High % of Declines

[ericbramlett]

Hey guys. I'm new here, but hoping to learn more. I have an ecommerce site that's getting ~5-10 transactions/day. Unfortunately, about 25% of them are declined due to AVS (address verification system.) This seemed extraordinarily high to me. Is it a very high percentage of declines? Any ideas on what, if anything, could be wrong? We're running oscommerce w/ authorize.net.

Thanks!

Eric

[BasicECommerce]

I'm not sure what the average rate for this is. But do some analysis of the occurances/addresses. Are these declined orders international? Or show any locational trends? Might be fraud and you should be thankful.

OR, is your site really gift focused? People may be buying gifts to send to the recipient or to their office so the recipient doesnt get a sneak peak. If this is the case, it seems like you should call you verification company to straighten it out.

-BEC

[marc77]

Well, I would be happy that your address verification works so good - otherwise you surely had lost much money in the meantime.

Without knowing your website, it is hard to give an advise, but you may ensure that during checkout you really ask for the postal address of the credit card holder (and if you allow different shipping addresses, state this explicitly).