Suspect Orders

If you think that an order placed in your online store could be fraudulent, the first step is to contact the person the order is being billed to.

When you contact someone placing an order, it's important not to assume that the order is fraudulent.  Sometimes suspect orders are actually from legitimate customers, and you wouldn't want to offend them by seeming suspicious!

Start by checking that the billing address actually exists. When you retrieve orders online, you can check whether an address exists by clicking on the "show on map" link next to the billing and shipping addresses. Check also that the area code matches the address. If the order is a large one, or you feel uneasy about it, call the billing phone number to verify the information in the order. Ask the person who placed the order for home and work contact information, "in case there is a problem with the order."

You can also ask for the name and phone number of the bank that issued the card. Both are usually printed on the back.

If you are suspicious about an order, request that the customer give you a traceable ISP, business, or university email address, rather than an address at one of the free email services, like Hotmail. Not all free email addresses are as obvious as Hotmail. Iname, for example, has a lot of addresses that you may not recognize as free. To find out whether their "fred@something.com" email address is a free address, go to www.something.com and see if it is a site offering free email services.

If the order is from a foreign country, you may not want to make an international call to check out the order. In that case, you could send an email instead.

As a general rule, someone using a stolen credit card number will not want to have a long conversation with you.  Beware, though, that some criminals are very bold. We know of several cases where criminals have had extensive email conversations with merchants.

So what do you do with those suspicious orders? If you don't feel 100% certain about an order, simply ask for payment in advance before shipping... for example, by wire transfer, direct deposit, or PayPal.

Some stores go so far as not to ship outside their own country. That could be a valid approach if you are selling something with a high resale value, like electronics.