How can I prevent fraudulent UPS charges through my Shopify account?

[thelovelycrumb]

I have received a paper bill from UPS indicating three shipping charges to addresses that are not my clients and did not receive anything from my store. Someone used my account to ship to these addresses and billed to UPS using my account but not billed through Shopify, hence the paper UPS bill. UPS is reversing these charges however, UPS cannot do anything further. I need Shopify to address how this happened.  I need to know what steps they or I need to take to prevent this from happening again.  I cannot find a phone number or help desk chat to connect with Shopify.  What is going on? Are there no longer any customer service reps to talk to?  How do you get service or ask questions?  HELP!

[HT_SWAM]

following along - We have come across the same issue.  UPS did clear the charges, but we got another invoice for 4 more addresses and charges.  How do we get this resolved?

[thelovelycrumb]

I finally spoke to a customer service rep today. They researched the problem and discovered occasionally there is an error on UPS’s end where a bill is mistakenly sent. There is no fraud or system problem. Hope this helps you.

[jrobthreads]

I find it difficult to believe that there is no fraud  involved.  There are several strings from several didn't Shopify customers with this same issue.  This is more than an 'occasional error' with UPS.  

[georgiak]

This happened to me, too: https://community.shopify.com/c/payments-shipping-and/really-weird-activity-with-shopify-associated-... and to this person https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-discussions/ups-fraudulent-charge-by-shopify/m-p/1926597/thr...

I will update my post as soon as I hear back from Shopify.  Nothing yet.

[georgiak]

I called UPS yesterday and was more insistent that UPS should cancel these invoices.  The representative I talked to said there's no way these invoices were caused by a flaw in their system, but instead insisted it was a problem with Shopify's system.  The rep finally canceled the charges to my Shopify-associated UPS account, but not before I told her I had checked every single shipment and the names, destinations, and tracking numbers were not in our order history.  I also told her that the weights and destinations of some of the shipments listed on the invoices were unusual for our store and that I would remember them because I ship the orders for my Shopify store personally. 

The rep finished the conversation by telling me I should get in touch with Shopify to resolve this issue, and I repeated that I had spent an hour chatting with Shopify support, I was waiting on further communication from Shopify support, and had connected with several other Shopify merchants with very similar experiences with strange UPS invoices.

[Suzannadai]

Same thing just happened to me.  This is DEFINITELY a UPS fraud problem and NOT a Shopify problem because the same exact thing happened to me 3 months ago with an old UPS account # I had closed over 6 years ago.  UPS knew the account # had been closed, but some fraudster used the acct # and UPS sent me a bill.  I got the customer service rep at UPS to admit that there is a loophole in their system, where if anyone manually fills out a PAPER mailing slip and puts any UPS account # on it (whether active or not), UPS will send the bill to the associated business, even though no one at that business mailed the package.  After numerous VMs left from UPS and from a collections agency, I filed a claim with the FTC.  If you call UPS and tell them you filed a claim with the FTC and provide them a copy of the report, they will drop the bill like a hot potato.  They are completely aware of this issue but don't seem to want to do anything about it, which in my opinion borders on fraud.  Imagine how many companies just go ahead and pay these bills!

[georgiak]

This is very useful information, @Suzannadai!. Thanks so much for sharing.  I was about to get back in touch with Shopify support.  I will pass the information you shared.

[Shay · Accepted solution]

Hi everyone! Thank you for reaching out about this to share your experience with other merchants on this unknown UPS shipping charges. 

Our shipping support team is happy to further investigate any reports of this, and if you have not already we kindly ask that you reach out through our authenticated support channels to have this escalated. Please feel free to share this blurb with your live agent to help them escalate this: 

Hi, I was directed here from the Shopify community forums to report an issue with an unknown UPS bill that was mailed to me. The charges on the bill are not related to any of the orders on my store and I do not know where they came from. I was told this can be escalated to the shipping team for further investigation. Here is a link to the forum post: https://community.shopify.com/c/payments-shipping-and/fraud-through-ups/td-p/1921714. 

To access our live support, please follow this link: Shopify Help Center. Next, you will want to follow the on screen prompts to sign in, choose your topic and issue and at the bottom of the help articles provided will be all available live support options. 

I am going to mark this response as the "answer" so that other merchants experiencing this will know to contact our live support. The thread will still be open so feel free to continue sharing your feedback here as well. 

[Tacocat2]

First, I have never used Shopify and had to create a login to respond to this, nor has the company I work for. I handle all UPS invoices at my office, and I am the only one that has the account and login information. I noticed on a bill last month that there were some weird shipments that weren’t mine and had weird addresses, and I had seen some other weird charges previously on bills but the first bills didn’t have the addresses listed. This year I had started to keep thorough track of my shipments, dates, addresses, box size, cost, and weights. These weird charges didn’t match up to any of my notes and they weren’t in my shipping history with UPS when I was logged in. The shipments also listed the address from as our old address, which we moved from 5 years ago. 

I called last month and had them remove all of the random charges, some from as far back as a December 2022 bill. We get several bills a month, and there were random charges on several of them. That agent accused me of giving out my login, no absolutely not. I’m also the only person with our login information, which only I have access to it. She went ahead and credited the charges on the invoices. 

We have since received two more invoices with new weird charges. Called again today, they waived them again but again accused me of giving out my login info. I explained to the person no, and no they don’t show up on our shipping history so they weren’t done online. She said they weren’t but whoever did the shipment didn’t upload the info at the end. I had to explain her that’s not how it works when you login and place a shipment, it uploads automatically when it gives you the label. This person at least sent this over to the fraud department for it to be reviewed. 

I was able to search the tracking numbers in the general system and they still had the shipping process that listed where the package was dropped off to be sent. These packages were sent from across the US, over 1700 miles from where I am. 

I am posting this to say this is 100% UPS’s fault, not Shopify. 

[havenprint]

This is happening to us, too. I noticed we keep getting emails about past due invoices, but everytime we ship with UPS, we pay at the time of shipping so we should not have been getting any overcharges. I made a call with UPS, told them the acceptance scans are no where close to where we even ship out. They're done in Stafford, TX, California, and other odd states. We're in NY. The rep even gave me the names of the receivers, but of course theres only an address on the shippers. 

I went through every invoice with the rep, and let her know not once single address was in our system and none were accepted anywhere near our shop, where we personally drop off. Its not a shopify problem at all, its UPS having such a terrible loophole for scammers to take advantage of people who utilize a UPS account. 

[DrT]

Similar thing here - I'm looking at UPS charges for $837 dollars billed to my account number for shipping that originated in California, we are in Indiana. This seems like someone using my UPS account number and then getting a pickup that is billed later. We don't even do shipping through UPS - everything is through Shipping Easy and paid at the time of label creation. I will be calling UPS tomorrow and hope they will waive the charges without me having to go all the way to the FTC. What a waste of time - Nothing makes your day like dealing with a multi-national mega corp.