Busted... Caught a liar today and stopped a chargeback
 

For those who don't know, I work as a customer service rep for TD Visa here in Kanada. Now before you all start to flame me for my affiliation with Visa, I work helping customers and I have nothing to do whatsoever with merchants or regulations concerning them.
However, I do have something to do with the chargeback process. When a cardholder calls to dispute a charge, I'm the one who outlines the chargeback procedures to him.
Being an adult webmaster, I know all about third party processors, and I know that when a guy has a charge from ccbill, globill, ibill, etc. he can go to the customer service site, put in certain pieces of information and see all the information regarding his charge.
so when cardholders call to dispute these charges, i first advise them to go to the customer service site and see for themselves. i've had people check it while they were on the phone with me and they're response is usually along the lines of "oooooh yeah... i remember that" or "oooh... that must be my husband/roommate/kid/etc". So I avoid chargebacks that way. Maybe I've even saved some of you a couple of bucks. And I'm doing my best to educate all my co-workers on this info as well.

Anyways, long story short (or maybe a little longer):
The guy sitting next to me took a call today from a guy trying to dispute a charge from ccBill on his statement. The guy was insisted that he never signed up for anything on the net. I over heard the call and got my co-worker to put him on hold.
We looked at his customer profile and luckily we had his email address because he uses our web banking service. So armed with his email address and cardnumber, we visited ccbill to check his account info. Sure enough, his name came up and he has a membership to PornKing which he started Oct. 10.
Let me tell you, he ended the call as quickly as possible when my co-worker fed him the info and offered to remind him of his username and password...

hey i'd like to talk to you can you hit me up on icq? my number is 120482156 my name is steph...thanks :)

good stuff

Kanada???

You are our savior. :)

OMG. That is hilarious. Good one. 2nd best thing I've read all day.

The thing is a one time charge back on an adult site is fine, or the guy who occaisionally charges back 10-20 minutes after he joined.

But how many of these guys just constantly charge back?

And why is it not possible to give each card another PIN number to verify the person using it is the person that owns it?

Nice :thumbsup

I love you visa chargeback people


"we will investigate it and send you out a form 10 weeks after you dont care anymore"

"mail it back to us and we will pretend to give a shit and let you know 2 months later"

I think all chargeback request phone calls should be directed to you

Charly: We're working on a program called Verified by Visa were cardholders will have a pin number to do online transactions. The program is currently being tested on a few sites.

Pipecrew: I know it may seem like that to you, but when we do a chargeback, we have to order documents from the merchant before we can send you an affadavit... if the merchant takes long in complying with our requests, there's nothing we can really do aside from enforce time limits.

Brown Bear: I'd take calls like that all day if I could. Unfortunately, I can only deal with TD Visa calls. My girlfriend works for CIBC Visa and she's been doing the same thing.

how many calls a day do you usually get from people about porn sites?

good job

on average, i only get 1-2 calls a day. but when i hear a co-worker on a call like that, i'll tell em what to do. unfortunately, we don't always have all the necessary information to access the account information...
but i'm doing my best to educate all my co-workers on what i do, so as opposed to only me doing this, there'll be 100 people in my call center alone doing this.

charly:

I once saw a faxed credit statement from a customer that had TWENTY (that's right) charges disputed, and he had been refunded by his bank for every one. They were all adult sites, the bank had let him charge back 20 internet charges and keep all his normal ones, i.e. Home Depot. We spoke to the bank and the lady actually said, and I quote...

"Oh, I know him. He's a good boy. He wouldn't be joining any adult websites."

It varies by card issuer, but charging back is about the easiest thing you can do these days. The biggest hypocrisy is that by charging back you are admitting that someone fradulently used your card. If it is a debit card the procedure is to destroy your card, dispute charges, and re-issue a completely new card. This is why the overall chargebacks on debit are almost negligible.

But when you say to your VISA/bank rep SOMEONE USED MY CARD WITHOUT MY PERMISSION rather than them saying oh my, someone malicious has your card number, we will cancel your card immediately, they say ok we will refund you for the charge.

If someone had charged my card 20 times for things I supposedly did not purchase, wouldn't that ring an alarm bell? Wouldn't the fact that I don't want a new card, I just want the charges remove ALSO ring alarm bells?

The VISA/MC liability policy is utter horse shit. They need to follow the same policies debit-issuing banks do. If you have a fradulent charge on your card, you get a new card. That would cut chargebacks to practically 0, since noone wants to go through that hassle.

VISA/MC are essentially enabling fradulent activity among their cardholders.

C.

Cal, you have hit the proverbial nail on the head.

I've NEVER been able to understand why Visa/MC are so willing to let their customers "charge back" without any questions at all. Essentially they are saying "No valid purhcases have ever been made over the Internet".

Pskyo, enlighten us. Why are the major CC banks so quick to let their consumers perpetrate fraud?

My favorite excuse "Oh, I didn't know I was signing up". As if the join page, the username selection, AND TYPING IN YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBER wasn't a big clue.

