Do scumbags who do chargebacks get their credit cards deactivated for a week?
 

I just tried to dispute a fraudulent Visa charge from a company I never heard of and the bank told me they would have to turn off my card and issue me a new one and I would be without it for a week. Is this even slightly normal?

Thanks for any info you all can give me on this.

--Amelia G
:Grrrrrr :Grrrrrr :Grrrrrr

From what I have heard, CC companies are really soft on online porn chargebacks. So, while almost any other "I didn't buy that" claim will get your card cancelled, such a claim about online porn doesn't usually. I assume that it has to do with the fact that even Visa knows that most people who say that are lying.

This appears to be some sort of internet phone company of some sort on my bill. I bet you are right, but it sure does piss me off that the banks would inconvenience an honest person being victimized and not inconvenience an obvious thief.

hey amelia, thanks for the email! :)

My eyes popped out when I got it. I was like there is so no way you all would condone that and they were so blatant. It baffles me that people like that think they are going to be bling blinging with that sort of behavior. On the other hand, apparently strangers can shop online with my credit card, so a lot of things are baffling me today. I need a beer and a latte round about now, not necessarily in that order. :glugglug

5am and a beer sounds good. thanks for the idea. just one though. :winkwink:

gothweb, incorrect on both counts.
first, she never said the charge was porn related. second, visa treats all chargebacks the same.

Amelia: your card has to be cancelled and transferred to a new number. A new card has to be printed and mailed to you. The transfer/printing takes about a day. The mail takes another few days. So about a week.

If you're really in a rush to get your card quicker, you're bank would probably rush it to a local branch for you to pick up there. When a customer loses a card at my bank, I can have a new one for them in 2 business days if they reallt need it.

The charges on my account which I am disputing are all from a company called Net2phone which I believe from an internet search is http://web.net2phone.com/about/ and it does not look like they sell adult material. Of course, their phone operators identify the company as IDT and barely seem to know there is a company called Net2phone, although the name does ring a bell for them.

So does this mean that every chargeback any of us gets, the person loses their card number and at best can not buy anything easily for two business days?

One would think that if your got charged by someone YOU didn't give your credit card number to that you'd want that card cancelled and a new one re-issued.

I've only done one charge back in my life and my card wasn't cancelled.

Judging from the number of scum bags who try purchasing on my sites after having done a charge back though, I'd say that's not a normal practice.

I worked at a bank for many years, and any time someone had fradulient activities on their account, we were forced to cancel the card.

The content that was purchased frauduliently has no bearing on this at all. Simply stated, if someone really was making false transactions on your account, the safest and most reliable way to make sure that doesn't happen again is to close the account.

I had the same problem when a resteraunt ran my card when they were not supposed to. I had to cancel my card, and all that bullshit, but no more fake charges came through.


naz

If my purse were stolen or something like that where someone had my correct info, I would cancel my cards and checks etc. But I really doubt that whoever is doing these charges has my correct information. It could even be a typo. So it seems silly to be unable to travel or do anything where good record-keeping is important for the next week. Unfortunately, this net2phone or IDT company is so shady that I just keep getting forwarded to voicemail and, for exactly the reason that these people do not have my correct info, I hardly want to leave a callback request with my name and number.

I would think that fraudulant charges would require a cancelled card because they could keep doing it. You are saying you can't get them to stop billing so if you did get the charge reversed another would just come through.

When a porn surfer cancels they probably give the excuse the merchandise wasn't delivered or the site wasn't as advertised but they did get the charge to quit coming. Therefore there would be no need to cancel the card because it won't be billed again.

Just an opinion.

I would actually think it was pretty cool if people who have post-self love regret lost their cards for a week if they did chargebacks, but I agree with you that it seems like fewer of them would do it if that were the case.

--Amelia

I believe IDT is a long distance company.

:2 cents:

The charges are coming up as Net2phone, but the phone reps seemed to think they worked for IDT and maybe Net2phone too, but they would prefer not to admit it. Seriously. Looks like you are right about the IDT long distance. They have the dot net it looks like. The dot com site did not look right to me, but looking for long distance too brought up http://www.idt.net/ and the addresses are really similar. Just emailed them too. Thanks for the info.

