Forum Moderators: buckworks
1. shipping to a different address than the billing address, especially if not in the same city;
2. request the security code on the back of the credit card and make it part of your credit card verification; for AMEX you can request and verify the 4 digit code from the front of the card;
3. Unusually large orders ... I always call their telephone number and see if it's real ... you can also backtrack a number now to see who has it ... does it match the card name?
4. use address verification with your merchant provider;
5. free email addresses ... I always call on the phone and speak with the person who ordered, then call the issuing bank and verify
6. Demands for rush, immediate, or urgent shipping, authorization to ship overnight at exorbitant cost compared to product value is a flag
These are just off the top of my head ... if I come up with anymore, I will add to the post.
Debs
The above is a red flag, but not a major one for us. Same with free email addresses.
Be wary of very large orders...yes! Especially when people order large quantities of very liquid items. Say, twenty disc drives. That's probably riskier than one really expensive item, such as a computer
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Hierarchy of Risk:
1) Orders from Nigeria
2) Orders from Indonesia
3) People with Nigerian or Indonesian names requesting merchandise to be shipped to a reliable country
4) Orders from convicted thieves
Frankly, I'm amazed how little fraud we have. But we don't ship outside the U.S. However nothing stops the emails from Indonesia and Nigeria asking for air express delivery with a credit card :)
Have other people experienced the same?
If you're selling palm pilots and you get an order for 100 but the ship to address is an individual that would raise my suspicions whereas if the ship to was a company I wouldn't worry. But if we were talking about books - I wouldn't feel the need to be so diligent - though 100 books to a home address is a bit odd and would probably get my attention.
I'm thinking outloud as I write here - In part I think that there's simply no substitute for frequent hands on reviews - not that you're suggesting there is. What raises red flags with me are the things that are out of the ordinary. Orders that are somehow unique or odd. A single palm pilot to Nigeria might give me pause but certainly nothing like 100 Palm Pilots to Nigeria.
I love orders from people with rare oddball names such as
Elvis Z. Drombarski. At least with bad checks, most of our problems have always been with very common names. Similarly, I prefer orders from small towns where crime rates are lower and people have more reason to shop on the web for hard to find products.
No question that an order from an apartment, college dorm or trailer court is more likely to be bad. With checks, an apartment address is many times more likely to be bad.
We look up questionable customers in Google. Perhaps half our customers can be found there. You can't believe how many people turn up in running races, school reunions, church groups and the like. Scammers probably don't go to high school reunions!
BTW, Perhaps 1% of our customers have their own websites. Fun to see their wedding pictures, kids etc.
For telephoned orders, be wary of the security code. I had a customer who had a card with the security code 671 (a chance of 1 in 1000), when he phoned back I stated that the card had failed - he gave another number - security code 671 (chance of having two of these 1 in 1,000,000). This happened a third time - he would not give up - he was so bad that I had to confront him properly when he phoned. Looking back, maybe it was not too good an idea, but when the security code was the same for three cards - he stood a better chance of winning the national lottery! I said something along the lines of: "We don't process stolen cards and these are all stolen cards or card numbers, aren't they?". He started his reply with a large pause and followed by the word 'ermmm...'
A lot of uppercase orders are fraud, but not all. Some lowercase orders are fraud too. Many can't be bothered to use the shift key (apparently) and just want to get out of there to place an order elsewhere. Time is money you know...
Other things you can track: IP address - location lookup can indicate Indonesia/Nigeria with delivery addresses elsewhere.
Yahoo email addresses are used for more than half of the fraud we get - the rest made up of other free email addresses (justice dot com is common).
Take care for those who want orders fast. I had one yesterday and everything seemed normal, but he wanted delivery Saturday (Monday was too late). It was after 3pm! He asked if I could send it Special Delivery (who don't guarantee weekends), then about couriers (who had already gone with parcels). "I don't mind spending extra". He never ordered - so he may have been genuine - but speed of order can be a dead giveaway - they want it fast and will pay extra for a quick delivery. Or should I say, they want it fast and won't be paying for a fast delivery - you will be.
There are some delivery companies in the UK (I don't know who) that will only deliver to people with ID. The customer must show forms of ID and you can specify certain items - they can check credit cards are in the possession of the person before handing the goods over. Mobile phone companies use these for delivering contract phones. You could use this if suspicious on very large orders.
But I once pasted a photo of a monkey over my photo and the guy didnt notice! Strange but true.
