A Heads up re B&H Photo Video for non U.S. buyers

[bandhphoto]

Originally Posted by columbus

My Visa account today is showing a provisional entry from B&H Photo Video for a refund of $25, dated 14th October, as awaiting confirmation.

You're welcome.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by astra

I hope everybody learned from this unfortunate event.

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.

[astra]

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.

You are probably very fortunate to have a good choice of online companies in your city.
I have zero in my town.
I purchase online for 8 years now. I have never had any problems. I buy from shops all over the world. I do apply a good measure of common sense and do my best to avoid dodgy companies but credit card is my safe guard in the worst case scenario. However, so far, I have never had to use it this way. Only to purchase things

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by astra

You are probably very fortunate to have a good choice of online companies in your city.
I have zero in my town.
I purchase online for 8 years now. I have never had any problems. I buy from shops all over the world. I do apply some common sense and doing my best to avoid dodgy companies but credit card is my safe guard.

That's true, I do. I live in a major US city and make online purchases from stores like Costco, REI, Walmart, Best Buy, Staples, Target, etc.

I definitely will not buy from those east coast electronics firms. I don't trust them.

So far, I haven't made any purchases from Amazon. I usually find that Walmart has similar inventory; and many times, lower prices.

[astra]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

That's true, I do. I live in a major US city and make online purchases from stores like Costco, REI, Walmart, Best Buy, Staples, Target, etc.

I definitely will not buy from those east coast electronics firms. I don't trust them.

So far, I haven't made any purchases from Amazon. I usually find that Walmart has similar inventory; and many times, lower prices.

Over here, Amazon is usually the cheapest choice. I think 80% of my online purchases are from Amazon.
They also have the best return policy. If you can send it by post, then all you have to do is print the label, stick it to the box and send it back free of charge. A friend of mine bought 42" LCD. 2 weeks down the line his wife made up her mind that she dislikes it, so he arranged with Amazon a pick up day and time. No questions. No delivery payment or payment for sending back. I am not aware of anything as convenient as Amazon in the UK.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by astra

Over here, Amazon is usually the cheapest choice. I think 80% of my online purchases are from Amazon.
They also have the best return policy. If you can send it by post, then all you have to do is print the label, stick it to the box and send it back free of charge. A friend of mine bought 42" LCD. 2 weeks down the line his wife made up her mind that she dislikes it, so he arranged with Amazon a pick up day and time. No questions. No delivery payment or payment for sending back. I am not aware of anything as convenient as Amazon in the UK.

Where one lives is definitely a major factor for purchases and I'm glad you haven't had any problems.

[vaughnmr]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

I definitely will not buy from those east coast electronics firms. I don't trust them.

In many cases you are probably right, and I wouldn't limit the distrust to just the east coast of USA, either. Lots of dishonest people out there in the "Wild, Wild West" of the internet.

My other "hobby" is photography, and from many years of experience I can tell you that B&H is one of the best vendors in the business, ask any pro. I'm glad the OP got his CC snafu taken care of, hope he thanks them for the effort they put into resolving the issue. (When was the last time anyone here saw a comment from a large publisher!).

[vaughnmr]

Consumer Reports just rated B&H Photo one of the best online vendors for electronics...

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by astra

Over here, Amazon is usually the cheapest choice. I think 80% of my online purchases are from Amazon.
They also have the best return policy. If you can send it by post, then all you have to do is print the label, stick it to the box and send it back free of charge. A friend of mine bought 42" LCD. 2 weeks down the line his wife made up her mind that she dislikes it, so he arranged with Amazon a pick up day and time. No questions. No delivery payment or payment for sending back.

Tell your friend to take care. If you make a habit of returning "big ticket" items, Amazon will eventually get fed up with you and close your account.

[astra]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Tell your friend to take care. If you make a habit of returning "big ticket" items, Amazon will eventually get fed up with you and close your account.

He doesn't do it every day. He did it once as far as I know. He didn't buy a new one yet.

I have returned to Amazon 4-5 times too. Although inexpensive items (£40 the most expensive).
I think I know where you are coming from, but you have to really abuse the system to get this kind of response from Amazon. I believe the guy who was banned and posted about it over here a couple of years ago got it coming. Thanks to people like him the good system is being abused and the rest of the customers suffer.

[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.

[bandhphoto]

Originally Posted by Halk

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.

Thank you for your thoughtful post. In fact B&H specifically does NOT assume anything at all, and I think it's apparent from my continued participation in this thread we're quite concerned.

We excersize prudence and caution for a number of reasons, particularly with so-called card-absent transactions and most particularly with international transactions where the retailer has almost no protection if it is victimized by fraud. We have an ethical obligation to our customers and a contractual obligation to our merchant banks to deter credit card fraud and identity theft. Part of this effort is a set of rules designed to make shopping here as simple and straightforward and safe as possible for as many customers as possible while simultaneously protecting ourselves and our customers from the scourge of credit card fraud and identity theft. Our rules for holders of non-USA credit cards are designed to balance these two aims -- ease of shopping and safety -- as ably as possible. But, when forced to choose between ease and safety, we feel it wise to lean towards the latter.

Is the system perfect? It is not. We examine it frequently and modify it as often as we're able to do so. Our new international business initiatives team has a particular interest in this and as we progress we hope to be able to make the ease of shopping part greater without compromising the safety aspects at all.

[HarryT]

Hi Henry,

I'm sure that we all appreciate the need for caution. As a card merchant myself, I'm all too well aware of the number of "scammers" there are around. I would never, for example, accept an order with a shipping address in Nigeria. I'm sure that there are honest people in Nigeria, but unfortunately they don't seem to want to buy my products!

The problem in this case was perhaps simply that you were unaware how common it is for people to live in one EU country, and have a bank account in another. There is complete "freedom of residence" within the EU, and it's VERY common for people to move around. The nearest equivalent I can give in American terms is to perhaps think of the number of Canadians who visit Florida for the winter. I'm sure that you wouldn't automatically assume that someone with a card billing address in Canada and a shipping address in Florida was up to no good!

Perhaps you could consider relaxing your restrictions for customers within the EU? I do assure you that the situation described is all too common.

[OldGunbunny]

Originally Posted by columbus

I did re contact them before posting here to give them a chance to correct it, that was when I got the * Tough! Not our problem* response.

In that case - time to escalate......

New York City Office of Consumer Affairs

[bandhphoto]

Originally Posted by OldGunbunny

In that case - time to escalate...

Perhaps you overlooked the fact you're replying to a post from September and failed to note that the customer has since received a refund and both the customer and B&H consider the matter resolved.