Article Marked Sold, Then Not Sold

[Patinator]

Good day,

Last night, one of my articles (What You Should Know About SEO in 2012) was marked as waiting, then marked sold for full rights, though I received no "article sold" notification. The sale was reflected on my account status page, under amount due. When I woke up, the article was available for sale again, and the money was removed from my amount due line. Naturally, my fear is that there's an exploit allowing buyers to "buy" an article and download it without actually purchasing it.

What happened? Has this happened before and should I be concerned? Is there a possibility that my article was downloaded without being paid for?

[mnicol22]

Hi,

I can't think of the reason why that would happen. CC does have a returns policy, but it sounds odd that you didn't get a notification about the sale in the first place. The best thing you can do is contact Support and explain what happened. They'll be able to figure things out.

Good luck!

[Word Gypsy]

Hi,
Not sure what happened here, but I believe this scenario does occur when a stolen credit card is used. Contacting support will get you the answer though. Wishing you future success!
Happy writing,
WG

[Patinator]

Thanks all. Support has replied, clarifying the issue.

"Hello,

This article was purchased by a customer, who then decided to return it after seeing the full article. Customers are able to do this within 5 business days, and do agree they will not use the work in any way. I apologize if you didn't receive an email notice of this refund.

Take care,

Support"

I didn't know customers could do that. It explains what happened though. It makes me slightly uncomfortable, but I checked online and it hasn't been posted anywhere, so I guess it's all good.

[Lysis]

I post the whole article text, so the "now that they see the whole article" thing doesn't really matter. They have a few days to return regardless. It happened to me a couple weeks ago. It was weird, because I did not receive a "Sold" email either for the article.

You should check to make sure that the article isn't spun somewhere. I wrote support to point out that mine was online on 2 sites, but never heard back.