Forum Moderators: buckworks
We rarely get orders for more than 1 widget unless its from a merchant because its some thing that end users usually never need 2.
Shipping Address is same as billing address on world pay...and the country is Nigeria. (First time for us)
World pay says "Warning" against both.
To ship or not to ship .. is the question...what are the things I need to look for / do.
The risk is enormous and most likely you will end up being cheated big time...
If they pay in advance it`s another ballgame.
Even if they pay in advance be VERY careful, any cheque/check you recieve needs to be checked thoroughly.
P.S. Nigeria has one of the highest fruad/chargeback rates.
Thanks
However if you are shipping anywhere overseas, I would personally ask for money up front.
That is the same whether it be Nigeria or France.
But I do know of times when an order from Nigeria is fully legitimate. Another site selling widgets received an order from Nigeria. They set up a new bank account, waited for the check to arrive, checked the shipping address... everything turned out fine. However, it was going to a Nigerian business, which made it easier to do background checks.
Personally I would forget about it, especially if it involves substancial sums of money. But ultimately it is your decision. Later.
of course we should - political correctness doesn't pay the bills. Jaski is talking about a business situation. Any risk is calculated on odds - the odds of a ligitimate Nigerian business transaction is exceptionally low.
> That is the same whether it be Nigeria or France.
i don't think so, chief.
To discriminate a whole country because you had a bad experience it is a bit too much. However, Nigeria is a special case. It is the country were most of the dollar forgeries come from. Compering France with Nigeria is going too far.
I am a strong believer in the client is king, no matter where he or she is from.
Imagine if you were in Nigeria, studying and ambitious and you read this thread. People should be given a chance, and I am sure your client if he is honest will aprreciate that.
There must be ways to work it out and cash in advance seems fairly easy to do, if you get the money with a solid contract that states no money back guarantee or whatever then there should not be a problem.
Comparing France with Nigeria is going too far
Indeed. How much abuse can the Nigerian people take? ;)
> I am a strong believer in the client is king, no matter where he or she is from.
Me too, and the best businesses in the world will say the same. That is why businesses will go out of their way to give credit to clients without insisting on cash up front - to keep the client happy and give them what they want. You are suggesting that all clients regardless of nationality should be treated the same - i.e. cash up front only. Show me a business that treats all clients the same and I'll show you a year 1 failure. It simply doesn't work like that. Some clients present a higher risk than others.
> Imagine if you were in Nigeria, studying and ambitious and you read this thread.
I wouldn't be too happy, but that is not my fault - it is the fault of Nigerians who are fraudulent. Nothing I can do about that - and I certainly wouldn't want to encourage it.
Your trusting approach might please an honest hard working Nigerian student but it will also breed further fraud - fraudsters prey on the gullible.
I have never heard the term 'white brush' before - it sounds like political correctness gone too far. I respect anyones opinion - i really do - but we are talking about a business situation. If businesses put political correctness before proper risk evaluation, they wouldn't get very far.
You might think I am being harsh - but I think most people would agree that I am being realistic.
... and of the Nigerian government that does not seem to be able or willing to prevent those fraudulent acts as would be fit for a rights based society.
Andreas
I will just say that like I mentioned in a previous post the merchant should find a solution there are always solutions. Cash in advance seems to be the best but this does not need to be applied to every country just those where your company feels that there is the most risk.
Let's not forget that every country has many scam artists it is just that the Nigerian's thanks to the internet and mass emailing seem to be the most well known.
We are not blanketing a whole country for no reason - there are others - Uganda for example.
The reason I said Answer = No is simple - it is an order from a foreign country with high credit card fraud ordering an UNUSUAL order. Also, why did he place two orders?
WorldPay have issued a warning for the transaction (which it always does if the security code comparison does not match, plus other special circumstances - such as unusually high activity compared to the cardholders normal usage etc...).
I would also bet money that if it is fraud it has been used with a yahoo.com email address, is that right jaski?
Visit_Thailand, you would also be very wary if you had lost £4000 (about $6000) to Nigeria in fraud in less than two weeks, and the orders keep piling in.
The banks accept these, orders are cancelled, money is returned, and a few weeks later the banks charge back the money as it turns out they were high enough quality frauds to fool the banks.
Widget seller is out $1000's.
Poor students and well to do businessmen in Nigeria will be treated like con artists until they find a way to control it in their country and prove to the rest of the world that they are as trustworthy as they would like to be.
What I was wondering is .. if there is any way to verify the genuineness .. sorry I am new to this game .. could be missing things which more experienced people out here might take as granted.
