Careful ordering from Bimmerworld!!

[The HACK]

Originally Posted by JamesClay

I strongly (as a vendor) prefer to sort out issues with our customer instead of the chargeback/bank route because the majority of the time we actually end up getting our money back - because if a refund is due we've already given it.

Running a business is hard.





I hope y'all get this resolved man. I do. Vanne is a valuable part of this Z4 community, what he's done with his Z4 M is amazing (I assume he, this being. car forum and all and I'm still old-school sexist), and I've bought enough sh*tuff from BimmerWorld that my wife has pretty much cancelled ALL my credit cards and put me on a pre-paid debit card as a punishment. Just don't like seeing people airing their laundry in public, that's all.

You guys sort it out amongst yourself. Group hug, kumbaya and all that. But I DO thank you all for the opportunity to type out some meaningless trivia and anecdote to show how "knowledgeable" I am in software, accounting, and automotive aftermarket sales.

[Huz-Z]

No no- it’s Ku///Mbaya, ain’t it?

Just realized why I’m so cranky. Just watched the weather forecast and I see that there’s MORE SNOW in the forecast.

Anyhoo, I’m confident now that this will all be resolved long before the snow melts up here.

[The HACK]

Originally Posted by Huz-Z

Just realized why I’m so cranky. Just watched the weather forecast and I see that there’s MORE SNOW in the forecast.

Yeah man. FFS. I pay the gawd damn paradise tax for a reason. And yeah, I get it, WE (California) need the rain. But c'mon. It's been NON-STOP for about 3 weeks now. I haven't fired up the MZ4 Coupe except to pull it out of the garage, quickly rinse it between storms, dry, and put it back on a trickle charger.

Then again, whenever I say that to my brother, he rolls his eyes and says "b*tch hold my beer."

He lives in Chicago.

[Vanne]

Thanks guys, and thx Clay as well. No need to hurt anyone's feelings. I appreciate you guys taking point for me, but also not required, though much appreciated. And I do understand how busy you must be Clay, running a joint the size of BW must be crazy busy.

I spent last night on the phone with my bank, and have this morning returned my funds. I am still not sure where the stuff up was, but just explaining the situation to the lady on the other side of the headset was a mission in itself, with a successful outcome I might add.

I am not sure why your credit card fraud department declined my card, as I've used it before on orders with your firm Clay, but it sure as heck is frustrating to say the least and would no doubt stop a lot of people ordering from your store (I'd be looking into that if I were you as it's no doubt costing you a mint)

Well, why dont you you use PayPal I hear you say?
It's not as easy as that, as my PayPal (which no doubt some of the guys here would know) is registered in Oz, where I am from, and can't order anything with a miss-matched address.

Hang on... So your PayPal,s registered address is in Oz, living address is in Dubai, and what? You want your shipping address in the states...

So that's pretty much 95 percent of the time a no go.

At any rate, I gotta add, not sure what the issue is, but I'd be looking at why your company is declining cards so viciously, as after Pat's email, I placed my order with Turner's (using the EXACT same card) and went through without a hassle.

THAT as a company owner is what I'd be looking into, as it's lost revenue for BW, and if anything good can be said for this thread, besides me being slightly annoyed, pointing out that possibly your accounts department might need a look at. Root cause and effect.

My single purchase doesn't mean much, but I wonder how many international shoppers go elsewhere because of this.

Cheers everyone, and thanks for your responses.

[JamesClay]

Originally Posted by Vanne

I am not sure why your credit card fraud department declined my card, as I've used it before on orders with your firm Clay, but it sure as heck is frustrating to say the least and would no doubt stop a lot of people ordering from your store (I'd be looking into that if I were you as it's no doubt costing you a mint)

Thanks for the follow up. Once we have a relationship with a customer, things are easy. I suspect we have enough info that we're on that path with you (hard fought for sure - sorry for that). If you or anyone ever wants to reach up to me with an issue, my email is james@.

We all set our own fraud parameters, and some companies are more hungry for that initial sale and have a higher acceptance of fraud than we do. We constantly work on our fraud parameters, and the fraudsters constantly work on ways to penetrate the screen - it's ongoing. Our only goal is to let the good guys in and try to keep MOST of the scammers out, and when you have addresses for billing/shipping in Dubai, California, and Australia, that's a big red flag for us because a lot of the scammers work similarly remotely.

We do our best. Thanks for your patience and working through this one.

[The HACK]

Not to belabor the point but...

