Fraud sucks.
We sell primarily online, so we’re very wary of fraud.
We’ve been targetted several times in the past by fraudsters from the four corners of the globe. While it’s easy to say that country X or country Y is a “hotbed” of fraud, the reality is that fraud is an international problem.
People get phished all the time. It’s not nice, but it happens.
Before we launched our new system we had to completely block orders from outside Ireland and the UK, as the old billing system’s fraud checking was pretty rudimentary (and that’s being polite about it!).
With our new order system we can accept orders, but we put them on hold until they’ve passed a simple fraud check. (If your order gets flagged you’ll get an email from us asking you to prove that your order is legitimate)
Before the order passes the fraud check your credit card is NOT billed, so the order is NOT processed.
Yes, we know it’s a pain in the neck and we are sorry that we have to do the fraud checking, but we have no choice in the matter.
Like most online companies we do get hit with credit card chargebacks. It’s a reality of doing business online.
A LOT of internet companies run fraud checks on orders from outside their home country, so we are not the only ones doing this.
If you want to blame someone, then please take it out on the fraudsters!
About the Author: Michele Neylon
One Comment
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Hi Michele,
I suppose this blog is as a result of my comment for my previous message.
I did not expect it to be published but at least your blog is better than nothing, at least you acknowledged my message.
I still think that that would-be customers should be informed up front about the additional fraud check but you would not do it as you know you would lose most of them.
I was told the provided documentation will be destroyed after 3 months, but I had to ask this, it would have been nice this to be put in the body of the document asking for those documents.
I am not at ease with this and I have to trust Blaknight they will be destroyed, even if 3 months seem a long period. They should be destroyed immediately once they are checked, fewer chances to fall in other hands with not so good intentions.
Is there an automated job that deletes documents older than 3 months or just a person who manually does it after they put a reminder in Outlook ?
The process is very important and it requires to be followed rigorously as not to leave room for mistakes especially when the human factor is involved.
It would be too expensive to get a company to audit how the private information is stored so I think it is better the documents to be deleted right away.
I do not care about CC info as it is either stored crypted or the company will re-imburse me if it is used by someone else (and I suppose everyone thinks like me) but the other documents that have address and date of birth.
Perhaps I am paranoid but one cannot be too cautious when there is a danger of theft identity.
Regards