Chargeback policies are set by Visa International, not by issuers, so they're the same worldwide.
For an unrecognized internet transaction, the cardholder must first send us a letter stating he did not authorize these charges. Now it wouldn't be a good business practice to outright call every cardholder a liar, would it? So we have to take his word for it.
The company that gets chargedback has every right to representment, which is basically saying "Yes, he did authorize these charges", but there are fees for that and it's usually less expensive and easier for the merchant to say "charge us back" then it is to go into representment...

and when we see more than three unauthorized charges within the span of a few months, we consider it as fraudulent use of the card and we cancel the card and send a new one.

not many people call up and say "i never authorized these charges, please credit me back". they usually say "i never authorized these, please give me a new number"

nicely done :thumbsup

good job psyko514 :thumbsup

an often used excuse is "i signed up for one of those free trials and they charged me $XX.XX"
so we turn around and say "the terms and conditions of the site clearly state you must cancel before the trial is over or else you will be rebilled".
"oh (long pause) well i did cancel."
"do you have a proof of that cancellation sir?"
"uhh... no"
"well i'm sorry sir, but there's nothing we can do, you'll have to try and contact the company to see if they'll give you a credit" and we note their account accordingly

Oh, well it must be WAY different in Canada, keep in mind I'm talking from the POV of a merchant here.

I have business associates who have had accounts for 3-5 years, even in the phone sex business. They'd call chargebacks and say 'we will pursue action with legal authorities' etc and get told to FUCK OFF and hung up on. The cardholders freely admitted on the phone that they had placed the calls. No lie, happened many times.

Another business partner of mine accidentally charged back his plane tickets because he didn't recognize the charge. Took him 5 minutes over the phone, and he didn't realize his mistake until later.

If only your regs were applied in the US, merchants wouldn't be dropping like flies. The merchant with a US account has NO recourse during a chargeback. The bank simply sends you a orange/yellow envelope saying congratulations we have deducted charge amt. + $25 from your bank account. I am sure many merchants can attest to this. You are not warned, you simply get 'served' with the chargeback letters, and the money is gone before you can do a thing about it.

If everything worked as your VISA Int'l regs suppose, chargebacks would be a non-issue in the online industry.

C.

I'm just glad there's at least one Visa official who sees our side of the argument. Any chance you're gonna be the CEO soon?

:smokin

like i said, chargeback policies are they same worldwide as they are laid out by visa international.
the only thing that differs is some banks might credit the customer right away and some may not.
some banks will give the customer the credit right away and debit the merchant right away. then, if the merchant brings the charge to representment and proves the charge is valid, we'll re-debit the customer and credit back the merchant.
other banks (mine for example, and CIBC as well) will issue a chargeback notice to the merchant, give them the chance for representment and if the merchant doesn't prove the charge is valid within the given time frame, the merchant is debited and the cardholder is credited.
either way, a merchant has every right to representment, and if you don't think so, contact your merchant services department for your acquirer bank.

pine... actually, the CEO of our bank just announced his retirement 2 days ago...
but unfortunately, i'm still a long way from being ceo... maybe an assistant manager within the next year or so...

Not sure about CIBC's policies, but in the US every time we do attempt to dispute we get a 'require signed receipt of product' which obviously is impossible with online charges. That is the way that VISA (or whatever banks we always seem to be dealing with) have pigeonholed merchants. We have no signed receipts because we have no tangible products. Server logs, login requests, even chat logs (or phonecalls) WITH the customers on their ISPs are disregarded by EVERY bank we have had to deal with. That includes international, got nailed by 20+ charges from a person in the UK all at once, no chance for recourse. Maybe Canada is easier, God bless you, but we have never had a single chargeback reversed by a bank. And you're going back years now, processing all card types.

C.

amen

Wow, this thread has some intelligent posts in it.

is that sarcasm?

psyko514, what are the policies now with online/mail-order purchases?
When I worked for CIBC, I remember it was such a hassle to ask for a refund on your credit card that people would think twice before signing the affidavit saying they *never* signed or authorized the transaction - because either way, they knew it would not be done instantly - Client had to sign the affidavit, a copy of the transaction had to be sent to Visa, Visa would then verify the signatures - and any other document that the merchant had to back-up the charge. It was a hassle just to ask for a copy to verify the transaction so people would be hesitant to do it.

I have a copy of one of the forms from MasterCard. They goe as far as letting the client *State* or certify that they have not promised nor authorised anybody to process the *said* transaction. They have not authorised the merchant to process the transaction, whether by telephone, mail or other

I'd like to know what kind of proof Visa/MasterCard are asking for now? If it's online, there are no signatures and if it's not a product that was shipped, they don't have a waybill or an address back-up the transaction. So what are they looking for?

No, I was serious. You guys have posted some interesting info about the chargeback process.

What is the process of charging back with Visa debit cards or Mastercard debit cards?

I read that debit card purchases have overtaken credit card purchases. Debit cards are the future.

you used to work for cibc? customer service on rene-levesque? or something else?
anyways, they still require all that information for a chargeback.
for an online service, i'm honestly not sure what is considered tangible proof... i'm going to be speaking to the people who run my chargeback dept. next week to find out. i'll keep everyone posted.

brownbear... i honestly couldn't tell you as no canadian banks offer visa or mastercard debit cards. but i too have heard that they're doing really well. i have a paypal debit card and use it all the time.

I'm the new owner of GFY?
Sweeeeet...

i did a little research on check cards (i looked up terms and conditions of various issuers)
from what i can see, the process is the same, liability is the same, unless the transaction was done with a pin number.

Why don't Canadian banks issue Visa/Mastercard debit cards?

maybe they haven't caught on yet.
it's too cold up here i guess.

anyone else have a better answer than mine?

Yesterday ya didnt know left from right, now you cant even spell your own commonwwealth?

ghehehe

too funny.

:winkwink:

:1orglaugh

You can't spell your city name, so you're on the same level as me.

maybe it's a pun