Every order counts when it comes to running your online store, especially fake ones that waste your time and money. Watch today’s episode to learn 5 red flags that help indicate fraudulent orders.
Like it or not, there are lots of not-so-nice people out there looking to take advantage of you and your online store by placing fraudulent orders. When you process falsified orders like these, you’re out of time, money and inventory – and that’s never a good thing.
Fortunately there are several warning signs that you can use to identify ecommerce fraud before it happens. To learn how to detect fraudulent orders and better protect your business, check out today’s episode for five tried and true tidbits.
Happy selling!
-Matt Winn, Volusion
Here’s the transcript if you’d like to read along:
Hi, everybody! My name is Matt, Social Media Manager here at Volusion. Welcome to Two Minute Tuesdays, where we bring you two minutes of ecommerce advice to bolster your online success.
Now when it comes to ecommerce, every dollar counts, so you want to make sure that your dollars are not being taken advantage of. With that in mind, today I present you five warning signs of credit card fraud.
First on our list, look for orders that have amounts that are a lot higher than your average order value. For example, if you’re selling T-shirts and you’re used to getting about $40 per order, and then all of a sudden someone orders 300 T-shirts for $3,000, that’s probably a sign of a fraudulent order. You might want to contact them and check on that.
Now along the same line, look at the actual items in the cart themselves. If you’re selling handbags and you see 14 Louis Vuittons, it’s probably a sign of a fraudulent order. Again, you might want to follow up on that one.
Number three, if you see an order that has overnight or rushed delivery, it might be a cause for concern. Why? If you ship the product out, it gets to them a lot faster, which means that you have less time to check on the fraudulent order. So definitely go through, follow up and if you have those coming through quite frequently, it might be a sign of fraud.
Number four, and this one is really big, look for orders from high-risk geographies. For example, some countries in Africa, Eastern Europe, even in cities in the US, like Las Vegas and Miami, are known for a lot of credit card and Internet-ordering fraud. So take a look at where the order is coming from, and that will be a good guide too.
And last but not least, always look for sketchy email addresses. Now granted, these usually come from free clients, like Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, etc., but really look for the user name before the @ symbol. If you see a lot of strange characters, a lot of numbers, random alpha numeric characters, look out for those, because that is usually a fake email account, which will also be tied to a fake order.
Hopefully, these five red flags will start waving and prevent you from having any fraudulent orders. If you see something, feel free to reach out to the customer, give them a call, shoot them an email and always make sure to follow up.
If you have any questions about ecommerce fraud or anything else, leave me a comment in the box below. I’ll get right back to you.
From me to you, happy selling!
About Matt Winn
Matt Winn is Volusion’s Marketing Communications Manager, where he helps oversee the organization’s branding and communications efforts. Matt has created hundreds of articles, videos and seminars on all things ecommerce, ranging from online marketing to web design and customer experience. Beyond being a certified nerd, Matt is an avid college football fan, enthusiastic home cook and a self-admitted reality TV junkie.
Is there a list somewhere of the cities that have high fraud orders? Would be a great reference tool.
Another really common one is getting an order for an item that is very rarely sold. Since the fraudster is unlikely to care what they are ordering because they are going to resell it, they often order arbitrary high dollar items. We’ve caught multiple fraudulent orders trying to order an item that normal humans just don’t ever purchase.
A more common problem for us is people saying they didn’t receive items with their order. So, we have a high def video camera over the table where we assemble orders that is tied into our security system and we record order assembly and can narrow down if we did really make a mistake, if the customer lost the item on their end or the customer didn’t check the entire box or packing materials for all items. We’ve been able to dispute a number of orders this way just by sending the video to the customer and in most cases, the customer “finds” the missing item(s).
Another method is to check shipping weight – if you know what it should be, and it’s way off, then an item may have been missed.
Checking the IP address on odd orders is a good idea too. We have a lot of scammers buying from countries like Venezuela and shipping domestically.
Different billing and shipping address is another BIG sign. Not that there are cases where someone places a legit order that needs to be delivered to their work place instead of their home; but, they are those where the city is hundreds of miles apart, and attention name is no where near related to the bill-to person. This is the most common in my store. And yes, lookout for shipping addresses going to Florida and Nevada, as these are very common states with fraud order being sent to.
Different bill to & ship to addresses can also be a red flag.
What exactly are the high-risk geographic locations?
I question “sketchy” email addresses, though. Really?