maggitronic Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 Hi, I have a small store to sell T-shirts for my small theater company in NYC. I really don't get many orders and almost all of them have been from friends or "regulars" of our shows. Suddenly I am getting a bunch of orders from a few different people in Nigeria. While I think it would be great to suddenly have an international market, I am a little worried and not quite sure why someone who hasn't seen my shows would suddenly want 20 t-shirts. Should I be worried? Thanks, Maggie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noobish-n-stuff Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 yes, be worried. before you process their orders, verify the CC number and address. i had a few people from indonesia (that i talked to via email several times) that wanted to order a ton of stuff. they were all scams. rule of thumb: if it smells fishy, check it out. it's worth it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbadshoppingcarts Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 i would agree with Noobish-n-stuff make sure all payments are secured before sending goods and if using cc then only ship to card holders address Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maggitronic Posted December 10, 2003 Author Share Posted December 10, 2003 Unfortunately, I already sent out one order. Their CC was fine, but now they want to order more. Is the scam that they are possibly using stolen cards? Should I report this to someone? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ixon Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 Remember if they order by cc the money is not yours. They can reverse the transaction for up to 6 months. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jello1 Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 We got burned from a Nigeria order.. we sell health supplements and all of sudden we got like 12 orders each order was for about 3800.00USD. we did send the one and six months later we got all the others... come to find out that the card was bad. we even sent it to the cardholder address.. but still.... burn.... beware of any 3rd world country..... it's to easy for them to deny payment. and call it a day. <span style='font-family:Courier'>If you can't fix it Perl it!!!...</span> ****************************** Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minglou Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 Hi, guys Never ever receive order from Nigeria, all of them 100% are fraud. Just keep in mind or you will get chargeback more than that!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 For the people who want me to ship out of the country, i require them to do a wire transfer only, prior to shipment. it elimenates logs of headaches. i also got burned 8 years ago for $250,000 when i was selling high end equipment, that got sent to england. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrwrestling Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 terran is totally correct. Nigerian E-Commerce is about as legal as Microsoft. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TerryK Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 Any time I get orders from Nigeria, or Indonesia (among others!), I call Visa's AVS system (or MasterCard's helpdesk) to obtain the phone number of the issuing bank. I then call to manually verify name and billing address and alert them to a possible stolen credit card. In every single case I've encountered, the transaction has been fraudulent. I have implemented a couple of policies to avoid this: 1. I maintain a posted list on my Web site of countries/regions that I will not sell or ship to, some due to the high instances of fraud, and others because the post office will not insure deliveries (or won't insure them for high enough values) to certain areas. Nigeria and Indonesia are among them, but I've also had trouble with orders from Romania, Russia, Malaysia and Korea, and more. (If anyone wants to see my complete list, let me know.) 2. Through posted policies, I've retained the right to decline any order for any reason. That way, if my gut instinct kicks in and says " Don't Do It! ", I don't have to. :) Hope the order you shipped doesn't come back to bite you in the behind. In future, JUST SAY NO! Best, TerryK Terry Kluytmans Contribs Installed: Purchase Without Account (PWA); Big Images, Product Availability, Description in Product Listing, Graphical Infobox, Header Tags Controller, Login Box, Option Type Feature, plus many layout changes & other mods of my own, like: Add order total to checkout_shipment Add order total to checkout_payment Add radio buttons at checkout_shipping (for backorder options, etc.) Duplicate Table Rate Shipping Module Better Product Review Flow * If at first you don't succeed, find out if there's a prize for the loser. * Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roby2003 Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 I received a cashiers check for $5,000 from a guy in nigeria. After a week my bank finds out it was cashed 7 yrs ago. Beats me. Luckily for me i waited upto 10 days if the check would cash or not. When i deposited the check , half the money was available , and the funny thing is the bank couldnt tell me if the check was good or not. They found out after 7 days. So NIGERIA can KISS my A**. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noobish-n-stuff Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 terryk is completely right. you should call the helpdesk to find out if the address matches the cc number. in my case all of the cc numbers were good, but stolen. so if i would have made the sale, i would have gotten burned for nearly $5k. I'm always leary of international orders. That's why i manually process and verify cc info. no gateways for me! i can't take that kind of chance. besides, the extra 1.5% i'm getting charged by doing it manually, is cheap insurance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burt Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 We don't ship anywhere other than Euro, Japan, US, Canada, Aus, NZ. In 4 years of trading 100% of orders from outside of these countries has been fraudulent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrwrestling Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 Gary, I've had the same effect from other countries. I've recently actually received emails from these groups each asking if I would deliver to Nigeria. If anyone is interested, Ill post it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TerryK Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 Gary, I've had the same effect from other countries. I've recently actually received emails from these groups each asking if I would deliver to Nigeria. If anyone is interested, Ill post it. I've gotten quite a few of those, too. I also received this letter, sent by mail ( they paid for a stamp! ), which kept me chuckling for a couple of days. (Note: linebreaks are exactly as they were in the original letter.) LETTER OF REQUEST ----------------- It is my grate pleasure of writting you this letter. My main point of writting this letter. I want you to help me for this pro blem I am in need of all this thing are I dont have money. so I want you to se nd it to me free. And send it to me address. 