What steps do you take to prevent chargebacks?

[XSI-Larry]

I'm just curious what steps others take to prevent chargebacks. Personally we have implemented a few methods:

Fraud Guardian
A physical Mailing to the customer (more than just a welcome letter).


We are looking at what other methods we might be able to add to further mitigate any "Potential" chargebacks.

[sv1hosting]

Fraud Guardian and MaxMind, http://www.maxmind.com

[ProSystemHost]

www.maxmind.com , Is a good company?, I need more information about this Website.

[Galaxy-Hosts]

We use maxmind.com, it is good and integrates with our order sytem.

[nicckii]

You might want to try on this site http://www.fraudlabs.com . Hope it helps. :)

[xAngelx]

Maxmind and good old intuition. Also we don't take CC's without them faxing in both ID and the card so they prove they have physical posession of the card and matching ID that proves it's them.

The odd time we also phone them up if something seems amiss.

[Peter Verrill]

We manually accept every order and don't have any automated order forms.

This will put off most fraud attempts but may put off some buyers...

[northstormnet]

VariLogiX Fraud Prevention Services (http://www.varilogix.com/)

[SageStone]

I'm going to read up on some of these also. :)

[Kustomhost]

i also use maxmind.com very good company

[yahost]

My 1st step was to start using paypal and get a desent merchant account

there are many free ones out there for little or no startup cost

[yahost]

another step actually 2 is:


do a call back verify;

make a policy that the client must say ok too. and post it on the check out.

I would say that most chargebacks are ppl not happy with the services, or thier spouses/ parents are gripin cauz they paid without thier consent. and its just eiasier to do the chargeback.

[leec]

Phone call is the most accurate. Not always reliable but it is more reliable then any fraud check.

[brianoz]

Most people use a mix of the following:
Billing system integration with fraud scoring system that assesses location, card number, phone number and makes sure they all match and aren't high risk areas;
Automated fraud system call back of customers (often only to verify the higher risk ones)
Common sense and intuition (ie Nigerian customers are usually fraudsters; weird requests such as for trial accounts etc)
Manual approval of all orders before card is charged or account hosted, or, verification and cancellation/refund if details look suspicious after order is processed;
Manual callbacks of all orders, or orders that look suspicious (see "common sense" above)


I had a spammer try for a free trial account the other day. Went away very quickly when I hinted in my reply that we have strong anti-spam measures and need some ID to setup trial accounts.

Some billing systems (such as WHMCS) do fraud scoring where they try to assess the risk of an order based on known patterns and warn you of the likely risk factor. This can be good in early days and acts as a backup and training for your common sense/intuition.

[ryan1918]

You will find people learn new ways to defraud your company and I think the best method is what someone else said, do not have automatic orders this will cause a lot of problems if they are out to get you, I would suggest you having them fax the front and back of the credit card, and there license or id if they don't want to you know something is up with the order and I wouldn't even bother processing it, I used to run a large company where we sold web hosting, ircds, bncs, and many other irc related products which had a lot of fraud, so we had to learn from such things.

[JKookServ]

Maxmind is popular and is good

[LaneHost]

Maxmind seems to be very popular around here, and we use it as well. It works quite well, allowing you to get a good idea who is buying from you and their risk by accepting the order.

Using that with phone verification, looking over each order and good common sense should block out most charge backs.

[chrisb345 [DHD]]

personally just make sure that they sign your terms and then they cant chargeback

[onlinesolutions]

Maxmind works well and we just setup voip so we can phone verify orders that are suspicious.

[sng]

I agree we been using Maxmind, and our chargebacks has declined a lot.

[webhostukcom]

']personally just make sure that they sign your terms and then they cant chargeback
I really agree with you...

[DatabaseDesign]

We check a variety of things in house although a phone call pretty much takes care of any possible issues.

[cherylfoster]

I follow the following steps.
1. Always use the AVS and CVV systems for on-line orders
2. Fully describe your refund and return policies on your website.
3. Provide accurate descriptions and images of your products on your
website
4. Be cautious of any order with a foreign shipping address.

[HostGeek]

I would recommend doing a call back as yahost recommended

[ibee]

We use MaxMind and it is one of the best fraud monitoring tool, it is well integrated with our automation systems as well