FYI, to my surprise I received the following long and detailed response
from the CEO of Rightstuf, to an indignant email. It shows signs of
having been at least "personalised". I've thanked him for his response
and suggested that the milder suggestions for identify proofing he makes
might here usefully be incor****ated on the website page dealing with
credit card authorisation.
>Dear Chris,
>
>Customer Service forwarded to me your e-mail, and I wanted to reply
>personally to you to give you a level of understanding as to why we do
>what we do. While it may not change your opinion, at least you can be
>informed as to our policy and some of the reasoning behind it.
>
>Our request for additional information is not meant to be exclusionary
>or discriminatory against those customers who do not reside in the US
>and Canada. The issue here is one of verification.
>
>When a domestic customer places an order, we can use the credit card
>processing infrastructure to get verification on if the customer's
>address and zip code match the order address - this system is called
>AVS. However, AVS is not available for cards issued outside North
>America. Therefore, we have no way to match you, the cardholder, to
>the address on your order.
>
>Before we implemented the policy in question, we were finding that the
>majority of the chargebacks that we received were from foreign cards or
>cards where we were asked to ****p to a different address. This is not
>to say that all non-US transactions were fraudulent, because obviously,
>this is not the case - we have many customers outside of the US. When
>you are a merchant taking a credit card, especially in what's called a
>"card not present" transaction (where the card is not swiped through a
>machine), you bear all of the risk of loss if the use of the card is
>not authorized or if the customer states that they did not place the
>order. Larger companies with heavier volume will take on this risk by
>creating a fraud reserve that is depleted by these chargebacks. As a
>small firm, we have to protect ourselves from large losses which could
>potentially wipe us out - a single $500 chargeback may take $5000 in
>additional sales in order to recover from/break even, depending upon
>the profitability of the items which were on the order, for example.
>There is no "international protection" available to us from Mastercard.
>The vendor bears the sole risk of loss with such transactions. I'm not
>sure why Mastercard would say this would place you outside of their
>protection, because you as the cardholder always have chargeback
>protections for unauthorized use of your credit card.
>
>Therefore, in order to try to minimize the risk from these
>transactions, we have attempted to get some level of security through
>getting a scan or photocopy of the actual card and a form of
>identification that includes the customer's address so that we can tie
>the address for the customer to that card.
>
>Now, we do not require the identification to be a photo ID or anything
>that would hopefully have privacy issues for you - some customers
>provide a driver's license, some pass****ts, but many customers also
>choose to simply provide a utility bill or something similar which has
>your name and address on it that matches the address we're ****pping
>product to.
>
>For the card itself, it is fine if you'd like to black out a block of
>the digits and your signature. What we're looking for here is that the
>name matches the name on the order, that the digits visible match the
>card you used, and to obtain the issuing bank information and phone
>number, which is usually on the back of the card.
>
>Once we receive this data it is reviewed, your account is marked as
>verified, and then all of the information is deleted or shredded. Visa
>and Mastercard rules do not allow us to hold or store this information
>long term. You should never have to send anything to us again once the
>account has been noted.
>
>It is not the fact that we do not feel that you are of age to possess a
>credit card, or that you are a thief or unworthy customer, but simply
>our efforts to make sure that you are you, and not instead a hacker in
>China or Romania or somewhere who has your card data and is using it to
>buy merchandise. There are no tools for us to use to verify this
>information for customers outside North America, so we have to use a
>manual solution.
>
>I value all of our customers, and know that it can be something of an
>inconvenience to scan and submit this information or provide it by fax
>to us. I know that we do lose some customers and orders because of
>this policy, and some feel that it is draconian. However, over the
>years (and I have been doing this for over 20 years now) I have watched
>a number of merchants fold or encounter severe financial hard****p due
>to accepting orders that ended up being fraudulent.
>
>In closing, I do hope that this helps you to understand our reasoning
>here, and am certainly open to any suggestions that you may have in
>order to handle this issue. This has been the best we have been able
>to come up with over time, and I know that it has been copied by others
>in our marketplace, and we reviewed it with our card processor at the
>time we implemented it.
>
>Alternatively, the release of Emma will not be limited only to our
>store (it is not an exclusive item), and should be availble at other
>online shops. While I don't wish to turn your business away, I also
>want you to be able to enjoy this series when it is released next year.
>
>I look forward to your thoughts and discussion on this matter.
>
>Sincerely yours,
>Shawne Kleckner
>
>--
>Shawne Kleckner
>President/CEO
>The Right Stuf, Inc.
--
___________________________
Christopher Webber, Blackheath, London, UK.
http://www.zarzuela.net
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