1. New at KIDiddles seasonal songs in motion CD 2. Children's videos 3. Children's stories 4. Song books 5. Jewis musi for children. I want you to send it true (fedex shipping agen). so he can fast. because I need it fast. So mail me about it this is my mail address. ******at yahoo.com. I we be execting it. Send the (fedex track number) to me mail box. Your faithfull ( NAME DELETED ) The 'list' I was requested to send (for FREE) worked out to about 400 products. Too funny... TerryK Terry Kluytmans Contribs Installed: Purchase Without Account (PWA); Big Images, Product Availability, Description in Product Listing, Graphical Infobox, Header Tags Controller, Login Box, Option Type Feature, plus many layout changes & other mods of my own, like: Add order total to checkout_shipment Add order total to checkout_payment Add radio buttons at checkout_shipping (for backorder options, etc.) Duplicate Table Rate Shipping Module Better Product Review Flow * If at first you don't succeed, find out if there's a prize for the loser. * Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrwrestling Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 Dear sir/ma,My name is Renee Kaster a businessman who based in the U.S, i do distribute goods all over the world and i will like to order the under listed item below from your store to one of my customer in Nigeria. And i will like to know if your store do ship to Nigeria, if you do kindly reply me soon with the total cost of the items including the shipment to Lagos-nigeria. The shipment can be made via UPS Express . So that i can provide to you with his credit card informations and the shipping details. 1.ASU Wrestling Long Sleeve - Apparel Sizes Medium 2.ASU Wrestling Mesh Shorts - Apparel Sizes Medium Qty:20 pieces each respectively with discount. With Kind Regards. Williams. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
berkedam Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 Uhoh :-( "If you're working on something new, then you are necessarily an amateur." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
northof60 Posted December 10, 2003 Share Posted December 10, 2003 :ph34r: The credit card scam works this way. They will give you a varity of CC numbers based that one card is not apporved etc and they are going to use a different card etc. If you do not call in to your credit card service for approval to check address what happens is the machine will approve the purchase, you send off the goods, You may get another order from the same person shortly, usually as soon as they know you have shipped. Then about a month later when the real owner of the card disputes the charges on their card you get a call from the card service saying this number was stolen and you land up on the hook for the goods. I was stung for $12,000. over 3 orders to indoseasia. The REAL card owner was in vegas the day the numbers were provided to me. So I hope you don't have too much on the line. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 11, 2003 Share Posted December 11, 2003 I've gotten quite a few of those, too. I also received this letter, sent by mail ( they paid for a stamp! ), which kept me chuckling for a couple of days.My favorite was the gold mine scam where their intended scamee actually talked them into sending a *real* gold nugget prior to telling them that they were morons. It's on the web somewhere. Classic example of turnabout as fair play. Cheers, Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrwrestling Posted December 11, 2003 Share Posted December 11, 2003 Its interesting that people actually fall for the most outlandish scams though. When I get an email saying, " Send us $200 so we can transfer $12,495,344.45 USD to you" I generally don't cave... lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
defender39 Posted December 16, 2003 Share Posted December 16, 2003 I have just removed the offending countries from my countries list in the database...this way they cant sign up even with that country as an option to ship to. I agree with Burt about the good country list but even still you have to be careful. When anything from Nigeria comes my way I get a good laugh. It's like someone is Jail asking the guard if they can hold the gun for a while... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
penge Posted December 21, 2003 Share Posted December 21, 2003 Hi, If you using Worldpay, use the pre authorisation option which gives you time to checkout suspicious orders before accepting the payment. At least this does not incurr chargeback costs if you decline the order, the payment expires after 5 - 7 days if you don't accept it. Also Worldpay gives you a 'WorldAlert Configurator' to exclude any fraudelent names, email, IP etc. from purchasing on your site. We have had orders to be delivered to South America, the shopper used Dutch IP address and the card holder was a sailor on a US aircraft carrier on duty in the Arabian sea during the Iraq conflict. I don't think his mind was on buying jewelry!! Penge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JazzMan_Jay Posted December 21, 2003 Share Posted December 21, 2003 Hi, we decided to concentrate ourself only on the german market only with "Cash on Delivery". It may sound crazy, but make a bullet point on your "Terms and Conditions" site that explain why you are doing this: 1- First to protect the custommer nothing to pay in advance without recieving goods, no cc numbers given out even if it is with SSL encryption, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JazzMan_Jay Posted December 21, 2003 Share Posted December 21, 2003 Sorry I was quicker that my conputer... here is the whole message. Hi, we decided to concentrate ourself only on the german market only with "Cash on Delivery". It may sound crazy, but make a bullet point on your "Terms and Conditions" site that explain why you are doing this: 1- To protect the custommer: .nothing to pay in advance without recieving goods .no cc numbers given out. even if it is with SSL encryption (what will happend with the numbers after you recieved them ?? stored in a database ? send per email to some one ?? who will take care of it, and how long ?) 2- To protect yourself: .you will always get the money. I repeat 100% money recovery after shipment. .no special security levels to your database. .no problems with lawyers, or bank or who ever comming 6 month after payments saying it was fraud. 3- Make "Licenced shops" for other contries and developp your business without having more work. (we have people taking care of other countries. We ship goods to our partner, they take care of it and send it to customers.) Belive us or not, we develop more quickly that we would have dream about. Even if it is not a general solution,it is in our case something we will never change. Make business, not problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 21, 2003 Share Posted December 21, 2003 DO NOT ACCEPT ANY ORDERS FROM NIGERIA & ESPECIALLY INDONESIA!!! Trust me, don't do it! :angry: All you will get in a few months time is chargebacks and grief! Why don't you remove those countries from your list? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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