The Ecommerce Guide

The popularity of the dotcoms brought along with it a rampant ecommerce fraud.  There are many unscrupulous people out there who instead of an honest day’s work would rather grab the money out of the pockets of millions of unsuspecting customers who choose to carry out their business online. But first, let us see what ecommerce fraud is – this is a term which covers any type of cheating that takes place where ecommerce is carried out.

Be Careful

Just as you would do in the real world, you will need to be careful not to be cheated when you want to buy something over the Internet. In order to ensure that you do not become a victim of ecommerce fraud, you may want to keep the following points in mind:

1. Check orders for discrepancies – many times big business houses have a software in place which will carefully filter any such order which shows that it is unusual in any way. The orders thus filtered are then manually checked to ensure their genuineness. This will prevent the money, time and effort lost in completing the order only to find out that it is a false lead.
2. Identify scams early – many people, who steal the payment information over the net, will use that information for their benefit, i.e. buy things over the net for themselves. In case the address given for the credit card and the address given for delivery differ, it is worth an investigation.   There are legitimate reasons for this too, such as gifting something, or having billing address at office but wanting the goods to be delivered at home, etc so not all that have the addresses mismatched are actually ecommerce fraud. Be careful here. Do not have automated rejection of orders that come under this purview as you might cancel in the process a great deal of serious customers.
3. Verify the address at the earliest time of contact – Many companies check on whether the information given at the registration time is true – specifically things such as address, phone numbers, etc.  If there is any discrepancy found, then put a red flag on that customer and watch him/her closely. There are special companies which will carry out this verification for you.
4. Communication – document all communication you carry out with any and all of your customers. This is a great insurance in case of ecommerce fraud that sometimes stretches to cover the business houses that these frauds transacted with as well.

Tags: Ecommerce, Ecommerce Fraud