Policy varies from bank to bank. For example, the policy at my bank is to dispute the charge without cancelling the card. Unless there's more than two unrecognized charges. But there are exceptions. If the unrecognized transaction is more than $500, the card will be cancelled. Or if it's at a company that has a large chargeback ratio or a shady computer that only requires cc#+expdt to do a transaction, the card will be cancelled right away.

If you really wanted, you probably could have got them to not cancel your account. However, by doing that, you'd lose all chargebacks rights for unrecognized charges, meaning you'd be responsible for all fraudulent charges on your account.

Keep in mind these things: Your bank is the one who ultimately suffers in fraud cases as they are the ones who pay for the fraudulent charges. So it's in their best interest to do whatever is possible to minimize said losses. Also, a credit card is a privilege and a convienience, not a right. If you look on the back of your credit card, it clearly states that the card is the bank's property.

Okaay, so I track down the http://web.net2phone.com/about/ and http://www.idt.net/ people with help from you all. And I get the runaround and some seriously unhelpful phone service and the upshot is that they want me to fax them a copy of my statement with the charges from them on it. I am pretty disinclined to give my correct name and address and my spending pattern for the last month to people who are alrady stealing from me and show a desire to continue doing so.

It seems to me that all they should need is my card number and the dates of the charges. They should be able to give me the info on who is using my card. If someone made phone calls with it, then it may be possible to actually catch the culprit.

Anybody ever hear of a company asking you to give them your whole statement in order to reverse fraudulent charges? It sure sounds shady to me.

Thanks, Amelia

How does the bank "suffer in fraud cases"? Last time I checked, the merchant is the one who pays. Not only is the money taken from the merchant and given back to the customer but the merchant pays pretty steep processing fees for each charge back and risks losing their merchant account. I don't see how that effects the customer's bank in any way.

The merchant only pays when the bank can prove that the merchant could have prevented the transaction.

If someone steals your card and forges your signature on a receipt, your bank will pay for the fraud.

However, if your card says Mary Smith on it and a chinese male forges your signature, the merchant will pay for the fraud.

Also, in the case of an account takeover, where someone calls the bank impersonating the cardholder and then ordering new cards on the account, the bank will incur the loss.

For example, I dealt with a customer a few weeks ago who had a visa cheque on his account for $3900. We determined that someone had called, impersonated him, changed his address and ordered the cheques. The bank therefore incurs the loss.

That only applies to regular transactions where a signature is involved. There are millions of transactions that don't have a signature involved. This phone company or whatever Amelia is dealing with would have been one of them.

Visa approved the transaction, therefore Visa incurs the loss.

I'm a merchant (have been for over three years now) and I guarantee that VISA incurs no loss when a customer who purchased with me does a charge back. If they do, where is the money that's taken away from me going? I know the processing fee goes to my merchant bank but every penny that was deposited into my accounts as a result of that transaction is then deducted and refunded to the customer.

I work for Visa, and trust me, losses are incurred during fraud.

There's a difference between fraud and a chargeback.

This thread is about a fraudulent charge that she's doing a charge back on. When is a charge back NOT having to do with fraud? The only one I can think of is if the customer says they sent the item back and then didn't get a credit. Otherwise, something fraudulent is involved...

When a customer's card is stolen, money is taken from me. I've never ONCE had VISA say to me "Ok, this person admits their card was stolen so you don't have to pay that money back".

It's "This person's card was stolen so this money will be immediately deducted from your account and this counts against you." So apparently VISA doesn't think that fraud can happen on the internet?

Yeah, here is the difference:
When somebody rips Visa off, they call it fraud. When somebody rips me off, they call it a chargeback. :2 cents:

B

And I'm seriously asking because in the three years that I've accepted credit cards as a merchant, I've NEVER had theft, fraud, charge back or whaever treated differently...every single one of them results in money being taken back from me.

