Fraud Alerts all the time now

[jimbarber]

Lately, many orders have been coming through with a fraud alert. Yet when I check the "analysis" i get this:

• Characteristics of this order are similar to fraudulent orders observed in the past
• Card Verification Value (CVV) is correct
• Billing street address matches credit card's registered address
• Billing address ZIP or postal code matches the credit card's registered address
• There was 1 payment attempt
• Payment was made with 1 credit card
• Location of IP address used to place the order is La Grange Park, Illinois, United States
• Shipping address is 1 mile from location of IP address
• Billing country matches the country from which the order was placed
• The IP address used to place the order isn't a high risk internet connection (web proxy                                                                                                                                                                           

As far as I can tell, there is NO part of the analysis that shows a problem except the gratuitous statement at the top that says " Characteristics of this order are similar to fraudulent orders observed in the past".   

A couple of observations:

1-    WE pay YOU to take the credit cards and do the heavy lifting of determining fraud. That's the job of the credit card company, and by extension, Shopify. 

        It is NOT MY JOB to decide when a CC transaction should be denied. I do not have the proprietary information the the CC company has and do not have the resources to make the judgement.  Later on, if it is fraudulent, you will use this alert to absolve yourselves of  ANY responsibility and charge me back, plus a hefty chargeback fee.

2-    If there is an issue with the "analysis", then take care of it yourselves, and if you think it's fake, then DENY THE TRANSACTION. IT IS NOT MY JOB.

3- Asking me, as the store owner, to contact the buyer makes me, and my store the bad guy. IT"S YOU, not me. So suck it up and do your job.

[Jason_Sio]

Hey Jim.

Shopify's fraud system is quite basic and serves only as a  warning for merchants. We also notice quite a few false positives as well where many times the customer was indeed a legitimate buyer. So I would suggest you take shopify's fraud analysis with a grain of salt. 

There are many factors why an order might be flagged as fraud and most merchants will just cancel the order without question to simplify things on your end if you do not want to deal with a possible chargeback in the future.

[jimbarber]

I would say that having a fraud protection upsell for an extra 1.2% tells
me all I need to know. I still go back to the statement that this is the
job of the credit card processor. Shopify is still taking a high percentage
on every sale, but now want to add back additional charges so we are back
at the original cost without the shopify payments solution.
The point is that we are all being gouged by arbitrary charges to make the
numbers look good for shopify's shareholders. But they don't have a very
deep moat, and the barbarians are at the gates.

[JoesIdeas · Accepted solution]

Welcome to credit card processing Merchants get screwed by banks, I used to get frustrated by this too, especially when a person files a chargeback after a legit order was fully delivered.

Solution: Here's what I do to mitigate fraud and not invest mental energy into it:

1) Use an app to automatically tag orders / notify your team for orders marked high fraud.

2) Have your customer support team contact the customer's that were marked high fraud to verify.

3) Give them clear instructions on the action to take (how to reach out, whether to cancel or accept, etc).

Dealing with fraud is a reality of doing business online, unfortunately. I vote for stricter punishment for scammers, that's where the venting should be targeted to lawmakers

It is NOT MY JOB to decide when a CC transaction should be denied
You have the freedom to choose who you accept and decline payments from. You can automatically cancel high risk orders if you'd like.

Asking me, as the store owner, to contact the buyer makes me, and my store the bad guy. IT"S YOU, not me. So suck it up and do your job.
You shouldn't be contacting the buyer, as the store owner you can provide more value hiring, strategizing, forming partnerships, and scaling your business. Hire a customer support manager to handle this.

Don't worry, your store won't look bad if you use to a friendly tone - most customers are understanding. And if someone gets angry or calls you the bad guy, boom easy filter to see they were probably a fraudster continuing the scam.

Hope that helps. Fraud sucks!

[stream-gear]

I would like to add to this.

I just opened my store. So to test checkout process thoroughly, I bought one of my products to follow the procedure from beginning to end.

It issued me a high fraud alert... I accepted the risk... it was me purchasing my own product after all.

next day I had another sale.... the system flagged it as a fraud alert High.... with the exact reasons that my card was flagged. So I accepted the sale and the risk.

Shopify contacted me and are holding the balance of the 2 sales for 3 months.

I just want to inform everyone that you will be penalized by shopify for accepting the sale.

2 sales no money for 3 months. this amounts to $503.00

I know what the alert is because I am a snow bird, I travel south in the winter and I buy presents for my friends in the north. The IP flags me because I am in Arizona and the delivery address is in New York.

so most holiday sales will look like this.

So do I make no sales, or do I eat it and have shopify hold thousands of my dollars for three months...

I cannot make sense of this. 

[dylanpierce]

Like @JoesIdeas says, merchants are getting screwed by banks.

Shopify's not exactly incentivized to give the best fraud protection, because they don't have skin the game when you get the chargeback.

They're going to give you the most minimum protection they can afford, so they have a CYA statement.

That's why I created Real ID so you can automate this customer verification process.

You can automatically verify your customer's identities by requiring them to upload additional documentation - Driver's License, Passport or other official document + a headshot.

We verify the authenticity of the document, and you have the peace of mind to ship even though the customer's IP/billing or shipping addresses didn't line up.

Even in the case of friendly fraud when the customer is pretending like they didn't authorize the purchase, you have their ID on file to dispute the chargeback with.

You can download it on the App Store here: https://apps.shopify.com/real-id

It's free to try out, and it's already verified over $500,000 in orders.

Happy to answer any questions about preventing fraud on your store. Unfortunately dealing with it is a cost of business, but it's not a problem that's impossible to solve you just need the right tools.

Dylan