Ways to verify an international order

[Gampopa]

Hi Everyone:
We have a small home based business that is on the internet. A week or so ago we got an email from someone in Sweden who was interested in placing an order to be shipped to Sweden. I've googled the guys name, address in Sweden and didn't come up with anything. He gave me a freight company to ship via and when I google them they don't come up. I emailed the freight company for a quote and their email is a yahoo email. They gave me an appropriate quote but said they would need a wire transfer for the shipping costs. The guy is going to give me a US based CC to charge to. It would be the biggest order we've filled and of course would love to have the business but if anything is not legit, we might not sustain the loss. My CC processing company said to get as much info as possible including the CC bank phone number and confirm the CC is good. Can anyone suggest other things to ask/do to confirm this is legit. I'm just being paranoid I know but don't want to be left with a big loss 5-6K.
Thanks!

[billbenson]

Although Sweden isn't usually a place for fraudulent orders this one smells of fraud. Actually I doubt they are actually in Sweden from what you have said. International companies are used to paying by wire transfer. That is the only way I would accept this order.

If you take the order on a credit card and it's stolen, you won't find out for about a month or month and a half.

This one just has to many red flags to do it other than wire transfer.

[Freelancier]

Yes, this smells like fraud. Why should YOU have to pay when THEY pick the shipping company?

And, yes, just because it's a CC number doesn't mean that the CC number isn't stolen. So... do as the merchant processor says: get the CC phone number from the back of the card. Call the CC bank and confirm that the card is in the name of the person placing the order and that the card's mailing address matches what that person tells you. If it doesn't, tell the customer you need a wire transfer of funds directly into your account for all money up front before shipping. That should end the fraud right there.

[KristineS]

If you Googled the customer and the freight company and didn't find a trace of either, back away now. I can see not finding the customer, that's possible, but not finding the freight company sends up a big warning signal for me. Also, a freight company is a big enough business that you would expect they would have corporate e-mails and not a yahoo e-mail. That sends another warning signal.

Unless you can find a way to get paid for the order which does not allow the customer to do a chargeback on your later, I'd pass. There's just too many warning signs on this one.

[Wozcreative]

I'm very confident this is a fake transaction.

I've had this happen before. I was selling a big ticket item and someone overseas wanted to purchase it.

What they did was they arranged for THEIR shipping company. I got an email and the email was strange, it might have been a yahoo or something.. so that made me google the shipping company. Nothing came up. I googled the dude.. nothing came up. I was told I was going to get "payment" to setup the shipping with that company and do wire transfer right away. I got a fake payment via a paypal email (something funny about it so i also googled it). Called paypal and informed them, they told me it was all fake.

That money never existed. Nor will the fake CC you have been given. I would have been tricked to pay money out of my paypal account, and you are going to be tricked to ship something to them free of charge with a pretend CC to a company that doesn't exist.

Don't do it.


In my case they didn't want my big ticket item, they wanted to get me to pay my own money from my pocket to their "shipping" company. In your case, you are going to be giving away product for free.