Wholesale & eBay Forum » Scams, Ripoffs & Fraud » Help! I've been scammed.

Help! I've been scammed.

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  by: jackaxe926
  SaleHoo Junior Member
  18 posts
  

  Help! I've been scammed.

  Posted 24 Jan 07 4:25 pm.

  I have a website selling electronics. This is a highly competitve category to sell in and my sales had shown it in 2006. Between Sept and Nov. 06, I was finally getting some sales. Credit cards were used to make the purchases, they were approved by my CC processor, I verified addresses of the credit card holders. All of these customers requested items to be shipped to a different address than listed as the credit card holder. (this turned out to be a big mistake) After verifing addresses I had the orders drop shipped in about 10 days.
  In December I started getting chargebacks from my credit card processor. Almost all of the purchases were made with stolen credit card numbers. I have lost over $3000.00 from these thieves and has put my business in jeopardy. I know the addresses of two people where items were shipped. I have filed reports with law enforcement, Internet Crime Investgations. I had to file a report with my local police, not the police in the city that the thieves live in. My CC processor has all but blamed me for this scam and don't seem to want to help me. They are holding me responsable for the charges. The credit card companies of the stolen credit cards don't want to bother with solving this crime.
  DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT ELSE I CAN DO?
  I have a few suggestions that I have learned from this incident:
  1. when you get an order paid by credit card, don't trust that the card was approved by the CC processor. Verify the charge yourself with the credit card company. (you would think that you were paying the processor to do this)
  2. Verify the address. Don't ship to another address other than the credit card holder. Under certain circumstances you can if you do an extentsive verification of the person doing the request. Be sure of the address before you ship. Explain to your customer for the delay.
  2. Pay a little extra to have the shipper get a signature and verify the receipt of the order.
  Even if you do all this, you may have to hold your breath for a month or two waiting to see if you've been scammed.
  I know there is such a slim chance of getting some of my loss back, but Does anyone have any ideas?
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  by: jlook41
  SaleHoo Junior Member
  15 posts
  

  Re: Help! I've been scammed.

  Posted 29 Jan 07 1:24 am.

  Hello,jackaxe926,
  
  I, very sorry to hear about your experience.
  Not sure what you could do at this point.
  Im posting to let you know that I had a similar
  experience.
  
  I've heard a lot of stories like yours ,so when I started out in this buiness I desided to us Paypal to try to add a little peace of mind.
  
  I had a customer buy an item from me off ebay,
  he paid by CC through Paypal.
  
  I was contacted by the customer asing me to ship the Item to a diffrent address than the one ebay had confirmed on file.
  
  I was leary, He then insisted that he arrange shipping and sent me by email, a shipping label and commercial invoice.
  Made me even more leary.
  
  Then a second person emailed me and said that they had been scamed and to cancel the order and wanted his money back.
  
  At this point a smelt a rat. So I sat on the item and didn't ship it out.
  
  Three days later my paypal account was limited, pending investigation because they thought someone else had accessed my account.
  I had to reverify my ownership of the account.
  Turns out the customer had a third party somehow steal his CC info off the internet and also accessed his ebay account and bought my item.
  The thief was from Nigeria. Beware of anyone from there !!! not sure there is an honest person in the bunch.
  
  I did end up getting a charge back for the price of the item from the Credit card company. But for some reason I just left the money from that transaction in the paypal account, insted of transferring it to my business account.
  
  I didn't lose anything but the fees for listing the item on ebay ,and still had the item,Thankfully.
  
  Just thought I'd share this with you.
  Good luck ,and I hope somehow you get your money back.
  
  Jlook41
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  by: jimmy_huber
  SaleHoo Master Member
  2919 posts
  

  Re: Help! I've been scammed.

  Posted 29 Jan 07 1:37 am.

  For the fact that you didnt ship to the address listed on the credit card you pretty much screwed yourself out of fighting the chargebacks. This is a bad experience but you will have to take the loss and move on.

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