Declined Credit Card Transactions

How do you handle these?

[Samiam]

I am hoping that I can scrape together some good ideas on how to handle orders where the credit card has been declined. Unfortunately around certain holidays the amount of declined cards we get is substantially higher. Basically, I was wondering how most of you handle this type of situation.

[jsinger]

We phone most declined orders and many customers come up with a card that will work. Some send in checks.

[Samiam]

I do try that with some orders, but since some are gifts quite a few of the orders come through "please do not call, email only". Which I do not mind doing, but some never respond to the email. I was thinking of putting a blurb on our page that if we do not hear from you in 7 days your order will be cancelled.

[martyt]

Well what else are you going to do?

If you can't call them and they won't reply to an e-mail, seems kind of difficult to close the sale.

I give customers a week or so, usually with two e-mails asking them to call us to resolve the problem. If I don't hear from them, I cancel the order and stop worrying about it. If they notice it's cancelled, they'll either try again or call us.

The real issue I've had is in determining *why* a credit card authorization was declined - the payment processor I use doesn't necessarily give "useful" response codes that identify the problem -- sometimes it's an invalid expiration date or an invalid CVVS code, but in either case, the transaction is simply declined. Makes it hard to tell the customer what additional information you need, which is why we just have them call us to resolve it - once they've got the card in their hands and are on the phone with us, it's a matter of verifying all the information, usually with one bit of it having been mis-typed on the checkout form.

[Samiam]

Yeah, I guess basically I was trying to determine if most people have a policy stated on their site or if they just deal with it as it comes.

[Hawkgirl]

On our site, if someone is rejected for credit, they get an automatic email telling them:

1. What happened - why their order isn't going through
2. What does 'rejected for credit' mean (we use nice-nice language)
3. What we'll need from them in order to continue

If they don't address the problem within a specific period of time, they get another automatic email with the same info as above (worded slightly stronger) and a warning that we'll cancel the order if they don't respond by X date.