I may be too suspicious but I’ve received a couple of phone requests for “Gift Certificates” yesterday, charged to different CC# and to be mailed to the buyers “Uncles” which the recipient will show up to redeem over the next few days as their Christmas present. When I offered to ship a holiday wine special instead they refused and when I said I wouldn’t process the card until the “Uncle” showed up to redeem, the buyer wanted me to run the card ASAP. I called the bank and the CC# and info is good. Is this an old scam or the result of procrastinating shoppers, something I can relate too?
Thanks
Kevin,
It’s a double edged sword. They may want you to process CC now because it is a scam and they know it will be declined in a week. On the other hand, if the person takes the merch before you get a retrieval request you’re screwed because the CC was a phone order and never swiped in the store.
I spoke with Amex recently about this as we’ve had a spate of issues recently. They basically want to see the merchant did three things to avoid your being held liable:
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The ‘customer’ was physically in the store to present the card. (IE no phone or internet orders!)
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The card was manually swiped through your terminal and processed with an ‘approval’ from the bank.
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A physical signature was taken from the ‘customer’.
Even in the case of fraud if you have these three things you as the merchant will not be liable. However, all phone orders and internet orders must always, unfortunately, be viewed as suspect if you don’t know the customer or recipient due to this.