as "Completed" or "Received" or "Delivered" there was some form of confirmation I had to do because the money was held for him until I did that specific thing.

Either way, thanks for your post...and I hope you continue having a wonderful experience on these forums.

Take care!

[[erm]]

This is being handled via PMs now, so I'm going to lock the thread now to prevent the discussion going where it doesn't need to go.

Just a reminder to anyone buying second hand licenses (in case you missed the sticky at the top of the forum), as always it's buyer beware. All license transfers are between two private parties, Ableton cannot verify the source or the integrity of the funds being used on either end of the deal, all we can do is facilitate the license transfer.

If you don't know the person you are buying from, you might want to think twice about giving them your money. I'm not faulting anyone in this thread or others, just making a quick reminder for other people that might see this thread.