Protect your business and your time

Each week we receive requests from resellers for quotes for high-ticket items destined for Nigeria, Ivory Coast or Ghana in Africa or Indonesia in Asia. Here at NextDay Network we receive emails from those countries on a daily basis. Price is usually not an issue. Most of the time the products will be paid for by credit card, sometimes even by check. Because we are able to block most of the IP-addresses from those countries, these “shoppers” are increasingly targeting resellers.

In the history of our company we have never had a legitimate order from those countries. There have even been attempts to pay for transactions with fraudulent cashier’s checks. Furthermore, the individuals trying to place these orders are finding new ways to try and get you and us to ship the products.

What can you do to protect your business?
Well, the easiest solution would be to just not respond to requests from those countries. However, it is not that easy, you have to know what to look for first. Here are the most common things to look for in a potentially fraudulent transaction:

1. The shopper uses a free email address, like hotmail or yahoo. If you are not sure if it is a free email account just try looking for the web site of the domain that is used. For example, if someone sends you an email from the following email address customer@domainname.com, just open a web browser and type in the following http://www.domainname.com/. If this is a free email account the web site usually has some sort of login screen and a way to set up a free account. If a real domain name is used, it is quite easy to find out where the domain name comes from: just go to http://www.geektools.com/whois.php and type in the domain name. You can quickly find out where the company is located that issued the email address.
   


2. If you know how to extract the IP-address from the email or order you have received, you can use a very nice tool to find out the geographical location of the shopper. Just type in the IP-address and in most cases it will tell you exactly where the shopper is from. Give it a try here. http://www.networldmap.com/TryIt.htm .
   


3. Shopper is unconcerned with shipping costs. Most legitimate shoppers are very sensitive to shipping costs. A "please expedite and add the extra onto my card" with no maximum or qualifying comment or question may be a tip-off: Use Caution.
   


4. Very large dollar amount order or large quantity. Thieves need to score quickly and move on since fraudulent delivery addresses have a short lifespan, at least in the USA. They will try to hit a perfect spot where the order is big enough to profit them, but small enough NOT to make merchants suspicious. Sometimes they will aim for $500+ orders, other times try to stay in the $199 range.
   


5. Ship-to address is not the same as the billing address. There are many legitimate reasons for a shopper wanting to do this, but it is a "cheat" of the AVS (Address Verification System) system if the thief has the billing address of the real cardholder. This is also one of the reasons why we always ask the customer to have the shipping address added as an alternate address.
   


6. Tell them you have their product in stock, and ask if they want an accessory to go with that, for only $200 more. Phrase this appropriately to avoid annoying legitimate shoppers. A crook, if monitoring their bogus email box at all, will say "sure!" without even a question. This should raise red flags.
   


7. Call the phone number given in the order. It may be entirely bogus, and sometimes it is even the actual number of the person whose card was stolen. If you don't get a phone number with the order, write and ask for one.
   


8. We have heard of some cases where the shopper emails you the credit card information. Unless you know the customer very well, don’t expect this to be a legitimate order. Normal shoppers would never send their Credit Card information via email.
   


9. Sophisticated thieves now also use very legitimate looking cashier’s checks. Please make sure to clear those checks with your bank and hold on to your products for at least two weeks after you have deposited the check. We have heard of several cases where the reseller had shipped products after depositing the check only to find out two weeks later that the originating bank had refused the check because it was fraudulent.
   


10. Always use common sense when you are dealing with pure Internet orders and if a deal looks too good to be true, be very careful.