Credit Card rejected by customer

[Russell]

We recently had a customer contact the credit card company and say they didn’t order from us. This was a delivery order. They made this claim twice in a two week period. The credit card company contacted us about a month later with the claim and wanted proof of the order. Well I sent copies of the signed credit card and a copy of our cash register receipt. Then this week (another month has past) and now they want a copy of the imprint of the credit card. My question is, do any of your drivers carry one of those imprint machines with them on deliveries?

Thanks,

Russell

 

[marbles_2]

Long ago we had problems with people using credit cards on deliveries and then it would turn out the card was stolen and a chargeback with fees would show up on my statement. Often these would be big orders and mysteriously there would be no one living there when we get back to the location with police. We responded by flat-out only doing credit cards in-house, and deliveries must be cash or checks with ID (and we rarely have trouble with checks). It kind of iritates me that there’s not a lot you can recover from food that’s been consumed, unlike washing machines or TV sets that can be confiscated. Also, the credit card processing fee is higher if you don’t scan the card so we just decided to skip it. We might lose a few customers but if I know who they are I’ll even accept a mail-in payment or “come by later” or something.

 

[system]

The vast majority of (if not all) pizza delivery drivers do not carry card imprint machines with them. There are cell phone type card scanners, but I imagine that solution is expensive.

I took 10 deliveries today. 9 of them were CC (or debit) orders. One was a check. Not accepting CC’s may be hurting your business more than not accepting the risk and expense of taking them.

 

[Napoli_Pizza]

If your cc machine used thermal paper, the driver could ask to see the card and by rubbing a pen over the paper and card, imprint the card onto your copy of the cc receipt.

Personally, I have had this problem once with a customer. Found out someone was using a stolen number.
Don’t let this one problem customer deter you from taking credit cards. If its a consistantly troublesome issue with other customers, then thats another story…

 

[ADpizzaguy]

this is why it is important for your drivers and cashiers to get a signature on every credit card transaction. But really, what percentage of your total credit cards does this happen on? I’m sure it is a very small number, these days more and more people are using debit/credit cards and not accepting either would hurt a lot financially. Another sollution is asking to see their idenitfication to make sure the name on the credit card and their ID matches. And another thing, don’t credit card machines imprint the credit card?

 

[Registered_Guest]

ADpizzaguy:

this is why it is important for your drivers and cashiers to get a signature on every credit card transaction.

Getting a signature makes no difference unless the signature is on an imprinted slip. Having a signature on a slip that was printed from a keyed in transaction means nothing. Check your merchant agreement.

Bottom line is this - unless you have your driver imprint the card at the door, verify ID and get a signature that matches - you will lose the chargeback. Even if you have all of that, I’d say there is still at 50/50 chance that you will lose.

When I get chargeback notices in the mail (request for transaction information) - I find that customer in my POS, mark them as credit card fraud - and throw the request in the trash. I stopped wasting my time on that a long time ago - was frustrating.

No one has any interest in stopping CC fraud - because the only person out any money is the merchant. The customer and the CC company loses nothing.

 

[bodegahwy]

If you delivered to the credit card billing address you have a decent chance of fighting and winning. Other than that, forget it unless you have either a magnetic swipe or an imprint that proves at least that the card was present.

 

[Registered_Guest]

bodegahwy:

If you delivered to the credit card billing address you have a decent chance of fighting and winning. Other than that, forget it unless you have either a magnetic swipe or an imprint that proves at least that the card was present.

I’ve tried disputing even those - however you will always lose “unauthorized use of card” - "It wasn’t me who ordered it was my sister (brother, son, daughter, drunk friend, etc.).

I’m looking at my latest letter from my processor - a card that was “unauthorized use”. They sent me the entire complaint - showing other places it was also “unauthorized used”. 5 other pizza places are on the “screwed” list. Total of about $250.

I’ll add too that a swiped transaction can be disputed and you will lose too. Again “unauthorized use of card”. Can you prove (to the processor) that it was actually the person that gave you the card? Nope. Here comes your chargeback. Swiped chargebacks are pretty uncommon - but I think I’ve had at least 2 or 3 in the past year.