Sometimes I want to start a blog just to share some of the more fun stories I've had in my 4 stints with the automotive aftermarket industry. I don't know if this one is any fun, but we've had our shares of having to deal with fraud charges.

When I was running our direct sales/internet sales department, I monitor sales regularly. First thing in the morning I'd log in to NS and glance through sales to get a general picture of trends for the past day, week, month...etc. Just a habit I developed since on occasion I'd get an email from the BoD or President of the company asking something esoteric and I'd have to be able to pull numbers quickly out of a hat, or my behind. And since in the 50+ years of existence in this company we've never done sales direct, the ramp up in sales was slow. At the beginning we'd get like 1-2 sales a day and I'd get all excited, when shipping in the warehouse was shipping out hundreds of thousands to our WDs across the country.

Anyway during this slow ramp-up period, we got a couple of web orders for several thousand dollars of parts. And these orders all came in within a week, but they all look very similar. Bunch of different parts, ALL expensive, for different cars IN THE SAME ORDER. Meanwhile I'm all excited, all the hard work, fruits of labor, yada yada yada. I was so PROUD I printed out the lists of orders to show the president of the company. And sure enough, accounting ran the credit card number, it was all legit, we packed up the parts and shipped them out.

We paid no more attention to the orders, and I go back to the handful of orders per day and a few hundred bucks in sales. A month goes by, and the sales are slowly picking up, and then I get another spike of orders. Almost the same, someone placed 3-4 orders, almost all the same parts, all expensive parts, THOUSANDS of dollars of parts, for different cars, all on different cards, different ship to address, all came in with in like a 2 day span. This time it raised a red flag with accounting. AR lady came to me and asked me to look into the orders before sales released it.

But it all checks out online. Legit credit cards. Name, billing address, all that fun stuff matches. So I had one of the sales guys call the phone number on one of the orders...Disconnected. We start going down the list of orders. None of the phone numbers are legit. Alarm bells start going off. So I looked up some of the shipping addresses on Google maps, and the first one came back as an EMPTY PARKING LOT. One was a church. One was a public park. So we went back and check the OTHER orders from about a month ago, and sure enough, Same deal. Abandon buildings. Schools. All within like a 10-15 mile radius. Then it dawned on us.

They were ordering our parts using stolen, legit credit cards, with all the correct name and billing info. Then they were having the order shipped to a place where they KNOW there's no one there at home or at the location to sign, and they just wait there for the UPS delivery guy to show up to sign for the package, and then turning around and selling the parts off for cash or whatever.

We were inadvertently involved in a money laundering scheme. They basically went down the list of parts for sale online and picked and chose the most expensive parts. On the first batch of orders they made off with about $5,000 worth of parts, then they waited for another month has passed and pulled the same trick again.

Again, mid 200x timeframe, we were none the wiser. Plus none of us has any direct sales/retail/internet sales experience so we were easy to fool. Ended up putting in another rule within the back office that requires ANY order over $500 requiring authorization and confirmation via a phone call, as well as any order where the credit card billing zip code and the ship to zip code does not belong in the same city (that one was tough to figure out). Surprisingly, the bank and credit card company never called us to question about that first set of orders that went out, despite it being a clear case of fraud.

That first order ended up padding my report for the first quarter. I'm ashamed to admit it, but it made me look good to the bosses.

[Vanne]

Lol okay, normally I wouldn't give a shit, but this is beyond me laughing myself stupid.. no idea what the time frame is anymore, but I just got notified TODAY that the funds have been deposited back in my account.. hahaha.. what a joke.. but on the up side, at least I have more funds for parts again.. lol making me forcefully save and all.. hahaha

[JamesClay]

Originally Posted by Vanne

Lol okay, normally I wouldn't give a shit, but this is beyond me laughing myself stupid.. no idea what the time frame is anymore, but I just got notified TODAY that the funds have been deposited back in my account.. hahaha.. what a joke.. but on the up side, at least I have more funds for parts again.. lol making me forcefully save and all.. hahaha

And all this time - we never had a dime of yours and our cancellation of the authorization (which hadn't ever given us your money) happened a LONG time ago... Might want to consider your bank's processes as a factor when deciding which card to use as a primary. I can tell you - they aren't all the same and certainly this experience wasn't pleasant.

[Vanne]

Thanks for hanging out with me James, I appreciate the feedback mate, and your right, banks here do suck, but that's banks in general. Still, Visa is accepted the world over. Yup not pleasant for me either. I wish you and your business all the best mate.