Getting defrauded and dealing with it

Cheekykid

Cheekykid

Cheekykid

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I run a small shop online and I recently got scammed out of £350. It's not a substancial amount for me but it still hurts.
Basically i received payment, I shipped the items and couple of days later I got charged back by the bank due to an allegedly fraudelent transaction. I tried to alert the police and they told me and there is nothing of value that they could do as what matters isn't who got the items but who ordered them and that's very difficult to prove and takes time. After all the receptient of goods could be a legit person who bought something from ebay and the scammer scammed a shop online and had them send the items to him directly. I kind of understand police's position on this. Needless to say the banks can't help either and I have to take the hit.

I just can't believe how easy these scammers can get away. Anyone has similar experiences? Any idea if there is a way of chasing them? (without spending tons of money)
 
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Cheekykid said:
I tried to alert the police and they told me and there is nothing of value that they could do as what matters isn't who got the items but who ordered them and that's very difficult to prove and takes time.
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So they just won't bother investigating a case of fraud as it takes too much time?
 
Pestilence said:
So they just won't bother investigating a case of fraud as it takes too much time?
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Police have limited resources and surely time is a very important element considering how many frauds they have to deal with every day.
Also I really don't how the law behind these things and even if they visited what could they really do?
 
Cheekykid said:
Police have limited resources and surely time is a very important element considering how many frauds they have to deal with every day.
Also I really don't how the law behind these things and even if they visited what could they really do?
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It doesn't matter. It's their job. YOU run a business - it's your lifeline. YOUR business has been defrauded in an illegal manner, and the authorities should be offering you assistance to reclaim your losses and see the perpetrator brought to justice before they defraud someone else.

Every police investigation takes time and effort - they can't just shrug their shoulders and say "nah...too busy!".
 
There are various services you can sign up to that will check credit card details and provide a score to show how likely an order is to be fraudulent, no idea what the cost of this is, but I imagine once someone know they can order from your site with fake/stolen details it won't be long till other people start doing the same.
 
There is far too much accepted these days it seems, everyone just puts up with it..i lost my wallet a bit back, fair enough these things happen.. someone decided to use my card to top up there o2 phone.

When i spoke to o2 they were surprised to find an address registered to the phone that had been topped up, they said if i got in contact with the police they could ask them for the information they had on file, i did all this and explained the situation to the police.

A YEAR later i got a phone call from some police officer telling me there was nothing they could do
 
The Police will not investigate this type of fraud. It takes too long and they will never find the culprit.

A fraudster has obtained a legitimate persons credit card details, possibly by intercepting their post.

They have ordered items at your store and had them delivered them to another address. The fraudster will not live at this address, and you may find that the address is not occupied. It will be an address where intercepting goods is easy.

Lesson learned OP, do not allow delivery elsewhere as it sounds like your business is not large enough to cover losses on this type of fraud.
 
Cheekykid said:
Would the courier company help at all?
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I highly expect that if the courier driver remembers anything, it will that the recipient of the goods was probably outside waiting. You might get a description, but it will be worthless.

I guarantee that that address has been used lots of times. You, other shops, mobile phone companies, the works.

Like I said, it may be a legitimate persons address who is not involved. They will find out soon enough though as they will be getting random mail, if not already.

It is how they operate unfortunately. Very hard to catch.

I worked on a case for a mobile telecomms company recently and the fraudsters were driving round in vans collecting all the goods at different addresses where they knew the occupier would be out and had timed deliveries on all the goods.
 
can you get insurance for this kind of thing? i'd like to start a shop soon (though it's nothing that i'd imagine fraudsters would buy) and am now concerned about how you'd stop this sort of thing from happening.
 
Mammalian said:
can you get insurance for this kind of thing? i'd like to start a shop soon (though it's nothing that i'd imagine fraudsters would buy) and am now concerned about how you'd stop this sort of thing from happening.
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well in this case only shipping the to registered address only would be a good start..

it sux that the op lost his goods but its way too easy to nick a card and get a package sent to an empty building... no evidence and highly unlikley the person will ever get caught..
 
It is widely accepted to have the first purchase to be delivered only to the registered address of the card and then all subsequent delivers can be where they choose.

This way everyone wins.
 
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