HUGE fraudulent orders happening, 10+ a day!

[Joanna_Revelle]

In the past two days I’ve received 20+ orders that are fraudulent. Each order is $2,000+! My average order value is $50. Clearly it’s fraudulent and I cancel them immediately but they won’t stop ordering.

They originally all had a Saudi Arabia address so I blocked anyone from Saudi Arabia the ability to order. They then changed it to Germany so I blocked Germany. Now since I blocked Germany they are attempting to ship it to Aruba and Australia.

How can I make them stop? It’s super irritating! 

[oliversinz]

Hi @Joanna_Revelle 

Hope you're having a great day!

I'm sorry about what's happening to you. At this rate, you risk blocking countries where notable target customers are located.

Here's details to help you:

• To block users who try to make repeat fraudulent orders, you can use Shopify's Fraud Filter app.
• You can download apps that help with fraud prevention from the Shopify App Store. Indicators and recommendations from these apps show up with Shopify's fraud analysis for each order.
• If you want time to investigate orders before you accept payment for them, then you can set up manual payment captures.
• Check whether Google reCAPTCHA is enabled. Google reCAPTCHA to block spam from bots in contact and comment forms, on login, create account, and password recovery pages.

Find more details about fraud analysis and fraud prevention.

[yuyu233]

hi，recently, I also encountered a similar problem. They asked to cancel the order immediately after placing the order. Do you know why?😪

[BronzeSnake]

Hey Joanna.
We are having exactly the same issue.
Did you ever work out a solution?
We notice we are getting shorted $200 on the return due to Shopifys exchange rate too.

[Joanna_Revelle]

Yes! It's called Credit Test Fraud. People use smaller companies like ours to test cards and if they work immediately request us to cancel so that the cardholder doesn't find out and they can use it at Nike for example or a store that sells items that are easier to sell. The only way around this is to turn on manual payment capture.

This is extremely crucial! We lost over $10,000 and Shopify did nothing to resolve this for us. Turn on manual payment capture immediately in settings to avoid any card processing fees. I hope I was able to catch this in time before you got hit with fees. I'm sorry this is also happening to you! Shopify needs to do something about this. This is insane. We lost so much money in a matter of three days. 

[Misssami]

Hello, 

can you please explain how you lost money? This is currently happening to me but the Shopify chat was useless and they had no idea what it was, even though it seems to be a common thing! 

[Joanna_Revelle]

Hello, absolutely. Turn on manual payment capture immediately. I refunded all the orders. How I lost money is because when automatic payment capture is on you are being charged 2.4-3.4% to capture that payment. I had $200,000 in fraudulent orders. So although I tried to cancel them as quickly as possible every time an order came through it automatically captured the payments kicking in the fee being charged by the merchant to process the card even if it is refunded, you still get charged the processing fee. Do the math. Most of them were international, 3.4% on close to $250,000 in orders. I lost around $10,000 and no one was helping. 

Every single order came through Tapcart and then processed through Shopify. Tapcart let me know that I was going to extremes posting it online to let others know but if this can help just one person and save them money then I am happy to post about it online. I personally wouldn't recommend Tapcart as it seems there are many different people experiencing this and Tapcart does nothing to help the sellers like myself who are now in debt because of 3 days of fraud charges. 

The only way to get around this is to turn on manual payment capture in payments under the settings tab in Shopify. You will have to manually capture every order payment but it is worth it. You can also avoid getting charged for orders that are requested to cancel or are fraud orders. It could potentially save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year. 

You can manually capture orders 50+ at a time so it's not difficult if you know they are real and legit, it's minimal effort to protect you from losing thousands of dollars of orders. 

[Misssami]

Wow just wow. I didn’t know it was done on a scale where there are multiple orders at once let alone getting into anything more than 4 figures. I’ve only just had my biggest order and finally decided to google. I’m so sorry this has happened but you have helped at least one more person because I have just switched my settings. Shopify should really share this fraud type, never even knew it was a thing.

thank you for all your help, you’ve saved a small business much headache it seems!  

[Beacon-Jason]

Hi @Misssami Jason here with Beacon fraud protection. 

Just to add on to @Joanna_Revelle post, manual payment capture gives you a buffer time to review the order before a payment can be completed. 

You usually have up to 7 days to capture an order. 

I've posted a screenshot below on where you can configure this settings in Shopify's "Payments". 

Any orders that have not been captured will show the "Authorized" status. While orders that are cancelled without having it's payment captured will show "Voided" status. As you can see below. 

 

When you are ready to capture the payment, you can simply, use the "Capture payment" option. 

Of course, this would be a hassle, if you have a lot of orders that needs to be reviewed and captured everyday. There are apps like Shopify Flow or Beacon that can automate the payment capture and voiding process. 

In addition, you can also enable require shipping phone number under the "checkout" settings to further add friction to the checkout process and make it slightly more difficult for the bots to parse through test credit cards. 

I hope this helps!

