What do I do if a buyer is dragging his feet on a project

[gteh]

Got a question and hoping someone can answer this for me.

I am new on SL and as everyone knows, it's tough to get started when you have no ratings. I've been lucky enough to grab a few jobs on here and completed them successfully and received 10 star ratings and bonuses.

After my first week, I took a job from someone (a small one for $20) that required me to receive a zip file with a number of websites, upload them to this persons web server, and modify some text. There are two phases for this project. Each phase consisted of a zip with different websites.

My bid was accepted, and for some reason, the buyer paid me $20 immediately through SL ( I did not ask him to), before giving me any work. He then sent me an email telling me that he would send me the ZIP files in a few days and once the job was complete, he'd pay additional money.

A few days passed and I received nothing. I emailed him to follow up and asked where the stuff was. He replied that he already sent it and posted it on the PMB, which he did not. I asked him to resend it.... he only sent me the text changes that needed to be made, but did not send the website files. A few days after that, he sent me the website files for Phase 2 only, but did not send the text changes.

he keeps emailing me asking where the completed work is and I have repeatedly told him that he has not sent everything necessary to complete the job. A simple solution would be to just send me everything in a single email and I would have the job completed in 2 hours.

So basically I had the required text changes for the first group of websites, but no website files to apply them to or upload, and I had website files for the 2nd group of websites, but no text changes.

This has been dragging on now for almost 2 weeks. I am more than ready and able to complete this project but can't without the files. I do not want this to result in a negative rating. I will even return the $20 he sent me.. I don't care about the money, the $20 means nothing, I care about my ratings on SL which will affect my ability to get future projects.

Should I just open a dispute case on SL or what?

thanks