Fraud flag? Shipping outside USA

Customer request certain shipment carrier

[drhfinegifts]

Occasionally I get an order where the order is being shipped abroad (we ship worldwide, with exceptions).

We ship by best way, either UPS, DHL or US Postal System. We don't allow the customer to choose which method, as we ship by the most economical and timely method depending upon the size of the order and destination address.

Sometimes a customer placing an order to be shipped outside the US will request a certain delivery method.

For example, I had a fairly large order placed yesterday to be shipped to France. I haven't had any problems yet with chargebacks, etc. for any of the orders shipped to France in the last 2 years.

However, this customer is requesting shipment by DHL. It is raising a red flag to me because I am wondering if they will be able to redirect the shipment to a different address than indicated on the order if I ship via DHL.

Is this a common method for fraudsters? To use a valid credit card billing address and the same address for shipment, and then redirect it once they are notified of the tracking number?

It seems that most will request either shipment by DHL (which we don't use very often) or by US Postal System. They never request shipment by UPS.

Anyone else experience this?

[lgn1]

We had requests to change from courier to post office, as some customers are not at home, and the trip to the courier depot is much farther than the local post office.

Can see no reason for a customer to pick one courier over the other other than its a time sensitive shipment, and once courier is quicker than the other, but this is rare.

[Rugles]

Yes, it is very common for a fraudster to request DHL. You may be correct about the re-direct with DHL, not sure but maybe somebody here can clarify DHL's re-directing policy.

We almost never ship DHL and insist UPS on our account.

I know that there is a fraud problem with sending shipments to Singapore and it gets re-directed to Indonesia.

[Corey Bryant]

Large orders should always be a flag for you to scrub the transaction more. Do you have any fraud prevention things implemented like LinkShield, VBV/MSC, GeoIp, etc to help you determine if you should ship the order?

-Corey