Forum Moderators: buckworks
While my tourists are extremely careful when giving their card details these agents who usually have yahoo email accounts without any company address, seems to be happier giving away their card details.
Do you guys have experience with them? Is it OK to get orders from them? Will they charge back then accusing me for abusing their card details? They say they can send authorization letter. So are they legitimate? Do yuo guys do business this way that the payer sends card details by email?
These agents almost always ask tickets of Nigerian, Ethopian aairlines among KLM,Air France' tickets? Is there something to be suspicious?
Thanks for your feedback in advance.
I hate to say it, never, never deal with Nigeria. Its always fraud.
I suspect they plan on buying tickets, have you courier them. A week later you find out the credit card is stolen and you are out the money.
For the .01% possibility, ask them to fax you a copy of their passport and front/back of the credit card. If they do that (very unlikely that they will), verify the names/signatures match. Then I would still do a phone authoirzation with your credit card processor.
We are also in the travel industry, but do mostly hotel reservations. We have had dozens of reservation requests from Nigerians over the years, but have NEVER had a confirmed reservation from one. (Well, we did have one, but it was cancelled a week later. Still waiting to see if there will be a chargeback for the cancellation fee.)
I'm not trying to sound racist, but the sad reality is that almost every "purchase" from Nigerian is an attempted scam.
You might want to find a scambaiting forum and ask on there.
Go with your gut - and disregard them. Chances are they are asking you a way to pay you in hopes that you will see dollar signs
-Corey
One person told me he can send me credit card authorization letter. I'm not sure if this is going to protect me. Bank told me to be careful so I haven't yet done anything to accept these payments. Typical payment size can be over 10,000 USD for 8 tickets etc.
I wondered if I was losing big sale.
One thing is they don't try to negotiate or lower the price I quoted which happens furiously most of the time and easily say they want it. Also if I say that on my website there's secure online payment option verified by Visa, they don't use it and say they will send card details by email and email is secure. That person told me right after accepting card details from him I should delete that email. That's enough for him, he wrote. Do you have any case like this?
In this case how do you accept payments by phone or email or without having the card physically? Some of competitors accept phone orders. How is it done? Any resource on it on the internet?
That "car rental company" was probably a colleague of this scammer collecting the money.
If the CC details were obtained by hacking, then it will most likely to have come from the US.
But in any case, there are too many doubts already. If I were you, I would insist on being paid by T/T or escrow.
You mentioned he doesn't try to negotiate the prices. Another red flag. Why would he negotiate the prices if its not his card? Don't feel bad about refusing those type of transactions. You are doing the right thing. Just like people have already said Nigeria is notorious for fraud. Same with Ghana, Zaire and most African countries.
It will probably be pretty obvious fraud too, if you take the time to check the credit card number with the issuing bank and see if the name, shipping address and telephone number they are providing matches what the bank has on file.
You can get bank phone numbers from Visa International and Mastercard.
If everything including the phone number does match, call the number and verify that this person is placing the order.
If you ship only to the address the bank has on file, verify all details, and call the person using the phone number the bank has on file, then ship using FedEx or something trackable that must be signed for (make sure you specify to the shipper that the addressee only is required to sign), you are probably fine -- it will be very difficult for the bank to charge you back.
If you ship to a different address than the billing address registered with the bank for that card, or if you don't get the delivery signed by the person whose name is on the card, you will lose.
Even so, these orders are almost cergainly not genuine and are probably not even worth the time and trouble of verification.
If you can't verify with the bank because they refuse to verify, you could accept an order if provided with copies of the credit card and a credit card bill showing the person's name and address (which is the only address you should ship to). But this can be forged.
