kingsroadgal

I do a lot of online ordering and have never had this happen before. I ordered a pair of shoes from Quoddy moccasins...expensive-ish shoes, but nothing really extraordinary. My AMEX card was charged on Feb. 10, although shoes would not be delivered for some time as they are "custom made" (but returnable). Today, three days after the charge was made on my AMEX account, I received 2 emails from Quoddy stating that they are canceling the transaction due to "security criteria" indicating a "high risk of fraud". Quoddy stated that I could call them if their determination was in error, and continue my transaction on ANOTHER card. I contacted AMEX, and they said there is nothing on their end that triggered this. And as I stated, the card was charged, and they approved the transaction. The charge is still on my bill.

Of course, I no longer want to deal with Quoddy, as this is ridiculous and poor business practice. I will make sure this charge is taken off my bill. I am curious if anyone has had an experience like this. I NEVER have problems with ANY online ordering. I rarely even return things. So this looks to be a complete error. But where does Quoddy get their information from? Not AMEX, according to them. Curious to me that I get this for a charge which is WELL within my credit limit, and has already been successfully charged. Shipping address matched my billing address as well. Any ideas.

MSPeconomist

Could this be a case of a merchant trying to make you use a credit card with lower transactions costs for them? It sounds like they're saying that they want you to pay with Visa rather than American Express. Or maybe they would prefer something like PayPal or Western Union to make it much harder to return the shoes if they don't work for you.

kingsroadgal

It did occur to me that possibly they wanted a lower transaction fee with another card and came up with this mystery "excuse". They do offer AMEX as a payment option on their site, however, and they did charge the card??!! So it seems like a strange way to go about things. I know, from online research, that other people do return the shoes without problem. Not my intention in any way, and I was very careful to research the sizing to avoid problems. Just a terrible way to treat a great potential customer. Really made me mad as it makes so little sense. Thanks for any other insights!

mia

A few years ago we ordered a refrigerator on sears.com, using a newly issued Chase Ink Bold card. Chase approved the transaction, but Sears put a fraud hold on the order, without notifying us. I discovered the problem by logging into sears.com on Saturday night, but of course the fraud department was closed until Monday. They said the hold was because we were using a business card for a personal purchase, but in the end they approved it.

I would certainly call the merchant to hear their story, and tell them that you will not change the method of payment.

Steve M

There's a whole ecosystem of third-party advisory companies that provide fraud prediction / reduction services to merchants: they're separate from the credit card networks and banks, and separate from the credit bureaus. Each has what they claim to be a superior proprietary method to detect fraud before it's too late.

It doesn't matter that the credit card company authorized the charges. Many companies suffer from chargebacks when they don't have a physical card swipe. What these advisory companies offer is a service that supposedly tells the merchant that there is a high risk of a particular transaction coming back to them as a chargeback in the future.

I've not been caught up in such a situation so far, but if I were, I'd insist on using the original form of payment, or take my business elsewhere, if practical.

kingsroadgal

Interesting. I didn't know this, but suspected something of the sort when Quoddy hinted at some sort of mystery information!!! Well, in this case, the mystery security advisory company sure got the story wrong. Really just more than I wanted to deal with. Just wanted to buy a simple pair of shoes and not get drawn into some convoluted transaction. I like to try to support American-made products, but will pass on Quoddy. Just waiting for them to credit my account, or respond in any way!

newaarondavidson

Quoddy has probably had issues with their customers returning shoes or wanting refunds and Amex getting involved and reversing charges leaving Quoddy without cash. I doubt it is you.

Nicksta

I had this same thing occur to me in December. I ordered 5 GoPro cameras as client gifts. The charge showed as pending, but cancelled out a few days later. I believe AMEX asks the merchant for more info and if they do not provide it (or have it, because its an online order), the charge cancels.

Cardboard55

I've worked on the merchant side of things in similar situations. I obviously have no way to know what's going on with this merchant, but I did want to comment on a couple of things.

