How to avoid Fraud & Chargebacks - Part II

Ok well, last month I ranted about the fact that I had a few charge backs in one week that got mighty expensive (Beware of Fraud - June 15, 2009). In the end, I did not get that money back. The credit card company sided with their customer and removed the funds from my account. Now I completely think that they did the right thing. Their customer should not have to pay for any purchases that are made with stolen credit cards. But shouldn't the responsibility be with the credit card company and not the merchant? It's not my fault that I could not catch the fact that it was a stolen card. I have all the security in place. No transactions are accepted unless they have all the information:

• Name on the card matched 100%
• Billing address matches 100%
• Expiration date matches
• the CVV number matches

And I cannot get my baskets back... so why is the responsibility on me? So I contacted the credit card companies to plead my case, and pretty much didn't get anywhere. I was transfered several times and no one would give me a straight answer.

This is 100% unacceptable to me. So I did some research and found a few things that I'm going to try and wanted to share. I haven't used them for very long so I can't comment on how "great" they are yet - I will make sure to do so after I have more information. In the meantime, I figured I would share with the class to see what you think.

The First thing I did was sign up for a membership at Merchant 911. It's Free and has some search tools to help you do research as well as a ask questions, share stories and more.

The next thing I did is buy fraud screening from PreCharge. It does the research for you from checking Real-Time IP Validation to network pattern recognition. It's only $0.10 a transaction. I'm going to try it for a few months to see if it helps prevent fraud. It has a money back guarantee so it's worth a shot.

Hopefully these tools will help with charge backs and I can live a stress free life.... yeah right! :)