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The popularity of dotcoms has brought along with a rampant ecommerce fraud. There are a lot of unscrupulous people out there who, instead of an honest day’s work, would rather grab the money out of the pockets of millions of innocent customers who conduct their business online.
Let us first define what ecommerce fraud is – it is a term that covers any type of cheating that takes place in the world of ecommerce.
Take Extra Care
Just like in the real world, you need to be careful when buying something over the Internet so you won’t get cheated. So that you may be assured that you will not fall prey to ecommerce fraud, here are a few pointers to keep in mind:
1. Order discrepancies should be checked. Big business houses usually have software in place that carefully filter orders which shows that it is unusual in any way.
The orders are filtered and manually checked to ensure their genuineness. This process prevents loss of money, time, and effort in completing the order only to find out in the end that it is a false lead.
2. Early scam identification. A number of people who steal payment information online will use that stolen information for their benefit such as buying things online for themselves.
In case the address given for the credit card and the address given for the delivery do differ, it is worth an investigation. Of course, there are legitimate reasons for the difference in address. For example, one may want to have the bills sent to their office but the goods should be delivered at home. This is one example where a mismatched address is not actually an ecommerce fraud.
Be very careful. Just because an address is mismatched does not mean that you should automatically reject it. You may lose a great deal of serious customers in the process.
3. Address verified at the earliest time of contact. Many companies check whether the registered information is true particularly phone numbers, emails, and address.
In case a discrepancy is found, the customer should be “red flagged” and the transactions should be closely watched. You can also get in touch with companies that specialize in verification processes.
4. Document communication. Keep a document of all the communication between your company and all your potential and existing customers.
This is a great insurance in case of ecommerce fraud that sometimes stretches to cover the business houses that the frauds have also transacted with.
Tagged with: eCommerce • home-based business
Filed under: Home Business - MYO