Online Orders May Be Scams Retailers Warned
May 12th, 2008, 12:54 am Teen Hobbies
Rose Kriedemann came in to her toy shop one Wednesday morning and found a nice, fat order from her website.
It came from a customer in New Zealand, an order totalling about $1,000 for four specialty collectible items that Bayshore Hobbies is known for.
Kriedemann was happy with the early morning sale, but something, some instinct borne of 27 years in retail, told her to double check.
The Visa number was approved by Paymentech, meaning the number was valid. But she hesitated when it came to ringing it through.
Kriedemann tried to determine if the credit card number was correct. She wanted the sale, but not the loss. A thousand dollars is a thousand dollars.
She started to Google.
RCMP Corporal Louis Robertson of the Canadian anti-fraud centre PhoneBusters, applauded Kriedemann for following her gut.
In the end, it’s the only real protection most business owners might have.
“If you hear bells and whistles going off, step back, Google it … take your time.”
Once Kriedemann started to Google the address, it turned out to be in Indonesia, not New Zealand. Her hunch was paying off.
Then she had a number of credit card fraud warnings show up in her Googles of the address and the name given by the customer.
She tried to e-mail the customer with some questions to figure out if he was for real, but his responses failed to reassure her.
Their correspondence ceased.
Kriedemann feels her business narrowly escaped being defrauded.
“The scary thing is that if one of my staff came in that morning, they probably would have just processed the order and shipped it out. Why wouldn’t they?”
RCMP statistics from 2005 to 2007 show that about 98 Canadian businesses are victims of online or e-mail fraud, with losses ranging from $809,000 in 2005 to $558,000 in 2007.
However, like many crimes, police suggest that only 5 to 10 per cent of such crimes are reported.
Robertson said often such acts of online fraud are too small, too complex for an investigation.
“There are no borders on the Internet when crimes occur. The Internet is still a very hard thing to pin down. We’re still having problems with jurisdiction. It’s not policed.”
There is virtually no recourse for business owners, nor information about how to protect your business against fraud.
Derek Nighbor, vice-president of national affairs at the Retail Council of Canada, said online retailers should try to determine who the online customer is in an effort to better serve them, but also to protect the business.
Tags: bells and whistles, borders, canadian businesses, correspondence, credit card fraud, fraud warnings, google, Hobbies, hunch, mail fraud, thousand dollars, toy shop, wednesday morningRelated posts