First of all, it's not surprising that they wouldn't tell you what caused the order to get flagged, even if they did know. Over the years I've had many situations where a true fraudster will email or call (or FAX!!!) to try to get information about why something was flagged, in an attempt to get it approved (and get future orders through). Yes, security through obscurity shouldn't be relied upon, but it does add one more hurdle and slows down the dumber fraudsters. You're not going to get any merchant or bank who knows what they're doing to tell you the details of why something was flagged. Anyway, typically an order will be flagged for some combination of reasons that make it look suspicious, it's rarely just one thing. And even if the reps you talk to have some general sense of the kinds of things that cause an order to get held, they may not have visibility into the specifics of your order (some systems just spit out a score without details).

Also, my experience is that American Express is much, much harder on merchants in the case of chargebacks for online purchases. This means that in the case that fraud occurs, if it happens on an American Express card, we're MUCH more likely to end up eating the money than if it's on a Mastercard or Visa. In our case, we don't treat American Express any differently because of that, but I wouldn't be shocked if some merchants are more picky about Amex orders because they feel their risk is higher.

Anyway, I'm annoyed when stuff like this happens too, and my stance is generally that merchants should err on the side of letting through borderline orders rather than risk inconveniencing legitimate customers (especially when it's just a couple hundred bucks), but every business has to make their own risk calculations.

traveler9020

In the time you've taken to call Amex and post this on Flyertalk, you could have just called Quoddy and had this cleared up. Just call them.

Often1

Quoddy is a long-time storied merchant. It is highly unlikely that Quoddy chooses to accept Amex and then goes through the whole rigamarole of asserting fraud to get you to use Visa. If that's what they wanted, they would not accept Amex, may don't, and you would either use Visa/MC or nothing.

Don't take this personally, it's just that something about a combination of factors has flagged your transaction through third-party software and Quoddy assesses the fraud risk as greater than the profit from the sale.

Same thing with gas stations using 3rd party services to flag when a customer is required to pay inside rather than using a self-service pump with card reader at the pump.

This could be as simple as you having reentered the card information 2-3 times due to typos.

I would not make a big deal of it. Call Quoddy, don't get on a high horse about being insulted and either forget the order, give them another CC, or answer their concern about the Amex card.

kingsroadgal

I was in meetings and emailed them in the morning and they didn't respond by the end of business (I am on west coast, and they are east coast, but they still had ample opportunity to respond). I assume they are closed for the long weekend now. Personally, I was just curious about how often this happens, since it has never happened to me on much higher-end transactions.

alelex

When I had my little shop online many years ago, when I received a payment confirmation from my cc partner, I got a few informations with the purchaser location, ip, and "risk fraud %" (I think it was the amount charged, the location of the transaction, the shipping location etc etc etc). The transaction was approved, but if the % was lower than 60 or 70% They advised me to ask for copy of id or proof of real card.

I was only selling small pda cases and stuff like that.

From my experience, the ip location and shipping address must match usually, like one week ago, i got my homedepot order canceled (they already had my amex on file with a lot of approved order) because I made the order from Switzerland with a shipping in GA. Same for gift card (by email) I wanted to offer (swiss ip ordering us gift card). (what I did then, is using "hma" to change my location and do the order successfully again.

But one thing, I NEVER send picture of ID or credit card to merchants online.

DallaStarwooDelta

Agreed. I took a quick look at their shopping cart and it shows they use Shopify Payments which has a set price for all cards regardless of type.

Also something like the order coming from an IP address in a different country that is inconsistent with the credit card billing address country would cause a warning. This would happen if you place the order from work (and your IT network is outsourced to a company like CGI in Canada)

kingsroadgal

Actually, that is a possibility. Not sure where I placed the order from, but now things are starting to make some sense, although it's something I have never considered before. Nice to know things might not just be totally random! I have still not gotten any response from Quoddy! They are not too concerned apparently! Oh well. There are lots of shoes in the world!