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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!orca!andrew
From: andrew@orca.UUCP (Andrew Klossner)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: credit card crime query
Message-ID: <669@orca.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 3-Mar-84 22:29:28 EST
Article-I.D.: orca.669
Posted: Sat Mar  3 22:29:28 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 4-Mar-84 09:11:37 EST
References: <1068@uw-june>
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 40


	"I have a VISA card, and I'm wondering why no one's ever bought
	a VCR or something with it by phone.  Every time I use the
	silly thing, I'm letting the sales clerk get ahold of my name,
	my card number, and its expiration date, which coincidentally
	are the exact things needed to buy something via those 800
	numbers.  Now I suppose that if someone were to rack up a few
	grand on me, I could perhaps find out the address the gear's
	been sent to, but they could have moved or something.  My
	question is: why doesn't this stuff happen all the time?"

Fear not, there are banking rules in place to protect the consumer, at
least for VISA/Mastercard.

When a mail-order company submits a credit card charge based on an
order received through the mail or over the phone, they are not able to
have the customer sign the slip.  If the slip is not signed, the bank
is not obligated to honor the charge.  All the customer has to do when
faced with an unauthorized telephone charge is to tell the bank that
there was no authorizing signature and request that the charge be
canceled.  The merchant finds out about this by receiving a note from
the bank stating that the charge was not honored and that the
merchant's checking account has already been debited for the necessary
funds.

Of course, if it's a legitimate charge, the merchant will probably come
after you with a civil complaint.

Fortunately, none of this happens very much.  Mail order consumers, at
least those who purchase software, seem to be an honest lot.  While
running my mail-order company I submitted about a hundred credit card
slips without signatures (taking a chance in each case), and never got
burned.  I also honored personal checks immediately, rather than wait
for them to clear, and again never got burned.

The times that I did get burned were when large companies sent purchase
orders.  We quickly developed a policy of requiring payment in advance,
even from agencies of the federal government.

  -- Andrew Klossner   (decvax!tektronix!orca!andrew)      [UUCP]
                       (orca!andrew.tektronix@rand-relay)  [ARPA]