I have a gentlemen who wants to purchase 100 bottles of a supplement that I carry. He lives in Indonesia and has already given me his credit card info that was only verified for the amount of the purchase which was $4,000.00. Is there a way to verify he is the owner of the card? He asked that I put down on the shipping papaers that the products were only $5.00 a piece so he wouldn't have to pay lots of duty tax. Is this ok being that the products are actally $37.00 a piece? My issue is that I do not want to ship $4,000.00 worth of product to Indonesia and then having the card coming back as fraud a week later. That's a big loss for me. Thanks, john

from what I hear. When credit cards get stolen something like 70% of them go to Indonesia. You should demand that the money be cleared and in your possession before you ship the product. Also I would not adjust the shipping papers for him, seems a little shaddy.

I own a computer store and we had a problem a few months back with a guy that wanted to buy like $4,000 worth of memory. He gave us a credit card, we ran it (did not charge it, just checked it out) it cleared. But we thought it was kinda weird that we could never get ahold of this guy on the phone. So we stalled for about a week. Then finally the card came up stolen. We never heard from him agian. Now we get somewhere around 3 or 4 of these scams a month. But we just say, money has to be cleared and in our possession before we will make a move. This particular guy claimed he was in Georgia i think and we would have had NO LEGAL recourse. So you wouldn't have any either considering your customer is out of the country (or so he says).

Sounds like a scam to me, I've been warned about this. Definitely check with your merchant account provider before going ahead with anything.

i've heard its as high as 9x% fraud rate from Indo

I've actually been dealing with this individual since Feb. 25th. I am just gonna put it off until next week to make sure the card doesn't come up stolen. It's hard to lose a sale that big but also hard to lose that much money. Thanks

A couple of suggestions...

1) Run the CVV Code (the 3 digit code on the back
of the card) to make sure that he is in position of
the card and not just the number.

2) Run the billing address on the card and demand
that the item be shipped to the billing address ONLY.

Honestly, it doesn't matter that you've been working
with him for a couple of weeks. Take every
precaution anyway.

As the saying goes... better safe than sorry!!

It's a stolen card. We get those types of request quite often.

i would put money on it that it is stolen and your going to get screwed in some way sooner or later. I would cut bait and get out. But that is just my $0.02 worth.

Ok, here's what I have done. He sent me all of the credit card info along with the CVV number and billing address. I ran it through my merchant account and it cleared for $4,000.00. I emailed him back letting him know that I ran the card and that I will not ship his products for atleast 2 weeks, if that's how long it takes to show completely clear. I figure the card should show stolen within 2 weeks if it actually is. I also let him know that not only am I a business owner but I am also a police officer in the United States. I am currently still waiting on his reply. Thanks to all of you.

My customer emailed me back and says that it's ok to ship to his billing address and he understood that we had to wait for the card to clear. So now it's just a matter of time for me to wait to see if the card comes back stolen. Is there a way that you can call Visa to confirm a card?