Online Sellers - NOT Protected!

Jackdee

My sister has a website selling children's clothes, which I look after.

Recently we have had a couple of sales to Spain. However, they appear to be fraudulent as the location they were bought from was Romania, the card was registered in the USA, and the shipping address was Spain.

I contacted our payment provider SagePay and asked if they could check the security details to see if it had been stolen. They said it had not been 'reported' stolen, but that doesn't mean its not.

I then contacted the card issuer's bank in the US to see if they could contact the card holder to check if they made the purchase. They said that they could not do that because it is up to the card holder to report their card stolen. However, if their card was skimmed, they would not know until they go their next statement.

If I send out the clothes to Spain and in 2 weeks time the card holder in the US realises the fraudulent transaction, they are covered by the credit card company and will get their money back. Then the credit card company can do a 'chargeback' and get their money back from me. This means that I have sent out the clothes for free!

Surely in this day and age there should be a simple way of sending an email to the card holder to check if they did indeed make the purchase.

Has anyone else had a similar experience selling online?

How can we protect ourselves from fraud?

Sorry for the long post!

NomadicMe

Unfortunately, there is no legal way of helping yourself here.

You could look at asking them for ID and proof they have authorisation to use that card but other than that, you can't do much more. If you suspect it is fraudulent, you could cancel the order- but that's a decision you need to make yourself.

Do bear in mind, if it is a fraudulent transaction, unfortunately you are not covered- the bank will chargeback from your account and the goods would have already been delivered

jor el

Don't ship to non billing addresses, especially if it's a different country. The retailer always takes the risk when dealing with non-cash payments, that's always been the way and always will. In fact, it holds true for anyone that sells something. Unless you get cash in hand, you're at risk of being scammed.

Jackdee

Thanks for the replies.

I haven't sent the goods out and to be honest I probably won't until I hear back from either the 'customer' or the bank looking for a chargeback!

If payment providers like Realex or PayPal asked for a pin number like you must do in a shop, would this not make it a more secure way to pay?

It just seems a bit easy to use someone elses card to buy something online!

Even if the issuing bank was to send a text message to the card holder's registered phone to confirm the transaction. Surely there must be a more secure way of handling payments online without too much hassle for the customer.

NomadicMe

Jackdee wrote: »

If payment providers like Realex or PayPal asked for a pin number like you must do in a shop, would this not make it a more secure way to pay?

It just seems a bit easy to use someone elses card to buy something online!
.

Yes, there is technology such as 3V secure etc that the banks can provide you with- it does cost a little extra and not everyone knows their passwords so it could be bit of an issue but you could certainly investigate it further?