Stolen CC, who eats the charges?

[julian@mrc]

I just found this forum and am looking for some answers,but seems I can not get a straight answer from the Bank,My processor, and the Police.
10/25/2007
I own and operate a small business, and recently recived an phone order for an item totaling $6000 dollars. The customer gave me his name,address,phone number,CVV number and seemed totaly legit. I processed the card over at the terminal and it told me to call for phone authorization. I called my CC terminal porcessors verification system, they confirmed the card as being good and gave me an authorization number to punch into the machine.The charge went through and i shipped the items that day thinking was covered with the phone authorization.
10 mins after the authorization in fact, the customer called me back and said his bank called him to verify the purchase was being made.
At this point i was not at all suspicious..

10/29/2007
I get a fax from my CC processor stating the funds were being held and were under investigation by their department.

10/31/2007
My CC processor calls me and tells me the phone number I gave them for the customer was no longer in service.Now I start getting worried..I call the customer, and sure enough th enumber is no good.

11/1/07
My CC processor calls me and tells me the charge was fraudulent and the money was being returned to the Bank issuing the card, and that I was basically out of the merchandise, despite them authorizing the card 6 days earlier..


My question is, what recourse do I have at this point?Am I really out the merchandise???There is ZERO liability on my CC processor for authorizing the card? If this is the case, what is the point of a business taking a CC??

[JEccles]

Unfortunately, we small e-commerce merchants are the ones who get stuck when this happens. Have you tried tracing the package? Where exactly was it delivered to and was it signed for?

[Corey Bryant]

Unfortunately it is your job to vet / scrub the transaction. You did some things pretty good (i.e. calling the customer, etc) but there are somethings that you left out (i.e. verifying the ZIP code, area code, etc).

There are a lot of things that can be done as well to help with the transaction - but it also depends on the chargeback reason code. Everyone involved (except the consumer on this one), will eat the lost money at some point by processors / card associations / issuing banks raising rates, etc

I would ask - did you request a signed authorization letter from the consumer? Did you request the shipper get a signature when delivered?