Security Question - suspect orders

[Gillf]

Hi

How does everyone handle suspect orders?

The reason I am asking is we have just had a little cluster of possibly suspect orders.

Worldpay have an alert system which starts at "caution" then "warning". We've never had worse than that. They do not detail their reason for the alert so it is like blind man's buff trying to decide if they are correct or not and we do know that they make mistakes more often than not.

With the caution alert we check all the data we can and email the customer with a question relating to their order and this is usually enough to confirm if the customer is genuine.

With the warning we are more cautious and as it is usually impossible to tell what Worldpay think is wrong with the order we email the customer explaining (tactfully) that we can't accept a card payment and offer either bank transfer or for UK customers cheque. Responses are usually positive. Occasionally they decline and then we think there is a fair chance that Worldpay were correct.

This last couple of days we have had two warning transactions and one caution. The caution we sorted ok. One of the warnings has not replied to our emails. So we are fairly sure Worldpay were correct with that one. The other warning went berserk! Quite sinister emails, first threatening legal action if we did not ship and then threatening to report us for fraud! I am fairly certain this was a fraudster v. angry at being found out. But it could have been an honest but extremely nutty genuine customer so it set me to wondering if there is a better way to deal with these situations and to ask for your views.

Thanks in advance.

Gill

[john]

Tell them if them want to get their knickers in a twist, they should buy them from someone else!
Seriously though, just ignore them, it's one dubious potential customer that will probably cause you aggravation way beyond the potential reward for your efforts.

[G4G]

I used to have a worldpay account and had a lot of cautions but only ever had 2 chargebacks in 4 years although we did cancel a few(less than 5) of them most went through fine.

Something we used to do was to try and find that person on bt.com or 192.com and phone them on a landline if the people are registered there the chance of fraud does reduce.

[Angella]

Hi Gill
Follow your gut instincts, my Bank said that fraudsters usually want their orders quickly (so they don't get found out), they tend to order multiples and often to a different address. We have been stung in this country and Europe, so we never process cautios alert orders. (Often it is because their address does not match or their postcode) If they are genuine, they will re-order with another card or submit the order again, using correct postcode etc. (sometimes its that they use the o instead of 0 in the postcode)

Angella
www.internetwigs.com (http://www.internetwigs.com)

[Gillf]

Hi Angella

Thanks for your input ( and thanks to G4G & John as well). My gut instinct on this last case is that the man was either a fraudster angry at being caught out or a complete lunatic but honest. In either event I don't think we want his business. Incidentally on doing some further investigation on this topic I found something called a code10check which apparent you could ask WorldPay to do. I am not sure if this info was totally uptodate so I have asked WorldPay themselves... will report back.

Thanks again everyone - sometimes it is just good to share a difficult situation.

Gill