Credit Card Fraud
Well, I suppose it was inevitable. After two years in business we have just experienced our first attempt at major credit card fraud. Over the weekend someone attempted two large orders on our site. One was for $750.00 and the other over $1000.00. We knew it was fraud soon after the orders were placed due to a series of bizarre communications. They attempted to contact my partner, Lee Ann, via a service provided by AT&T, which caters to deaf and disabled customers. Through this service, an operator at AT&T is the go-between in an online chat format. Our dishonest client disconnected the call halfway through, and the operator advised my partner to look into this further. She took his advice, and he was correct.
What we found out was that they were able to use the same card number, a Visa, using two different expiration numbers (which apparently aren't even valid dates being used yet...ie. the year 2015), and two different mailing addresses in Ohio.
This makes me furious. What is my credit card processor doing if it's approving these cards with incorrect expirations, and invalid shipping addresses? I thought they were to safeguard us against this. We use Cardmember Services, and they refuse to refund our processing charges, claiming it's not their responsibility. So now, I am subject to the real cardholder "charging back" these fees, resulting in even larger fees.
This is complicated, and we don't seem to be getting the assistance we need from the credit card company. I'm curious if anyone else has dealt with this before, and how they went about refunding the money.