[Joanna_Revelle]

Also, all of the orders were coming through Tapcart and they also did nothing to help us. We had 0 issues until we downloaded Tapcart and started using them. If all of your orders are through Tapcart then this is super fishy because I have a friend who also had the same issue and all of those orders were through Tapcart as well. She lost not as much as me because she turned the payment capture to manual instead of automatic before serious damage was done. I had over $200,000+ in fraud orders so I lost out on 3.9% + 30cents for the total amount. It was absolutely terrible! 

[BronzeSnake]

Thanks Joanna.

I really appreciate your time to write back to this.

Yes ours are also through Tapcart and we are also getting hit hard on the exchange rate.
I will turn on manual capture. I really appreciate your help.

Do you think if I stop refunding the orders they will leave me alone - or the only way around this is manual capture.

[Misssami]

Hello! I’m so glad I found this thread. I was going crazy as Shopify had no clue what it was. Have you tried not refunding? I know it doesn’t seem ethical but it is not our position to lose money. Surely these people can do fraud report on their card when they see the other people are doing this?! I’ve previously refunded with a fee. So for example I didn’t refund about 10% of the order so that it covered my fees (just an example as I can’t remember the %) but I never had anyone contact me to say they have my company on their card and don’t recognise it. Very weird that I also noticed this since Tapcart, but my recent one via web not Tapcart. 

[Joanna_Revelle]

I refunded them all. I couldn't take the risk getting chargebacks for over 500+ orders and losing $15 chargeback fees on top of money I was holding. Then I would really be in a huge mess. 

I lost all the processing fees. Turn on your manual capture payment processing immediately and never turn on automatic payment capture again. See my above answer for why. I'm really sorry this is happening to people more and more every day! 

[DcSales]

Any resolution to this issue? Seems like it's happening to a lot of people including myself! Extremely frustrating that Shopify does not do more. The amount of money i lost from Transaction fees are ridiculous! Until i figured out to Manual Capture payments from these forms.

[Joanna_Revelle]

Do not ever turn off manual capture. They tried to do it again about 2-3 months after the first attack but because manual capture was on I only received about 2-3 orders and then they stopped. 

How you know its starting is if they start doing one or two a day and if it automatically captures they will start doing more every day and then boom pretty soon you'll have $100,000 in one day and you won't catch it in time if you don't know to turn on manual capture for processing under payments in settings. Don't ever turn off manual capture. Don't let payments automatically capture ever. 

[Nargis_Yahya]

Hello Joanna,

Thank you for sharing this with us. my client's store also experiencing the same thing. the order ranges from $1000-2000. and we are at 21 orders now. but since we applied new policy they haven't been ordering for a few days now. however we're still cautious in case it they will come back with new tactics. it's so so annoying. i really hope Shopify can come up with a solution for this.

[CherryTree]

hello,

exactly the same thing is happening to us but we seem to have a lid on it for now. But there’s another thing happening. We are getting a lot of fraudulent orders that only come from the shop app and are apparently not caught by fraud detection. What we don’t understand is how do the scammers get the merchandise?? We spoke to a couple of people and everyone says their shop app account got hacked and yes, the address is actually theirs. 

If you ask me, Shopify is very well aware of this problem because why else would they offer the charge back protection only on orders coming from the shop app and if shipped within 7 days. 

[eerieemporium]

Hi @Joanna_Revelle,

Our small business wants to thank you for this post/thread! We started getting a few fraudulent orders a day over the last couple weeks and realized pretty quickly that something was up, but we couldn't figure out how to block the transactions (and avoid the refund fees which add up quickly!) from going through in the first place. We've tested tons of fraud apps in the past and occasionally searched for a solution online regarding the refund fees issue, but could never find a solution that actually worked until now! You've saved us hundreds, and most likely thousands, in lost fees associated with fraudulent order refunds... so seriously, THANK YOU!! 

Final note... it is patently absurd/ridiculous that Shopify not only fails to make the store default Manual Payment Capture, but actually appears to actively hide/avoid recommending this as a solution to an issue that many of us are clearly experiencing. Our team spent so much time going around in circles with numerous Shopify customer support reps., only for them to repeat the same "Try one of our hundreds of fraud apps!" line over and over and over again, even though all of these fees could've been prevented initially if they would've simply suggested the world's easiest solution -> clicking the box next to *Manual Payment Capture*.

[Rufy_78]

Hi @Joanna_Revelle ,

Thank you for this post, I'm also facing the same situation in my small business. I've had my Shopify store open since 2019 but only now have I encountered orders with fraudulent payments. I'm going to test the manual payment capture option to avoid being charged additional fees for fraudulent orders.

[abam]

Thank you for this thread! I turned on the manual payment but not before a $6,000 order with a $217 cancellation fee. I refunded the charge and I expect another fee. It was very sophisticated included an email conversation that was almost believable, used a store name I sell to extra. Thank you to Shopify for the Fraud Alert, please work on getting Shopify stores a refund for Fraud cancellation Fees. People please keep informing others of scams, this saved me a week of work unpaid!!