AVS Verification Tip

[FalseDawn]

I didn't realize until recently how this works, but for anyone accepting credit cards on their site, and also accepting/rejecting transactions based on various address field match/mismatches, it's good to know.

For a start, if a transaction is declined by your gateway for AVS mismatch, did you know that the amount is "locked" against the account and it will still appear as a charge on the customer's credit card statement? (I've had a couple of customers call me about this). Of course, it will be "dropped" by the CC company after a period of time (10 days?), but to nullify it, you need to call the number on the back of their card, with the customer's name and CC number - which involves calling the customer, too, if you don't have their CC number on file (and you certainly shouldn't!)

If a customer gets a transaction rejected, they will invariably ignore the fact that you presented them with a nice "transaction declined" message and try again - sometimes 2 or 3 times.

Now if the customer is near their credit limit, each of these "failures" adds up, and they will start to bounce off this limit - more headaches for you, as they assume it's all your fault.
Not to mention that each time it is costing you like 50 cents or something for "excess authorizations"

Anyway, my tip is to turn OFF all automatic rejection based on AVS and manually check the status codes returned. If they match, all well and good - if not, then you can take further action and evaluate the risk.

I wish someone had explained this to me beforehand.

[allcam]

We use worldpay pre-auth. If AVS return not matched/checked, we simply return a warning message that we might perform manualy security check.

You are right the money is frozen for around 7 days and it reduces the balance available for the customer. Some bank will show your company name and amount, others don't.

[bullfrog]

The seven day thing sure is a headache. I have to continually reauthorize a revolving list every day since our items take several weeks to ship. I wish they were good for 30 days like the phone authorizations, I wonder why not? Some people cant see the temporary authorizations on their account, for others they can, usually those checking their account online. The AVS is not that reliable, for mismatches you can check IP address location, lookup phone number on Google, and verify security code. Ive found it dangerous to call the customer about it since people dont like to hear about it and this carries a risk of an order cancellation. I dont want to sound prejudice but really watch out for anything in Florida which is not all right, many problems with fraud we have had coming from Florida.