I would like to post a rant

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Alek

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Hi.
My first post here.... I come here often though to get an answer for issues I got into on setup. People here are amazing! Very helpful and knowledgable community. Ok. Now here I go: I owned used Axe fxii mark2, and I own AX8 and Axe fxii xl plus. What really set me off was the moment when I purchased axe fx ii xl plus. My purchase was cancelled initially, not by a bank but by Fractal Audio. I received an email to call Fractal Audio. :). So I did. And since I am from Canada I talked to one guy for Canadian support... I guess. I will not tell his name though. I was let known that my purchase has been cancelled because my name sounds Russian (I am not Russian, but I do have the thick accent though ;)) and they had a lot of scams with orders and Russian names. Anyway long story short, I was asked a couple of security questions (where I buy guitar strings etc) and my purchase went through. But this was just awful. Even if I bought ax8 before that, no issues with that order, Fractal Audio was thinking that I am a scammer. I realized it only after phone call was completed. WTH. Also.... I am on the list for Axe fx3 (received confirmation on Feb 2 or 3 I think). I can't wait to have my hands on it, I am just afraid that I will have to go through the same ordeal. If it happens again, I am contempmating on snubbing it, but I am weak. I am also thinking that this thread will be removed, but I just wanted to share my story with you guys. Since I was late for wait list, I still have the time to think about it... maybe in a couple of months when my name shows up it will be much clearer. Also, I noticed that email thread for $3499 disappeared. Not cool.
I had to do this. It was sitting in me.
 
Yup... that was quick. Immediately moved from fx3 discussion to lounge thread. . But I noticed that 3499 thread is here. Sorry about saying that it was removed... it was just moved here. Good. Hope is not lost.
 
I would guess that FAS has asked those “security questions” for other purchases and they have NOT gone through. It’s clearly an issue if they even have that sort of procedure in place - I can’t imagine what they deal with in Sales.

I wouldn’t take it personally. FAS is strong because they do take precautions like this.

Alek said:
Yup... that was quick. Immediately moved from fx3 discussion to lounge thread.
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It’s not really an Axe3 discussion, so I moved it.
 
As a Canadian expat living in the USA and working for a financial services technology company: credit card fraud in the USA is on a whole other level. I’ve had my card number popped numerous times in the 5 years we’ve been living here. One time they emptied my chequing account in a two hour spending spree a town over; the bank shrugged it off and put all the money back.

Fractal’s security might seem draconian but they’re working with a very different reality here. It’s par for the course for US-based businesses dealing in credit card sales of high dollar, high demand items. Add to that, online sales come with a liability shift because they bypass the chip protection on newer cards. I can appreciate their caution.

My own credit card company has flagged my attempts to buy XL+ as fraud automatically in the past. Which means their machine learning has seen trends there.

Really: don’t take it personally. It’s not you, it’s the USA and rampant credit card fraud.
 
My credit card company once froze my card for a £10 purchase on Xbox live. I’ve also had it frozen when buying something from an Italian web shop (multiple times, every time I tried to order from that shop).

This was all on the banking side rather than the retailer side, but it happens. Like said above, unless they were hugely rude on the phone or something, I wouldn’t take it personally. If they have this procedure in place I imagine they’ve been scammed out of product before, which majorly sucks for a small business like fractal.

Edit- straight from the horses mouth. Huge bummer to hear that.
 
I just had my card reissued for the 4th time in three years. I can never get the credit card company to fess up about how my data was compromised. Reestablishing all of my auto-payments really sucks. It's gotten to the point where I have a two page checklist for everything I need to do.
 
I’ve had one card reissued at least 3 times in the past 2 years. I have another that will let my purchases go through, but the bank will immediately contact me to verify the purchase. Another just flat out declines them, and then calls me to verify the declined purchase. That company doesn’t understand that even though I’ve confirmed it was me, they’ve already declined it, so I need to go back to the retailer and start the purchase process all over again. I lost a hefty discount via a coupon code that way because the retailer said I already used the coupon, even though the card declined and the purchase didn’t go through. We eventually sorted it out, but it was a mess. Needless to say, that card is no longer used for online purchases. It’s a pain, and inconvenient, but I completely understand why everyone is covering their butts.
 
