Guide to Avoiding credit card fraud with an online business

At www.sellcom.com we have a -0- credit card fraud history and that is since before we even had internet, back in the 1980s.

While a lot of our customers are other businesses and supporting other business is our specialty, we also have a lot of other valued customers as well from private individuals to various government agencies.

Avoiding credit card fraud is really no secret at all and is as simple as this.   Always verify the shipping address in cases where it doesn't match the billing address of the credit card.  If the shipping address does not match the billing address then you can have the customer list an authorized address with their bank.  This is extremely easy with American Express and most competent  banks but can be difficult and frustrating with, thankfully, only a handful of incompetent banks.

Often you might have to speak with their fraud dept.   In many cases the competent banks are glad to call the customer to verify a large charge.

Now I will admit that we have been cheated a handful of times by customers abusing the chargeback program, but we just refer those over to a collection agency.

Of course, once a customer has a history with us we get very flexible and if it is a large enough company that we would give them credit terms if they asked then we aren't strict with credit card security (but you must make sure it is REALLY them!).

A few years back a perp was sending stuff using stolen account numbers from a major distributor and shipping to a big name company Xer*** so everyone thought it was cool (when they saw the name of a major company), but it turned out that the address was an abandoned building and the criminals had some guy to go to the UPS office to pick the merchandise up.   The manager of the UPS store had a second job, as a homicide detective.  The thieves picked the wrong UPS store.....   So, just because you see the name of a big corp doesn't mean it is really them.  Check that address!

Want to not be ripped off?  Then simply verify addresses.

Steve Winter CEO 800SELLCOM www.sellcom.com