He has given email id .. which is a yahoo.com
He has also given a phone number (any use? )
From what I have heard about Nigeria before .. and also the impression I get from this thread is that "I should not ship it for now .. and not until I find a strong proof of genuineness"... but how can I go about that .. are there any basic things which a merchant can do to gauge the genuineness .. for example can world pay do any kind of check for me?
Thanks.
"are there any basic things which a merchant can do to gauge the genuineness"
EXPERIENCE.
I have experience, I would not ship the order. It is a classic fraud attempt:
1) High fraud country
2) Unusual order
3) Free email address
4) No AVS matches
You have all the symptoms (except for 4, possibly - but I bet it does not match/not checked).
If you want another experienced opinion, find Crazy_Fool and stickymail him. I know he/she does not always agree with me, but I am sure he will this time.
Fraud is a waste of time. It wastes your time filtering out the fraud, it wastes more time if you ship the goods.
PS. Who loses the money? Can you AFFORD to lose that money, plus admin charges? If you can't, decline the order.
If you are new to e-commerce, you should know that you will get a steady stream of fraudulent orders. Some countries are notorious, like Nigeria and Indonesia, but you can get US-based fraud orders too. It can be difficult to turn away what seems to be good business, but you must always keep a healthy dose of suspicion present as you examine orders. In your home country, you may have a bit more flexibility to verify addresses, phone numbers, etc., but international orders are tougher - you have no recourse to get your product or your money back.
The reason I don't like working with companies like PAYSYSTEMS (yikes!) .. or even Worldpay, is because you don't have access to the CC info. They do the fraud checking on your behalf, which is not very thourough. As far as I know, Worldpay doesn't even have AVS working for the US yet, but they do for the UK woo hoo! :(
You can't call up the bank yourself. Do the address verification yourself, ask if there is an alternate shipping address listed yourself, etc. Being reliant on someone else to do it for you, when they dont' check 100% of all the orders, is just unacceptable if you ask me.
Especially if you have expensive widgets.
I don't even give out the FedEx tracking #'s anymore unless it's running late. I had one guy try to change the shipping address to a fraudulant alternate address for an expensive widget. The order seemed 100% legit, because I was shipping to the authorized billing address, then I found out later he was trying to redirect it to some abandoned warehouse.
Bottom line is, only ship to the billing address, or alternate shipping address listed with the actual credit card company. If you can't get a hold of them, or confirm the information with the bank, cancel the order.
Waitaminute.. You mean there are CC processing companies that give merchants full access to customer credit card info?
On a serious note, we haven't been the victims of fraud (yet!), we do get "no show-ups" on bookings from overseas which is almost the same thing when genuine orders have been turned down.
I think the old gut-reaction is best and we are also suspicious of yahoo and hotmail email addresses.
If a business recieves a disproportionally large amount of fraudulent orders from a specific location, then yes they should pay more attention to orders from that country, and yes they should run background checks.
But no one should discriminate against an entire nation - not for any reason.
Im sure if most of the people on this board recieved order rejections based on the same reasons, they would be not too happy about it (and no doubt would voice their objections here).
At the end of the day, the effort can be made to accommodate all potential customers or not.
Is it PC?
Ethical?
Business wise?
Professional?
Probably not all of the above! ;)
But we each have to make our own decisions.
Scott
Ya, It's called get your own security certificate, make a secure website and collect the data yourself. ;) Then enter it into their virtual terminal, or point of sale device manually for authorization/approval.
My thank you page basically says "thank you, your order is pending aproval."
Unless you have hundreds of orders per day and this is not possible. I am happy to put through all my orders manually because of all the fraud checking I can do.
Best way to go, in my opinion.
Don't ship there or to Indonesia period!
Jaski, in this case you yourself noted in your first post that the order seems strange, and WorldPay issued a warning on the order. I would be inclined to be cautious of the order for no other reason than it rings alarm bells with you, regardless of its country of origin. I have clients who have suffered from fraudulent orders in the UK, because they have been less careful than they should have been about maintaining a proper control on security discipline.
If you have legitimate concerns about the validity of the order, I would be inclined to make enquiries to reassure myself of the provenance of the order. Even in countries with a bad reputation for fraud, there are many honest companies who also suffer from the activities of the fraudsters, as they no doubt have trouble sourcing from overseas. If you have been contacted by one, I'm sure they would go to great lengths to reassure you as to their status
AVS results:
security code comparison - 0 (not supported)
postcode comparison - 1 (not checked)
address comparison - 1 (not checked)
card issue country/contact country comparison - 4 (not matched)
The only thing that seems positive to me about this order is that shipping and billing addresses given by him are same .. I am not sure if that has much significance though.
