OT Paying by credit card over the phone

My niece needs some auto parts. I called Advanced Auto Parts. They need the money before they can order the parts from the factory (Ford). Cool........I have a 15k limit on my card. Ready for my card number? Well we have to have you come down here and bring the card to order it. What? Well.......this is a part that comes from the dealer. We have to get you to come in to pay for it.

I can only guess they suspect foul play. Anyone else get turned down for trying to order over the phone?

Reply to
Metspitzer
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LOL...

@Metspitzer:

Ask any one of your friends who might run a business where the public purchases things from them that accepts a credit card as payment...

Transactions which are non-swiped cost the business double what swiped transactions cost... 2% of the transaction total vs 4%...

Apparently the Auto Parts store didn't want to pay 4% of the total sale on a special order...

With retail business being sluggish, every penny adds up...

This is why some businesses still take imprints of the credit cards, it proves the card was present at the time of sale...

~~ Evan

Reply to
Evan

If they have to order it from the dealer, why are you dealing with them? Or not ordering it online yourself, if you know the part numbers? No disrespect to Advance and the other FLAPS, but that is not where to buy serious parts, it is where to buy wiper blades and cheaper generics for non-critical systems where the part isn't model-specific.

But to answer your question, yeah- they wanna make sure you at least have the card, and aren't just scamming for resellable parts using somebody else's CC number. They also don't trust their own employees that much- with a card in hand, they have a virtual paper trail. I don't recall using a CC over the phone in years, other than to confirm a hotel room.

Reply to
aemeijers

Tell then that if they don't take your order over the phone, that you'll simply take your business to the parts counter of the closest Ford dealership.

Which I would guess would sell you that same part for less than what Advance is quoting, given that Advance has to buy it from a Ford dealer (or a Ford parts depot) and will apply their own mark-up to the price.

Reply to
Home Guy

Home Guy wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@Guy.com:

The trade gets about 20% off consumer-retail for OE auto parts. They add that back when they sell to the consumer, so your buy price at Advance will likely be pretty close to what you would pay at the dealer. Unless that particular Advance store is clueless and jacks the price to the point where consumers will notice...

Reply to
Tegger

Metspitzer wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Oh yeah. More and more places are refusing to take credit card orders by phone. And fraud is the problem.

My wife works for a bank, and she has to attend all their fraud seminars. Fraud is the primary reason the interest rate is so high on credit card balances: Somebody's gotta pay for all that fraud.

Reply to
Tegger

That is a very good reason.

Reply to
Metspitzer

My sister started this transaction. My only part is supplying the cash.

It turns out that even though I drove 25 miles or so to show them the card they were not able to order the part.

Reply to
Metspitzer

I can understand that fraud would be a problem for the bank but not for the merchant. Ok maybe I can, but it still sucks.

Reply to
Metspitzer

Metspitzer wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

The merchant still needs to pay his suppliers, usually in 30-days. Less if he wants to take advantage of 2%-in-10 or other deals offered by the supplier. Then he needs to wait to get reimbursed by the bank. This takes time, and time affects cash-flow. Since most businesses only get to keep about 5%-15% of their gross, late payments can be devastating, and failure to manage cash-flow often results in bankruptcy, or at least loss of credit with suppliers and a bad reputation.

Plus, this would need to be done one-by-one, for each instance of fraud. The labor alone would be a killer.

So they're careful about who they allow to pay by phone.

Yes, it sucks.

Reply to
Tegger

In the past ten years the only businesses I have had take credit card imprints have been hotels. I use a secure or virtual account number to guarantee the reservation, but they have never honored it at the desk unless the reservation included prepayment.

Reply to
Bob

Sounds to me like you haven't dealt with a small enough business, the big chain stores use electronic capture of signature of the person using the card as well as store CCTV footage to document who made the purchase rather than keeping a printed copy of the receipt on file in the store for the required retention period...

Smaller stores still imprint the card, especially when the card doesn't swipe and the numbers had to be punched in manually, as the card is either swiped or imprinted to prove it was there at the time of purchase... Smaller stores also still deal with keeping extra copies of the receipts on file in case of a charge back during the retention period...

LOL... Using a "secure" or "virtual" account number to do anything where you have to reserve something is stupid, as the virtual account number won't match your name and address like the info on your actual real account will, hotels tend to like knowing the real name of the person reserving the room in case of a no show as they have the information to send the bill -- this is why your attempts at anonymous reservations with a credit card that didn't match the name you reserved under were not honored without payment of a deposit...