One of my business credit cards immediately declines any purchase over $200, I’ve figured out. I asked them why, and they say it’s for my protection. They don’t even let me verify! But the purchases are for the same vendor, similar amount, regular intervals and it’s local. It makes no sense. What’s the fkn point of having a credit card if it declines purchases! And they say it’s policy and not going to change (not due to credit status or anything). Needless to say I don’t use that card haha.

Credit cards are weird mannnnnnn.
 
ElectricPhase said:
I just had my card reissued for the 4th time in three years. I can never get the credit card company to fess up about how my data was compromised. Reestablishing all of my auto-payments really sucks. It's gotten to the point where I have a two page checklist for everything I need to do.
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The auto pay stuff definitely sucks... I've moved anything I can over to using PayPal. Then I just have to change PayPal the next (inevitable) time it happens...
 
FractalAudio said:
RAMPANT credit card fraud. We've lost tens of thousands of dollars over the past few years to CC fraud. Mostly Russians.
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I strongly believe you'd be better off (safety-wise and fee-wise) using Square (my company) or Stripe (a competitor and geared specifically for online sales) over Yahoo for your store and card processing. Both have Wordpress integrations that are straight forward to use with inventory management and such. If you ever want to talk about it, I'm here.
 
We've had a credit card through my wife's employer - its a good card we get a low rate and good points because she is an employee. We've had it for about a year. In that year, we have had it popped 4 times. Twice by people in Russia, and twice by people in Abu Dhabi. Both times they charged around 20k in airline tickets/travel... This was obviously covered by the CC company and barely an inconvenience for us - but it is crazy how rampant it is. These cards are also the chip type - which apparently doesn't help a whole lot. In my life of having cc's, I think I had it happen twice. Crazy it happened 4 times in a year. Shows it is getting worse.
 
Jimmytwotimes said:
These cards are also the chip type - which apparently doesn't help a whole lot.
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As long as companies allow card-not-present processing (which is what an online sale is processed as because the seller can't physically verify the card) this will be a problem. Chip+Signature or Chip+PIN don't help for CNP transactions.

With the introduction of the chip in the USA, CNP transaction liability shifted almost entirely to the seller. Pre-chip, credit card companies assumed the liability so if it turned out to be fraud the credit card company ate it and their insurance made the seller whole again. With the chip introduction, most of that liability shifted to the seller. So if you take a swipe (instead of a "dip" with the chip) or a CNP transaction and it turns out to be fraudulent you're boned -- the credit card company won't reimburse you. Hence the extra scrutiny companies like Fractal have to do to sell high value items using a card-not-present method of sales online.

Companies like Stripe and Square, where CNP transactions are considered a normal part of our transaction flow, have "special sauce" fraud detection for CNP stuff that makes fraud much, much less common for CNP transactions. So much so, both companies offer their own fraud and chargeback liability for our sellers. Put our money where our mouth is so-to-speak.

Some, ahem, light reading if you want to know more:

https://squareup.com/townsquare/emv
 
I've gone to carrying a few prepaid cards to cover meals and incidental expenses when I travel out of town. I hate the reloading fees, but every time I have had my regular cards popped it was after buying a meal, gas, or small items when out of town. For the card I use for hotel rooms, I have it set up for authorization from me for each transaction over $200.

For some strange reason the people that kept hitting my cards were using them to by Disneyland tickets.
 
iaresee said:
I strongly believe you'd be better off (safety-wise and fee-wise) using Square (my company) or Stripe (a competitor and geared specifically for online sales) over Yahoo for your store and card processing. Both have Wordpress integrations that are straight forward to use with inventory management and such. If you ever want to talk about it, I'm here.
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We haven't used Yahoo in years. We use an enterprise-level eCommerce suite. Square is fine for mom-and-pop stores.
 
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FractalAudio said:
We haven't used Yahoo in years. We use Volusion. It's enterprise-grade stuff. Square is fine for mom-and-pop stores.
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We do small to big. Mom and pop is where we started 8 years ago but we’ve long since moved upmarket. Multi-location, large inventory, thousand employee scale stuff is all in there now if you need it.
 
Rant on —

Credit cards have no real built-in security. They’re basically a vehicle for credit-card companies to make money from you by loaning you money at exhorbitantly high interest rates. They make so much money at this that they can afford to eat the cost when their not-secure credit cards are used fraudulently. Now with chip cards, they’ve managed to transfer much of that cost to the seller, so they can make even more money.





— Rant off
 
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