There are several types of chargebacks:
- unauthorized/unrecognized charge
- merchandise not as described/damaged
- merchandise not received
- services not rendered
- credit not issued

now all those types can either be fraudulent or not fraudulent.

for example, say you sell a service and accept visa. if you purposely do not render that service, you've committed fraud and will be chargedback for "services not rendered". you'll have to pay.

if you agree to render the service and then go bankrupt, you'll be chargedback, but not for services not rendered. the bank will incur losses (for example, when Canada 3000 (an airline) went bankrupt, all losses were split between Canada 3000's bank and the issuing bank)

or say you you take someone's card at your store and it doesn't swipe because it's demagnitized. so you punch in the cardnumber, but hit a 6 instead of a 9 and charge someone else's account. you'll be chargedback for "unauthorized charge", but it's not fraud.

if you take someone's card and ten days later, punch in another $50, you'll be chargedback for "unauthorized charge", and it'll be fraud.

catch my drift?

it also depends on what type of business you're running. is your merchant account for selling tangible goods? do you have a physical store? are you processing high risk transactions? are you processing on the internet? there's a lot of different factors that can affect how your chargebacks are handled.

I guess my problem would be in the
- unauthorized/unrecognized charge
category.

It certainly has my back up extra because I've had to deal with being charged $25 because some girl wanted to see her friend nude but didn't think she should have to pay the membership fee because she didn't ya know touch herself to it. Most folks who bill for adult will give a credit if the person says that the charge is not them -- especially if the info they have makes it look like the charge was not legit in any way. But these Net2phone/IDT people act like they want chargebacks.

I shouldn't give them a copy of my statement, should I?

Is there a way I can compell the Net2phone creeps to give me the information on what phone numbers were called with my credit card? I'd like to catch whoever is doing this if it is not an honest mistake.

psyko514 does not know what hes talking about.
Lily is right.
it is very simple: unless the transaction is made at POS with a physical card presented and merchant has a sale receipt from the POS to prove the transcation, the merchant eats the chargebacks no matter it is phone or internet order, tangible items or not. simple as that.

working for visa? scrubing the floor?:1orglaugh

notice my last question? i'm asking what type of merchant account she was... what type of business does she run?

and no, the merchant does not always incur the loss. for example, if you order something online at Future Shop, they will ask for your credit card billing address. then, they call Visa to confirm the address matches the card number.
if someone has taken over the account and changed the address, then visa is going to say "yes, the address matches, go ahead with the transaction". if the transaction gets disputed as fraud, visa will incur the loss because visa said "go for it, it's all good".

you don't believe I work for Visa? Gimme a call. 1-800-9TD-VISA
I work in the Montreal, ask for Matt.

Amelia, you can give them a copy of your statement, but cross out all the other charges, so that all they can see is the charge from them.

Ok, you work for Visa. Now you have to prove this 1:10 conversion ratio with WEGcash.

Are screenshots good enough for you?

Amelia, I received my MBNA statement yesterday with 3 charges that weren't mine.

One from an online ticket broker, 2 for plane tickets to Phoenix.

I work 16+ hours 7 days a week, the only travelling I do is to the post office 20 minutes away :)

MBNA immediately put through a credit for me on the Mastercard, but also cancelled the card due to 'fraudulent transactions' and said it would be a week until I got new ones. I'm not worried, I have a lot of other cards until then. So yes, I'd say this is now standard practice.

I then called the ticket broker and asked who put this on my card. I told MBNA I felt it was a matter of it being charged to the wrong card somehow, not fraud, since every transaction since that time (roughly 50 transactions) were legit, and if someone were going to lift my card number and use it, they'd mostly likely go to a porn site and not buy airline tickets where you have to show identification to pick them up :)


They agreed but cancelled the card. Ticket agency could not help me without a transaction number and no ticket number was issued on my credit card statement. They didn't seem to care until I causually mentioned that it wasn't me who was out the thousand bucks and 3 separate chargeback fees ... then they sat up and took notice and said I'd get a letter from them and would have to sign something blah blah blah. I'll gladly do that so they can investigate.

