Unsuccessful transactions

Do you contact the person and get him try again?

[Raymond]

These unsuccessful transactions are the ones that actually entered their credit card info, but somehow were declined by the bank.

I usually get a few unsuccessful transactions daily and I rarely do anything about it. Do you usually contact the person after these transactions and try to get him to try again? How do you usually phrase your email and not sound like a greedy merchant trying to get his business?

[Dogza]

I wouldn't email him, I would call him. We check the customer out quickly first, just to make sure the order isn't fraud. Then we call them. Its not being greedy, in fact it shows really good customer service. This person obviously wanted something from your website, why would you not call them?

[topguy29]

We usually just send a quick email.

Dear john

Recently we noticed that you had a problem purchasing XX from our website. We were wondering if we would help complete the order? Feel free to give us a call toll free at 800-555-1212 and ask for Jeff. I'll be more than happy to help you with the order

We tried phoning, but it seemed that our customer based did not appreciate it. Emailing them had a much better ROI

[sja65]

We noticed that for over half of our declined cards, the error was with the expiration date (we check the checksum and card length of the cardnumber so those were ususally ok). The problem turned out to be scroll wheels on mice with the drop down boxes for the credit card expiration. We switched to checkboxes for expiration and cut the number of declined cards dramatically.

Also, a lot of declined cards will work a short time later. If the customer had not chosen an express shipping option, we wait 48 hours and try the card again. A good percentage go through at that point.

After that, we send email if they gave us an email address or call if they gave us a phone number. We also give them a notice on the order tracking page to give us a call.

[LizaJane]

We have occasional declines we can trace to customer input error on card #, expiration date or incorrect cvv. We contact the customer usually via email, sometimes via phone. We are in a niche market with thankfully very little fraud. However, if it is a large or unusual order, we do a bit of research before contacting the customer. Billing - shipping same? Is the area code given correct for the billing location? If not, is the same type cased used? IP address vs email addy, is the email addy a free account? Just a few red flags that would keep us from pursuing the order.

[sniffer]

Send a default email asking if there were any problems and if so, reply to email or call us. If the email is received close to the time of cart abandonment, some turn back around and complete the transaction. Enough to make it worthwhile!

[G_Smitty]

Most of the declined transactions on my site are for address mismatch. I normally email the customer and let them know to try again or to try using paypal. Most of them retry with the correct address.