[Halk]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

This whole fiasco is just one of several reasons why I don't make online purchases (over $30) from companies that don't have an actual store in the city I live in.

I'm quite relaxed about it. Sometimes there are problems, and each time I'm able to get through them by speaking to the company. This particular episode was a little unusual but even it ended up in a solution.

I work for a bank in a particular capacity, and although I don't deal with credit card or transactional stuff on a day to day basis I'm required to maintain competence in virtually every aspect of retail banking to fulful regulatory requirements so I do understand what should have happened here.

Before I start banking is not the same in the US, the UK or mainland Europe. In fact although Mainland Europe is more integrated than UK>Europe it's incorrect to view it as a homogenised lump. Each EU member country has a different quality of bank. Likewise it may be surprising to hear that the US is a considerable distance from being the world leader in personal/retail banking. The UK in my own opinion is far ahead of the US and ahead of European competition too. As a result our banking sector is probably the most competitive in the world, especially for "premium" customers which would include international customers. As you would expect most people leaving the UK will retain at least some form of banking relationship here. Spain does not have a particularly advanced or competitive banking sector and it really does make sense to bank internationally.

Card not present fraud is huge. For big ticket retailers it's an issue they need to implement policy to avoid. There's literally thousands of fraudsters in North Africa and Central/East/Southern Europe constantly trying to get hold of goods. There's a large number of card details which are usually obtained by restaurant/garage/supermarket staff and passed to fraudsters who replicate the cards. Typically with compromised cards high value items are attempted to be bought which can then be resold. Jewelery, cameras, smartphones, laptops, watches etc. Also for some reason flights, which I've never taken the time to find out about. It's a little counter intuitive since you'd have to be on the plane to use it, and why would you risk it, plus how many flights do you really need? I'm sure there's an explanation though!

In short people who steal card details will target retailers in countries who have lax banking security. That means the second/third world and the USA. Most of our card not present fraud is done in Russia, the far east and the USA, but it isn't limited to just those countries.

B&H policy of not delivering to an address which is not the same country as the card issuer will indeed prevent fraud, but it's very heavy handed. I'm also surprised that they will deliver outside of the USA to an address that doesn't match billing address, that's pretty risky. The policy should be to deliver only to the billing address, even if it is a different country than the one which issued the card. If they want to they can also permit orders to a delivery address which does not match, but it has to be in the same country as the card issuer - it's really up to them to measure the potential for lost sales against the potential for loss. There's almost no risk though by delivering to Spain if the bank is a UK bank, as long as the billing address is the same as delivery.

As to what happened in this particular case I'm surprised the charge actually went on the card. What normally happens is this.

Online purchase.
Authorisation for $xxx.xx placed against cardholders card account.
Authroisation is accepted, the order is then accepted for processing.
Order is processed.
Charge is confirmed and goes against the card.

That's normally what happens, even if the goods are not in stock. The authorisation is Visa/Mastercards way of assuring the retailer that the customer does have credit available to purchase the goods, and in fact invisibly to the customer it reserves the amount. Retailers can reserve any amount they like. Hotels somtimes reserve a higher amount to allow for the porn channel, mini bar, phone charges etc. Sometimes the authorisation goes through for £1, which in most cases is enough to assure payment, since most problems are not related to the amount of the transaction. However in most cases the authorisation goes through for the actual amount of the goods.

In this case B&H should have authorised the funds for the Reader, and then when the order was processed by hand and rejected released the authorisation, or at the very least not claimed it. They eventually release themselves anyway.

Sadly I'm not an expert on how American retailers do card transactions. It may be the case that they authorise and claim the funds at the same time in most cases. I'd be surprised if it was, but it's possible. Certainly Visa and Mastercard won't enforce it on the retailers, they're pretty toothless in that manner (athough they're sharks when it comes to chargebacks).

B&H should be aware that by charging and then refunding an international customer that 99% of the time it will cause the customer to be out of pocket.

All I can think of is in this case is that B&H are assuming that if the card is UK registered and the address in Spain that the customer simply has to be a fraudster so they aren't too concerned about his experience.

What's comical though is the gift voucher. Sorry you can't order from us, here's a discount from the next order you won't be able to place. I do think it was sent in good faith, it's just amusing that B&H didn't realise what the result would be. I'm surpised they didn't refund the $25 instantly. The chance for a company to avoid looking bad and to appear to listen to customer feedback is worth $25 every time.

The end result of all this though should be B&H thanking Columbus for his involvement in this, and changing their policy as a result. I'm quite sure there's a lot of ex-pats in Spain who would order from B&H if they knew it was cost effective, with good service.