Shipping to a shipping address instead of a Credit Card Billing Address

[dannyshane]

Hello, 

In the past I used magento and through the years lost thousands due to 'friendly fraud' ( I think its called).   a customer buys a product, but has a different shipping address than his cc billing address. He gets the product and then files a chargeback and says he never received the product.  

The credit card companies favor them automatically if teh product did not get sent to their billing address. 

So on Magento, I disabled the 'shipping' field and used AVS to decline all transactions that did not use an address that matched the CC billing address. Thats annoying I know. 

Anyway, now I just launched  a store on Shopify.  and I dont see how to do any of this here. 

Do any other sellers have this issue?  

Do sellers typically allow products to be shipped to a different address? 

DO you use some other fraud tool to help reduce fraud?

is there even a tool that will allow us to ship to a 'shipping address' (instead of cc billing address) and then still protect us from the chargeback if they file one?

Ok, thanks for your time. just trying to get a grip on this before i catch a charge... back.  lol  🙂

[AnotherShop]

From what I've seen and read, this just isn't possible any longer.  It's a big problem honestly because we ship very high end expensive items and we simply can't take this risk.  The only option we have right now is to not capture the payment automatically at checkout.  We then review each order to verify before accepting it and if it doesn't match, we then contact the customer to see how they want to handle it.

[dannyshane]

Thanks for the reply.  damn, That seems like a pain and not effecient to have to inspect each order every day and definitely will slow order processing and shipping down - having to wait for customers to reach back. but unless someone else writes in, I guess thats what we're left doing.  but i just cant imagine this is the only solution. Thanks for your feedback. I appreciate it. 

[AnotherShop]

The only other option is that you can apply a bit of customization to the checkout page and state explicitly that you only ship to Billing Address.  You can modify several of the text fields in Settings->Themes-> (Press ...)->Edit Default Theme Content   You can filter for words like "address" and "ship" to see the available fields and play with your checkout page to build a message that helps limit the honest people from trying to place an order to another address but you can't actually force the system to "Ship to Billing Address" any longer.

It's a real shame because many of us have a lot of time and effort invested with a platform that has now willfully chosen to encourage fraud with this policy and actually makes it more difficult for store owners to protect themselves and follow the Merchant Rules for Visa / Mastercard.  Hopefully enough Shopify Store Owners will speak up and they will make a change.

[dannyshane]

7/12/24 Update.  I think Im close. lol.  I have two sites.. one on Magento and the other on Shopify...   both use STRIPE as their card processor.  IN Magento, I actually get the login for my STRIPE account and am able to create fraud rules etc.  So for my Magento site, I login to STRIPE and I added a rule to auto decline any transactions where the AVS failed on "street address". (you can auto decline it or set it for review).  

In case anyone wants it, the Rule is:   Block if :address_line1_check: = 'fail'

Although it says "address", it really only checks the house number.  (I did lots of testing).  and that is perfect because people misspell their streets often... street, st, st.  etc.. or even merge the two words into one like maple hill or maplehill.

So with that rule, STRIPE will decline all transactions in which the "house number" does not match the house number on their card. Fraud prevented.  🙂   and i just check Stripe every now and then for the AVS failed declined transactions,  and I email those customers personally and ask them to checkout via paypal (since paypal has seller protection even for a different shipping address). 

So all is good on the magento site.  (and it doesnt happen too often.. maybe once a week.)

Now for SHOPIFY,  as far as I know, we cant login to our STRIPE account and setup that rule.  I wish we could.  If anyone knows how to get access to our shopify STRIPE account, then please let me know because I would just add that same exact fraud rule. 

[JohnSmith6]

I believe the option is always available for you to config in Checkout. Settings -> Checkout -> Scroll down

Require shipping and billing address to match.

[AnotherShop]

Sorry but this isn't correct... This option hasn't been available for many years now in the standard versions.  Where did you get this screenshot?

[dannyshane]

AnotherShop is correct, this isnt an option anymore.  Now it shows a checkbox for :

"Use the shipping address as the billing address by default. The billing address can still be edited".

So a visitor can still ship an item to a different address (and therefor win a chargeback dispute).  

[adamnyc31]

This is an option. I have this exact setting enabled in my store as of 9-5-2024

Click "Settings" then "Checkout" and scroll down.  

https://admin.shopify.com/store/YOURSTORENAMEHERE/settings/checkout

[AnotherShop]

Thanks for showing this... This hasn't been an option in many years.  Maybe they are finally listening.  I suspect they are rolling it out slowly again.  We checked again to be sure when JohnSmith6 posted this previously, I went into this screen and my interface did not have this option.  I believe DannyShane also tried this and did not see the option.

I also spent hours on chat with the shopify support team and they confirmed it was not an option any longer.  However, I can see it in our interface now!

Really hope this sticks around.  We went through a lot of work trying to guide customers around this issue and would keep having to call them to let them know that we have to ship to billing address when they placed orders, attempting to ship to another address.

[adamnyc31]

One important thing to note though is this only seems to work if customer checkout using the standard checkout process.   If they use any alternate payment methods like "ShopPay" it still allows them to enter a different shipping address even with this setting turned on.    If you really need to lock down the checkout you would have to disable ShopPay, PayPal, AmazonPay etc as a payment method. 

The reason I've been down this road is because UPS now allows ANY UPS package shipped through Shopify or ShipStation to be redirected to ANY address by the receiver without any approval or knowledge of the shipper.  All they need to do is create a free UPS MyChoice account which take 2 minutes to do.  We lost close to $10k on redirected packages in a single week.   I've locked down our checkout to this most restrictive checkout options possible to deter these scammers. 

Now, we ship directly with UPS and enable the 'Direct Delivery only" option (which is not available through Shopify or Shipstation) on every label which prevents this. 

[AnotherShop]

We upgraded to the Shopify Plan and have added the ability to ship with 3rd party calculated rates which was a monthly add on cost.  This allows us to use our own FedEx shipping and Rates.  We actually process our shipping offline from Shopify so we have full control and only enter the tracking number for fulfillment. 

However, I see a message that says we are now on a plan that is no longer available so it seems they may have shaken that up a bit or maybe it's still available as an option, not sure.

Sorry to hear about the losses.  These fraudsters know what they're doing and are taking advantage of shops on shopify.  So just really hope the platform has our backs.

[dannyshane]

Yes this wasn't here before.. and now I do see it on my shopify store.  so this is good.  🙂   

EXCEPT, lol,  now (what Adamnyc31 says) UPS allows redirects... and other payment methods allowing the address to be changed. 

[adamnyc31]

You can read the full discussion about how UPS now allows package redirection to any other address here:
https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-discussions/fraud-alert-ups-labels-though-shopify-can-have-t...