“Hey Mr. CC processor - I have video of a person using this card - you want to look and see if it was them or not?” “Mr. Pizza store owner, we don’t care about your video - here is your chargeback. Have a nice day!”

 

[stebby1]

Registered Guest:

“Hey Mr. CC processor - I have video of a person using this card - you want to look and see if it was them or not?” “Mr. Pizza store owner, we don’t care about your video - here is your chargeback. Have a nice day!”

I was thinking the same thing. I wonder if you were to use a camera to get a picture of the drivers license when they come in to prove they actually made the charge.

 

[Registered_Guest]

stebby1:

Registered Guest:

“Hey Mr. CC processor - I have video of a person using this card - you want to look and see if it was them or not?” “Mr. Pizza store owner, we don’t care about your video - here is your chargeback. Have a nice day!”

I was thinking the same thing. I wonder if you were to use a camera to get a picture of the drivers license when they come in to prove they actually made the charge.

I doubt they would even care about that. Why? Because, as you know, the only person out any money in a chargeback situation is the mechant. No one else has any interest in helping you prove that it was a legit charge.

I’ve been through the whole gamit of things over the past few years with this stuff. None of it led to any resolution of anything. I’ve even had the police involved - and while they agreed that fraud was going on, there was nothing they could do about it because of certain technicalities. The best thing that ever came from involving the police was that the guys trying to rip me off were arrested for other outstanding warrants.

 

[Charles]

A local pizza restaurant just has the driver place the carbonless merchant copy over the credit card and rub it with their key for an imprint. Personally, I would rather just blacklist that address.

 

[bodegahwy]

So far we have never had a disputed charge. Ever.

 

[stebby1]

I wonder how hard it would be for the credit card machines to be programmed to require a drivers license swipe to finalize the transaction?

 

[Russell]

Hey all thanks for your replys. This is the only one we have had in 4 years but it is such blatant fraud that it really pi** me off. I will let you know how it ends.

Russell

 

[ADpizzaguy]

stebby1:

I wonder how hard it would be for the credit card machines to be programmed to require a drivers license swipe to finalize the transaction?

Probably not that hard at all, it would probably be more practical to use a social security number though, or something like a pin number specifically for phone transactions.

 

[Wizzle_Wassell]

Our ‘cardholder not present’ process allows us to check the registered address of the card and as part of the authorisation process the machine tells us before we OK the transaction.

Our CC process is as follows:

1. new customers - delivery MUST be made to registered address. We ask them before we take the transaction - if they tell us its not registered at that address we politiely decline (no exceptions) and ask them to pay cash - I’ve lost a few transaction this way I know.
2. Once someone has placed at least 5 orders with us - we will accept cards not registered at that address i.e. visitors etc
3. We only deliver to addresses not outside addresses.
4. The only issue we have with this is with hotels - we ask for the room number and we tell them we will verify this with the hotel before we deliver. We call back and that way if we are short we can at least track the customer via the hotel - so far I’ve only had one issue which actually the driver never checked the card (bet the customer never had it). Once or twice we’ve caught people out i.e. we ring the hotel and no one is in that room.

As part of the process (while we wait for the transaction to be authorised) we tell the customer 'please keep your card handy, the driver will check the card, get a signiture from you and give you a copy of the receipt. Occassionally people will change their mind to pay cash or hand up on us during the process.

Drivers are responsible for checking the card and checking the signiture.

So far the only chargebacks I’ve had are purely where people have NOT followed this process. Any chargeback which occurs due to not following procedure (currently 100%) has been taken from staff bonus - funnily enough this makes them think more.

A bigger problem for me is prank orders (even with call backs) nothing more irritating than doing a callback to a mobile which check out, then finding out it they don’t live at that address then getting some smart a**e on the end of the phone laughing at you!

 

[pizzaguy]

Registered Guest:

bodegahwy:

If you delivered to the credit card billing address you have a decent chance of fighting and winning. Other than that, forget it unless you have either a magnetic swipe or an imprint that proves at least that the card was present.

