DealersEdge Professional Forums

I would like to get some feedback on how your store handles "phone charges" meaning the customer is not in front of you. We've been burned a few times lately and looking for ways to cover our butts. I know of some stores that require a form signed and faxed back with a copy of your actual card etc. but that can be burdonsome for a retail customer. Does anyone use PayPal or something like that? We don't have a website for parts sales but it might facilitate these types of transactions.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance...

How were you burned? Stolen cards? Fraud? Chargeback?

that sucks

These were definitely our fault, got duped. One was an out of towner wanted $500 in parts shipped to his work. But he e-mailed us a shipping document from Fedex and gave a credit card number. So we shipped, and then he re-routed the shipment somewhere else. Luckily we got wind that it was a stolen card and were able to stop the delivery with help from Fedex, and got the parts back. This was a straight up scam. Another store of ours the guy comes to the counter with a credit card. It wont swipe, (probably messed with the mag strip on purpose) so we hand type it in manually. Never checked I.D., and he's gone with $1000 in tires. I agree we did it to ourselves, slopppy work, but when you get busy you fall for swindlers.

JERKS like these make life harder for the honest folks, and I admit I'm naive about what to do about it.

Anyone who has a written policy I would appreciate a copy, so we can develop one of our own.

I don't have much to add except I do find filling out that form, faxing it in and hoping for the best really pisses me off. Wondering if they get the fax in time (or at all), care enough to handle it quickly, etc...

I'd rather take care of everything with one phone call when I call another dealer for a part.

I have moved on to call another dealer in the past when faced with having to go through all that to get a $10 part - just sayin..

I've been lucky and have never been burned. I have sent a COD package out before requesting certified funds and FedEx ignored it and collected a regular check and of course it bounced. But they dealt with it and handled it

Don't take credit cards over the phone.

Our policy is to not take cards over the phone although I still do occassionally. I go with my gut on those. We have been burned by people saying they never approved of the charges but everytime it was a lie, they just didn't want to have to pay for it. One was a mom saying her daughter stole her card when we knew better they just scammed us. I don't ever ship parts to anyone so they have to physically show up and pick them up but most people who live here, work a half hour away so it's difficult to make people prepay in person. For me I can't help but think that the loss in sales by forcing prepay outweighs the few times we've been taken. That said though I also run a big risk of having a lot of CSO returns. It's a balancing act and a lot of trying to read people over the phone and making a judgement call.

I will run the VIN and see if Chrysler shows the same owner as the person buying parts. I will also put the VIN on the slip in the note field with any other info I collected. With a VIN it will give the authorities something to work with.

We will take credit cards over the phone and only order the parts once the card has gone through and been approved. As long as we get the payment on our end I don't see a problem with ordering the part(s). Also, we always try to get special orders prepaid; it has helped a lot with customers never returning to purchase the part. I do keep credit cards on file for a lot of my wholesale customers and that has not been an issue either.

We don't take credit cards over the phone unless its from an established customer ( either bought car here or had service work done)

Credit cards for wholesale? Really? Your credit card processor takes up to 5% of the total charge for their fee. Unless you are giving a very skinny wholesaale discount, you are barely breaking even (if at all) taking credit cards for wholesale.