When Your Customers StealWritten by Chris Malta
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Turns out that a woman in West Virginia had inadvertently left her credit card on a checkout counter at a large department store. A clerk at that store picked up card, and used it to make several online purchases. The clerk was having purchases delivered to a vacant house RIGHT NEXT DOOR to his own. This guy must have left his brain cell in ‘fridge that day. The above are both good examples of how WE, as Netrepreneurs, get “scammed”. Maybe I’ve been luckier than most, but it has not happened to me all that many times. We caught guy who was reselling our Directory on EBay. What we did was this: The person who purchased bootleg Directory was naturally very upset. I told him that if I were able to catch this person and confirm what had happened, I would see to it that his purchase was made good, and he would receive full access to our REAL Directory. He immediately sent me all information he had on auctioneer. Sure enough, auctioneer was a customer of ours. I notified EBay’s fraud department (SafeHarbor@EBay.com). I then contacted perpetrator and elaborated on penalties of copyright infringement. He pulled his auction listings immediately. We came to an agreement for restitution that I was satisfied with. I suggested to him that he refund other people to whom he had already sold bootlegs, before THEY came after him. The police in West Virginia caught store clerk. They set up surveillance at vacant house next door, and waited for more of his online purchases to arrive. After case was prosecuted, we got jewelry back. All we lost was a few dollars in shipping charges. If you’re in business, you’re a potential target. Protect yourself as best you can. Use an AVS system when you accept credit cards. Confirm large-dollar purchases before processing them. When people charge thousands of dollars to buy large-ticket items from my sites, I always contact that customer to verify purchase. I caught two stolen cards that way, BEFORE I got burned. Watch for multiple purchases of same item by same person. They’ll end up being re-sold out of trunk of a car, and you’ll be stuck paying REAL card owner back. Be aware of protection programs like EBay’s Safe Harbor. And if you think you’re being ripped off, don’t just wait around to hear from someone about it. Contact bank that issued card, and police in area you think perpetrator purchased from. They take credit card fraud very seriously. Who knows? Maybe someday, someone will write a news story about it. Chris Malta WorldWide Brands, Inc. For more information, visit http://www.YouCanDropship.com
Chris Malta is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. He has worked with computer Systems for 18 years. He's been involved in eCommerce systems, networking and site design for more than 6 years. He's taught college-level computer courses in Western NY. He developed The Drop Ship Source Directory, and he and his partners at Worldwide Brands, Inc., publish the Directory and run eCommerce sites of their own using Drop Shipping as their only business method.
| | Should I Offer Free Shipping?Written by Chris Malta
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But wait a minute. Where is Shopper right now? Let’s see, they visited you first, because you have Free Shipping. Then they went somewhere else to compare, and found that overall price was about same. What’s going to be easier for that instant-gratification junkie? Click! That’s sound of someone else’s button. Far-fetched, you think? Not really. I’d rather be last site someone compares prices on than first. The Shopper finds it easier, all things being roughly equal, to push button where they ARE than go back and push button where they WERE. When you have free shipping, people ALWAYS want to go elsewhere to compare prices, to see how much they’re saving. We ran free shipping on one of sites for a few months, and we were less than impressed. We got an increased hit count, but it didn’t make us rich with hundreds of extra orders, and we really got nailed on some of bigger shipping charges. We’re still trying to weed those two words out of all little nooks and crannies in our site that we stuffed them into. So, in my humble opinion, leave free shipping to big department stores that buy hundreds of each item and get massive discounts. They can afford it. We can’t. What we CAN do, as smaller stores, is build cleaner sites that don’t have 80 million items stuffed into each page. We can personalize our service by being more responsive to Shopper’s questions and concerns. We can sell slightly more unique items that big guys don’t want to “waste” their precious warehouse space on. We can specialize, and market to a single niche. There are any number of ways to find success without getting tangled up in a gimmick that is marginal, at best. Chris Malta WorldWide Brands, Inc. For more information, visit http://www.YouCanDropship.com
Chris Malta is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. He has worked with computer Systems for 18 years. He's been involved in eCommerce systems, networking and site design for more than 6 years. He's taught college-level computer courses in Western NY. He developed The Drop Ship Source Directory, and he and his partners at Worldwide Brands, Inc., publish the Directory and run eCommerce sites of their own using Drop Shipping as their only business method.
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