Fraudulent shipment claims

people claiming to not receive merchandise

[DXL]

Scenario: I sell widgets online. A customer purchased a widget, I ship the widget with no tracking # or confirmation. A week later, the brother of the customer sends an email asking about my widgets, mentioning that his relative received their widget in the mail and is very happy with it.

Two months pass. I get an email from the customer, saying "I never got my widget, so I'd like you to refund my money"

Its apparent that the customer doesn't realize that his brother emailed me saying that it was received, and is attempting to simply get a free widget for his brother or a check. Now, I can't prove that the package was received, but isn't this fraudulent activity a Federal offense? I'm probably going to just email the customer and include the attachment from his brother so he decides to drop his false claims, but I'd still like to know what the law says about this (and yes, I know most people here aren't legal experts, and I won't assume that your statements are expert, so just provide your best opinion).

[RC_Dave]

What I have found, especially on the internet with jursdiction problems, is that we have to watch out for ourselves.
Send trackable packages through USPS Priority or UPS.
Do several verification checks on credit cards and expect a percentage of loss due to fraud.
Even when you have enough evidence to press charges, most law enforcement such as the FBI within the USA or the local police just don't have the resources to follow up.
The positive side of taking care of fraud through the private sector is that is does create jobs and avoids turning the internet into an over policed state.
Overall we found the fraud rate can be controlled in house with software and experience.
That's not to say that a call to local police in some cases, is a good idea to let them know what's going on in their area.

[Essex_boy]

Yeah I had this problem big time over Xmas, cost my $1000's.

Price of doing business I guess.

[Faith]

We send out a “lost item declaration form” (of our own design) that requires the customer to sign to claim a replacement item. Under the signature line it says, “Giving a false declaration may result in prosecution” (wording taken from the Post Offices own lost item forms). When the customer returns that form signed, we will re-ship their product (this time on a signed for service) and make a claim for the original from the Post Office. If they are a repeated offender (seeming to have a lot of undelivered parcels), the Post Office have higher powers than us to investigate them further. It's worked well so far. Shame the Post Office are so slow to respond to our claims.

On the whole people are honest. Occasionally you get the hunch someone is telling a lie, but you have to put the occasional offender down as a cost of doing business.

We ship orders of value above £X on a signed for service as the small additional charge gives everyone that bit extra security.