Fake orders ruin brands' metrics

Fresh orders are the delight of every seller. They are what you practically work for and a new order gives your brand the hope it needs. But what if you encounter fake orders?

In a brick and mortar store, you must be mindful of those with less than honourable intentions, filling their pockets with your products, and then making off without paying. As an online business, you might think that you are immune from stealing – however the sad reality is that there are lots of people out there who are trying to do the very same thing. Perhaps even more so, given the benefit of committing a crime from a distance.

As your business grows bigger and bigger online, fraud should be the one thing that you monitor on an increasingly frequent basis.

Fake orders are the ones that have been placed with the intention of defrauding the seller. If left unchecked, fraudulent orders can cost you tens of thousands of dollars or more, easily.

Most of the customers in India prefer COD (Cash on Delivery) as a payment mode because they find it much more trustworthy than paying online. This is the reason that criminals place fake orders. Even if your customer is providing you a valid billing address, even then there are high chances of fraudulent orders. That’s why you need to be on top of a few precautions before accepting any order. Here are a few of them:

1.Verify and Contact through Email to Check if the Email Id is Authentic

Verify your customer’s email ID. Most fraudulent customers use fake email IDs to place an order. If you email them and they don’t reply, it means it’s a fake order.

2.Call Them to Double Check

This is the quickest way to verify someone is who they say. You can call the customer to double-check the information they have provided about themselves. If the number is unavailable, not reachable or the customer seems hesitant to comply with you, it means there is something fishy.

3.Confirm Order Before Shipping it

It is always better to get in touch with your customer via phone or email and confirm once they want the order to be delivered. This way you are sure if the order must be shipped or not. Just in case they do not reply you must immediately cancel the order.

4.Delay the shipment

Scammers want their operations to be completed as quickly as possible in order to decrease the chances of getting caught. If you delay a shipment deliberately, and tell them as much, it may scare them off. This is an inconvenience to honest shoppers, thus only use it if you have to.

5.Use A Security Software

Software ensures a good level of security for your brand. It permits you to impose several layers of security and makes sure that your customer is authentic and has the right intent. Once your customers clear all security steps, it’s safe for you to interact with them and ship their order.

The issue of fake orders isn’t only because of Cash on Delivery orders but also on prepaid orders. Here are few ways to find and prevent fake orders online using a credit or a debit card:

1.Verify the CVV code

There is a three-digit code on the back of the debit card, and it is a security measure to prevent cases of electronic credit card theft. If the numbers do not match then it’s most likely a case of fraudulent order, and such an order shouldn’t be accepted.

2.Verify the Address via an AVS system

Many people ship the product to a set number of addresses like their workplace or their personal home and those addresses are recorded in your account that you have set up with the portal. This system shouldn’t be viewed strictly as its results could be false positive too. Hence, this method should be used as a guideline.

Maximum customers in India prefer COD (Cash on Delivery) that makes it very hard for sellers to differentiate between fake and real orders. Although the above steps are useful in avoiding fake orders, you don’t have the time to do all this for each and every order, hence a good start is to develop your instincts. Learn to identify and spot suspicious orders early, and if something seems off to you — even just a little — by all means, don’t ignore it.