~~ Evan

Reply to
Evan

Here in Canada we've had a small chip on our credit cards for about 2 years now. About 75% of the retailers I go to (big box, grocery stores, restaurants, etc) have chip-enabled readers where you slide in the card and enter a 4-digit pin to complete the transaction. This replaces the requirement to sign anything, and the cashier doesn't ask to see the card (let alone take an imprint of it).

I believe that if 3 incorrect attempts are made to enter the PIN within a short span of time that the card is automatically disabled.

At gas pumps here in Canada, when you slide in your credit card to pay at the pump, we don't have to enter our zip-code (or postal code in our case) to complete the transaction, which is something you have to do at many pumps in the US (or at least in california).

At some pumps here, I don't even have to slide my card into a reader - just wave it near a small panel on the pump marked with a "wavy" logo that indicates some sort of RF transciever (this is NOT speed-pass).

I understand that Europe also has CC's with chip-and-pin.

But the US is being backwards about this by not introducing credit cards with "chip-and-pin" technology. You should ask your banks and credit card companies why they prefer to soak you with high fees and interest rates as a way to pay for CC fraud rather than impliment technology to reduce fraud.

I've never heard of the use of a secure or virtual account number. How does that work? I assume by virtual account number you mean a credit-card number that is different than the one embossed on your real card. ?

Reply to
Home Guy

Careful - your northern superiority complex is showing. Chip & Pin got a foothold in Europe because of the poor and expensive phone systems that were in place at the time. Credit card companies needed a secure and sure way of validating a translation without having to make an expensive phone call.

Meanwhile, in the US ubiquitous and inexpensive local phone calls made it possible to roll out cash registers, vending machines, gas pumps and cheap validation terminals all across the country. The sheer number of terminals in the US is several orders of magnitude larger than in Canada. The cost of replacing all those terminals would ultimately be passed on to the consumer - an expense the US isn't in a particular hurry to take on.

That said, Visa has announced plans to support Chip & Pin in the US for those banks that want to issue those cards. They'll be available in a year or so.

Reply to
Robert Neville

Robert Neville wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I liked the chip and pin in Europe. As I did the wireless portable terminals they have, so my credit card never left my sight. IIRC, they had them in a local Legal Sea Foods restaurant (Garden State Mall, Paramus, NJ) now also.

Reply to
Han

Maybe something unique to where you travel? I haven't seen any small merchants imprint cards for a really long time. Low end CC terminals such as the popular Verifone vx-510 are inexpensive:

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And even mobile business folks and businesses that set up say at shows use terminals with embedded aircards like this:

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Or swipe adapters for smartphones running a virtual terminal.

Reply to
George

At a restaurant in Canada a few years back they entered our order into a wireless terminal, then did the cc processing the same way.

I've also seen the wireless cc terminals used by itinerant vendors at flea markets and the like.

Perce

Reply to
Percival P. Cassidy

gpsman wrote in news:5948e2bd-245d-4d3b-8158- snipped-for-privacy@y12g2000vba.googlegroups.com:

I've found that dealerships generally won't give a consumer ANYthing off retail unless he buys a lot of parts from them.

A consumer who buys a lot of parts may get 10% off, but I think would be very unlikely to ever get more than that. Greater discounts are reserved for the trade, which may get 15%-25% off, depending on their volume and relationship with the dealer.

Reply to
Tegger

The CC companies couldn't care less about fraud or making it safer for the customer. The reason for "high fees and interests rates" seems pretty self evident.

The whole industry is a rip-off and different states deal regulate it

--or not!-- it in different ways. CA initially issued universally usable ATM cards. You could go into most any retail store and either buy merchandise or request cash, money pulled directly from your checking acct, with no involvement by the CC companies, whatsoever. Unlike debit cards, where CC companies get a piece of the action.

I moved from CA to CO. The banks, here, claim no such practice has ever existed anywhere. This I found hilarious, as the bank I was trying to open an account at here in CO has also has branches in CA that do exactly that. Whether or not CA still has usable-everywhere ATM cards, I do not know, having moved 3 yrs ago.

nb

Reply to
notbob

Hmmm, I and wife have couple retail business established over the years after we retired. It is not a franchise chain stores but we do well. We often get orders from outside our city as far away as South of the border. We eat the difference in card processing service charge. That is called customer service. We only do this to known repeat customers who we personally saw at least couple times. No, to total stranger first timer.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

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