Anti Fraud

As any other online business, we’re often dealing with fraudsters and card thieves. While most of these transactions are dealt with by the payment processor and the card issuers, there are some that skip through. Usually, stolen cards, sometimes even card credentials used by same family members, without the knowledge of their owner.

Therefore, we have implemented our own security checks as well. From our business point of view, we don’t want for a product to be shipped, only to find out later that the paying card has been declared stolen, and the money refunded (as they should) to the victim. Banks and card issuers usually refund the fraud victims, but they don’t do much for the merchants. In other words, if the above scenario happens (and it did), nobody will compensate us for the lost product/s. And this is why, if we suspect a paid order of being a fraud, such as possibly using a stolen card, we will cancel it or simply ignore it; there is no point is losing time trying to communicate with potential online thieves.

If we cancel a suspicious order ourselves, the money are refunded – usually we allow a few days for this so the card owner will realize what’s happening and block their cards, otherwise we’d just return the money to the thieves. Additionally, we will also notify authorities whenever possible.

Unfortunately, there are also false positives, which are legit customers that might be labelled as potential fraudsters. In such cases, orders are delayed until further verifications, although they could be canceled depending on the gravity of the situation. To prevent this, please make sure to:

• reply to our verification email (each customer will receive a confirmation email)
• write your name as it appears in the payment method (card, Paypal account)
• make sure the delivery address is the same with the one on your payment account (card, Paypal account)
• do not use weird or different sex/name emails (if your name is John Doe, don’t use an email box such as beyonce@email.com, or LaraCroft@email.com)
• do not use a VPN/proxy; if your paying IP is from a different country then your delivery address, it’s a big red flag
• try to split the purchase; useful when the card issuer limits your purchasing value and you are trying to buy multiple items

In case your purchase has been wrongfully cancelled, and we delayed the refund, we apologize in advance. Feel free to either ask your bank (or Paypal) for the refund, it might be faster; or wait a few days for us to issue it. Either way, if you then purchase from our store again, please follow the advice above, otherwise your purchase could be cancelled again.