Forum Moderators: buckworks
Sometimes fraud with different ship/bill addresses are unavoidable gamble, and we bite the lost in this case.
However what I'm really frustrated about, is those that uses the same Billing/Shipping address, with every authorization check positive, that ended up disputing an order without sending us back the stuff!
It is obvious that those customers like, and intent to keep the stuff. We use registered shipping, and UPS as our carrier. They both require customers signature. We bring the proof of delivery to our credit card processers, and 9 out of 10 cases we lose the case!(partly because we give up due to frustrations).
I've been in the industry long enough, that I'm slowly losing it whenever this happens to me, and had bad thoughts of hiring collectors to go and beat the crap out of those thieves, for a less-than-$50 order...
This is blatant robbery! You know what. I'll go and sign up for a credit card right away, and go order thousands of dollars worth of stuff online, and dispute 50% of them! Because I can just say that "oh my son used my credit card! I didn't know about it. The stuff? I don't know I didn't buy it."
I'm frustrated! I've read through charge back cases, and it seems that there's nothing I can do in this matter..
Urban
Getting lawyers to do this for us are expensive too. I couldn't justify spending 5X to collect back $200...so I'm still stuck in a loop.
We average a 1 in 4 fraud attemp (selling electronics) so maxmind saved us buckets in processing fees. Wat used to be a .25cent pre-auth is now a half cent check before it even hits the processor.
We then filter out/block the banned ips/proxies and that has worked great. Our fraud is now 0% and no chargebacks.
We've had very few problems like yours online. But B/M bad checks used to drive me crazy. The toll could be more psychological than financial on me so I understand your feelings.
I certainly worry that a bad recession in the USA could increase domestic online fraud.
Forget the police, unless you suffer a huge loss on a single order.
"how or what dispute are they using to do a charge back?"
Kind of at lose here as if there is a signed reciept of the product or ship and it is the credit card holder I can't see why your not filling a reversal here. I understand we are behind the 8 ball here but you can win if your paper work is correct and having a signed copy of goods delivered is a signed copy and you can win.
When the buyer's emails (with headers) are sent off to their credit card company... nothing. Silent from both ends: buyer & credit company.
One would almost think the credit card companies are in on this game.
One would almost think the credit card companies are in on this game.
they are. you know the bank profits from the fees they incur once a chargeback has been issued --- and guess what --- you pay those fees
9 times out of 10, the seller is the one with the cleaner record. I don't understand why automatically, we are the bad guy - in ANY situation.. you are guilty until proven innocent.
What have the buyers done to gain so much trust, I wonder?
But is that the proper way to do it? How would I be able to proof to the police in this matter, and would they entertain such a request, from overseas country, when those same police can be out stopping spousal abuse?
I always thought reporting fraud to the police was not worth the effort but I changed my mind since it is pretty simple - at least in my country (Germany) once you figure out how to do it.
I do it like this: I send one email to the customer telling him that if he does not reverse his chargeback within 10 days or contact me in this time to resolve the matter I will regard this as fraud and report him to the police.
Since usually the cases are always the same - order is shipped, received, chargeback is issued i have a template where I simply fill in the name and address of the person, the date, order number and so on. Then I look up the address of the appropriate police station or state attorney and send them a letter were I tell them what happened and I include all the evidence. (Copy of bills, tracking information, signature of customer, chargeback). But this is only to quicken the pace, I could also simply go to the local police station, they would forward it.
When it is an international order I do it as follows: If it is easy to do I send the case directly to responsible police in the country. If it's not I simply report it to my local police and they handle the international cases.
Also nowadays many police stations have online forms for reporting crimes. And thats what it is: Fraud is a crime.
The police has to follow this cases they are bound by law to follow every crime that is reported. And do not worry if you are taking resources that is not the case. On the contrary I have found that the police is sometimes grateful if you report those people since often you are not the only one who has been victim of a certain person and it helps them in court if they have as many cases as possible. Just make sure that you do it as easy as possible for the authorites and give them us much evidence as possible.
Of course it is not of much use if the fraudster knows how to cover his tracks and if he is a professional.
But it works with people who think they simply can issue a chargeback and keep the goods because they think you won't follow this anyway since you are abroad or who think they can keep the goods only because they arrived a day too late or who were not satisfied and do not bother to contact you.
The reason why this sort of crime florishes is simple: No one bothers to report it. And thats wrong. So go down to your local police station and ask them how to proceed or contact the police in the town the criminal lives. They will help you and tell you how to proceed.
And even if your case is thrown out later because of negligibility - this happens only if its the first offense. It remains in the files and if your "customer" tries to screw someone else he won't get away so cheap.
@jsinger Exactly. It's more of a psychological matter to me. I can prevent some petty theft from my store, when I can catch them physically, but I can't crawl out their of monitor and choke their lifeforce out of them as per "The
Ring".
I sell apparels online, custom-tailored kinds. So our shopping audiences are mature 30+ crowds.
@jake66 "I've had 2 buyers recently email me to say they received their goods.. only to file a chargeback less than 24 hours for "non-receipt" "
Jake in this case how did you handle the problem?
@wayzel Thank you for your support. We are currently using VBV, but we understand that a lot of our customers do not wish to go through with VBV, and often we process those that didn't accept their terms, and the order came out okay. However in this case, AVS, CC info and everything else matched. Shipping company have proof of delivery, but the customer just chargeback nevertheless afterwards.
@jecasc I will give your method a try. As I haven't done this before, and haven't ever dialled 911 in my life..well... this may take me a while, so when it happens, I will bump back this thread and post the result.
I have an additional question for all of you, as this method of online fraud has always been a mystery to me. Let's assume that I'm a US citizen, using my legit credit card to make purchase of a $4,999 electronic item or diamond ring, out of a regular mom-and-pop website(non-corporate) at an internet cafe. I choose a shipping method that requires my signature. When it arrives I signed off with UPS as "Bart Simpson", and 2 days later go and dispute the order. If the company contact me, I deny of never making that order.
How in the world will the company or the law be able to proof that I frauded them even though billing/shipping is to the same area?
Urban
If you couldn't due to ND, I totally understand as well.
Urban
perhaps you disclose us one incident in full detail so we should be able to find the problems
start analyzing for a pattern perhaps they are all in the same collage
JSINGER
you should use a check guaranty service like Telacheck
they do the collections while you get paid
its like you file for an insurance claim
JSINGER
you should use a check guaranty service like Telacheck
We looked into telechek several times years ago but it cost more than our losses which were around 1% at the worst. (but time consuming)
About 10 years ago, local banks stated running credit checks on people who wanted to open checking accounts. Till then, crooks could open account after account at different banks, even with their real names. Banks didn't catch it and they didn't seem to care.
After that, our bad checks plummeted. Today we get almost none.