I’ve tried disputing even those - however you will always lose “unauthorized use of card” - "It wasn’t me who ordered it was my sister (brother, son, daughter, drunk friend, etc.).

I’m looking at my latest letter from my processor - a card that was “unauthorized use”. They sent me the entire complaint - showing other places it was also “unauthorized used”. 5 other pizza places are on the “screwed” list. Total of about $250.

I’ll add too that a swiped transaction can be disputed and you will lose too. Again “unauthorized use of card”. Can you prove (to the processor) that it was actually the person that gave you the card? Nope. Here comes your chargeback. Swiped chargebacks are pretty uncommon - but I think I’ve had at least 2 or 3 in the past year.

“Hey Mr. CC processor - I have video of a person using this card - you want to look and see if it was them or not?” “Mr. Pizza store owner, we don’t care about your video - here is your chargeback. Have a nice day!”

I think if I was you I would change from who ever you are using to process your credit cards. If you swipe the card and get a signature and it matches what is on the back of the card you should never lose in a dispute. In 9 years I have had 2 charge backs one was because we accidently chrged a customer twice and the other was from someone that said they didnt order but when we sent in all the slips with his signature on it and till reciepts we won.

 

[Dox47]

When I was a driver in Seattle, we went round and round with charge-backs, no matter what we did the credit card company would always wriggle out of paying. We took imprints, matched up phone numbers and addresses, checked IDs, everything they told us to do and we still always seemed to get the shaft. Knowing the guy I worked for, he could have been using a cut-rate processor or some sort of low cost high risk type of service arrangement, it would have been in character for him. I did a bit of research into it on my own, and what I was led to believe is that there is a tiered system of processing service levels, trading off lower monthly payments for higher liability in cases of charge-back. I suppose their is an optimum level for different businesses depending upon the market, I just know in my case it would have been worth it to pay more rather than eat several hundred dollars a month in charge-backs, not to mention the attendant aggravation.

 

[Registered_Guest]

pizzaguy:

Registered Guest:

bodegahwy:

If you delivered to the credit card billing address you have a decent chance of fighting and winning. Other than that, forget it unless you have either a magnetic swipe or an imprint that proves at least that the card was present.

I’ve tried disputing even those - however you will always lose “unauthorized use of card” - "It wasn’t me who ordered it was my sister (brother, son, daughter, drunk friend, etc.).

I’m looking at my latest letter from my processor - a card that was “unauthorized use”. They sent me the entire complaint - showing other places it was also “unauthorized used”. 5 other pizza places are on the “screwed” list. Total of about $250.

I’ll add too that a swiped transaction can be disputed and you will lose too. Again “unauthorized use of card”. Can you prove (to the processor) that it was actually the person that gave you the card? Nope. Here comes your chargeback. Swiped chargebacks are pretty uncommon - but I think I’ve had at least 2 or 3 in the past year.

“Hey Mr. CC processor - I have video of a person using this card - you want to look and see if it was them or not?” “Mr. Pizza store owner, we don’t care about your video - here is your chargeback. Have a nice day!”

I think if I was you I would change from who ever you are using to process your credit cards. If you swipe the card and get a signature and it matches what is on the back of the card you should never lose in a dispute. In 9 years I have had 2 charge backs one was because we accidently chrged a customer twice and the other was from someone that said they didnt order but when we sent in all the slips with his signature on it and till reciepts we won.

Matches the signature on the back? :lol: 75% of the cards I’ve seen in the past 2 years have “SEE ID” written in the signature block. 20% of them are simply blank. The ones that are signed don’t give you any idea of the persons actual signature to make a match. Heck, even my own signature on my cards don’t really match what I sign on the slip - mostly because the slip has a lot more room to sign that a 1/4" strip.

I’m curious pizzaguy, what do you do with the kid who comes in to pick up an order while his mother sits in the car out front - and he has her card? Or the guy who comes in with his wifes card? Or the lady who comes in with three different cards from her co-workers who is picking up their lunch orders?