Meanwhile, 2 folks have had a free plane trip.

psyko514 claimed:

"for example, if you order something online at Future Shop, they will ask for your credit card billing address. then, they call Visa to confirm the address matches the card number. if someone has taken over the account and changed the address, then visa is going to say "yes, the address matches, go ahead with the transaction". if the transaction gets disputed as fraud, visa will incur the loss because visa said "go for it, it's all good". "

Really? Hm, very odd. I'm always told that when I get approval via terminal or on the phone it is no guarantee the transaction will go through and in fact could be fraudulent, even if they have an exact CVV2 and AVS match.

To go one step further, I've spoken to the 'security' departments and have been given manual authorization but have been clearly told each time that there is no guarantee the transaction will be approved once it goes through the final approval phase.

I only ever provide services to customers where I get an AVS match. AVS matching has nothing to do with proving that service was provided. NOTHING. It has NEVER mattered on any of my transactions.

I do audiotext so yes, my things are high risk. Isn't this an adult board? I don't think any of us are selling Sesame Street dolls.

My concern about giving the shady Net2phone people my statement via fax is that then they will have my correct address and, if they are the ones committing the fraud, then they can claim they have an AVS match. Not sure whether my bank would believe them, but that is my worry.

Won't matter if they have your address, CVV2, perfect AVS, etc.

Without a signature as proof YOU made the transaction, they're dead in the water

Yeah, it doesn't matter without a signature...we record our billing on the phone and have telephone records and those don't even prove it. They say "Oh that was my cousin calling from my house, he stole my card." Uh huh, bye bye money.

Well, Net2phone saw the error of their ways and is refunding my dough. They say they won't give me what numbers the person called using my credit card without a supoena, but I don't think it will be that big a deal to get a supoena. :)

Without this to stress to distract me, maybe I better get back to work . . .

i'm not talking about an authorization/approval. say you go to www.futureshop.com and order a computer. they ask for your credit card billing address. someone at future shop calls your issuing bank and verifies the address with an agent there. if it matches, then future shop requests auth/approval for the transaction.

if visa told future shop that the address was a match and then they approve the transaction, visa will lose the cash on the chargeback.

As far as I know, Net2Phone is a trustworthy company. They've been around for many years (since 95 at least), and if they were commiting fraud, they'd have been on the TMF a long time ago.

As for getting a subpoena against them, you won't be able to. However, the police will, but they won't share the information with you.

I have not had to do chargebacks before, so I'm not too informed on how to address that, but I am attorney-spawn and I do know my supoena stuff. The police don't need a supoena for this sort of thing; a warrant will do fine for them. If I file a police report, the police can do the warrant and, if I press charges, the police will supply the information from it. Police generally use supoenas to make sure witnesses show up and that sort of thing, often as a courtesy. It is sort of a nuisance for an individual to get a supoena, but it is generally pretty inexpensive to have an attorney do it for you.

As far as Net2phone being around for a while goes, the net searches I did pulled up a number of years' worth of people who felt the company had defrauded them. A reputable company of their supposed size would have a loss prevention department with people in it who were trying to prevent fraud and keep losses to a minimum. Net2phone has a complex voicemail system where it is almost impossible to reach a person unless you have an account with them and, if you do get a person, they are ambiguous about whether they have anything to do with Net2phone. Not trustworthy.

You don't survive on the net for at least 5 years without having a few people bitch.
The thing is, the people with a problem (valid or not) scream the loudest, go to the trouble to put up webpages, etc... the folks who are pleased with the service and have never had a problem don't do those things.
Think of Paypal - how many hundreds of thousands of people use their services day after day without a hitch?
But look around on the net and you'll find a hundred or so that are screaming and stomping their feet because they got pissed off. End result? You think Paypal is bad, because you don't see anyone out there building webpages about how GOOD Paypal is.

Age-old law of business... when people are happy with your service, they tell one person. When they're unhappy with your service, they tell ten people.