At 1/26/02 1:32 PM, POWERHOUSE wrote: >I'm sure if it was really a >Stolen card, which it would have to be >since I have the CVC number too,
Somewhat off topic, but: I hope you don't literally mean you still have access to it when the chargeback arrives. Storing the CVV2 or CVC2 number after the transaction goes through would defeat the whole purpose, which is that it's a number that appears only on the card itself, and not in any merchant database -- so an evildoer stealing a merchant's customer database won't get it. (It's also a violation of VISA/MasterCard/Amex contracts for a merchant to store it for more than ten minutes.) >I would not give up if >it was truly fraudulent! Sure, but how can you tell for sure? I recently had a whole rash of fraudulent domain name orders where the bad guy provided the complete account information of each customer, including the customer's name, address, phone number, etc. The only way I was able to put a stop to it was to traceroute the IP address of every single order before approving them (they all resolved back to an ISP in Israel, but the cardholders had US addresses). (We had to use traceroute because the Israeli ISP had non-working reverse DNS. Grrrr.) We talked to a few of the cardholders involved and every last detail of their personal information on the order was correct except for the e-mail address (they were addresses from US-based free ISPs, like Yahoo) and the Israeli IP address. If the thief had been based in the US, I would have had no way to tell at all without calling every new customer on the phone (and getting answering machines 80% of the time -- I've tried this with some suspicious orders in the past, and few people ever bother calling you back within a week, even the legitimate people; it's far more hassle than it would be worth to do for every order). My point is that even having all the information you mention, the charge could still be fraudulent if a thief has stolen all that information, unless you're checking it by telephone or postal mail. If the customer continues to insist it was a fraudulent charge, no bank will reverse that chargeback. Period. Because otherwise, legitimate customers could be stuck with charges for fraudulent use of their card by a thief, which banks go far out of their way to avoid. There's a persistent myth that some merchant service providers, more than others, "go to bat" for you and help you reverse chargebacks. It's simply not true. Whether a chargeback is reversed based on evidence you supply is totally up to the bank that issued the credit card to the consumer, not up to your merchant service provider. You can get a chargeback reversed if you provide evidence and the customer drops the challenge to the charge (as you described), but if the customer continues to insist it's fraudulent, it's going to continue as a chargeback no matter what company you use. (And your only choice then is to file a lawsuit, turn it over to a collections agency, etc.) -- Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies "The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was."
