Fraudulent Orders

HIGH RISK ALERTS

To provide better fraud prevention services, Specialty Toys Network has implemented a system to flag orders as ‘High Risk’ whenever details of an order exceed security parameters.

When an order is flagged as ‘High Risk’, the order will be displayed over a red background, and will show a status of “Order on Hold”. You will also receive an email from the system notifying you to this alert.

 

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WHY WAS AN ORDER FLAGGED AS HIGH RISK?

An order may be flagged as ‘High Risk’ for a variety of reasons, including combinations any of the following:

• The credit card number was reported as stolen
• Customer’s IPs address has been used to place past suspect orders
• Customer’s IPs address has been associated with other suspicious activity, such as hacking attempts
• Customer’s billing or shipping address is associated with a history of past fraudulent orders

For security purposes, we cannot provide the exact nature of how any reaches a threshold of ‘High Risk’.

 

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WHAT SHOULD YOU DO WHEN AN ORDER IS FLAGGED AS HIGH RISK?

1. BEFORE shipping products to any high risk order, carefully evaluate the order. If you find the order is indeed an attempt at fraud, or high risk, you should not fulfill the order.
2. If you determine the order is bad, change the order status to ‘Cancelled’, and include a note in the order comments as to why. Be sure to UNCLICK the “Notify Customer” box. We do not recommend that you delete the orders. It is important to keep records of suspect orders so you can maintain a reference history.
3. If you have accepted payment on the order, refund the customer’s credit card, and notify the customer of the action.
4. If you determine that an order is good, accept payment and ship the order.

 

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UNFLAGGED ORDERS SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AN INDICATION OF APPROVAL

The lack of an STN ‘High Risk ‘Alert does not indicate that an order is “good”. As a site manager, you should develop your own routines for accessing the validity of any order. The STN ‘High Risk ‘Alert system should only be used as one of the many tools at your disposal.

*There is a small possibility it is a ‘false positive’. 

 

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Tips for Detecting and Preventing Fraudulent Orders

In addition to the alert system, we want to provide you with tips you can use to determine whether you want to process an order or prevent loss through fraud.

 

Flags to look for:

• Different shipping & billing addresses.

• Expedited shipping: They are in a hurry to receive goods and don’t care about cost.  It’s not their money.

• High-price items, large orders, uncommon combinations.

• Free e-mail accounts, unusual names,  series of numbers or nonsensical lettering @ Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. example: as35qdf87@ sdka.ga

• Shipping to depot boxes/freight forwarders. These are companies that ship goods without using standard shipping carriers. examples: (not limitied to) AreoPost, Quick Transport Solutions.

• Unfamiliar or New customers.

 

Steps to prevent fraudulent orders:

• Call the customer and tell them you need to verify the shipping address (or some detail). Legitimate customers will (generally) be happy to verify info.

• Check the IP address of the order. ( IP address look-up )

• Google search the IP location as well as both ship & bill address’. 

• Use WhitePages and/or ZabaSearch to look up the customer.

• Call the card issuing bank: Find the issueing bank, enter the 1st six digits in a Credit Card # to get bank info. When you call the bank, have your merchant number, your phone number, the customer’s full name, address, and phone number ready. You can ask them to make a courtesy call to your customer to verify the charge.

• If you see a pattern on specific items, disable buying on that item. Note in product details for the shopper to call the store to place on order for that particular item.

• Delay shipping.  Create a policy of “orders ship in X days”.  Have customers call in if needed sooner.   It’s not necessary to hold all orders, only those that are suspect – meeting 1 or more of your determined criteria to flag fraudulent orders. These are notes you can put in the shipping method section and in the notes during check out, as well as any shipping policy pages.

 

Avoid chargebacks:

• Clearly label your merchant info (it shows on their statements) so customers know where the charge is from.

• Contact customers who issue a chargeback. Follow up with good customer service to clear up any misunderstanding or frustration and to rectify any issues.