Ignoring This Feature in Fluent Forms Cost Me Money
I made a stupid mistake when setting up Fluent Forms to take payment for my community. As a result, a scammer used a stolen credit card to access the community. The real card owner disputed the charge and I lost the dispute, which cost me the refund and a dispute fee with Stripe.
I lay out the problem, the evidence, and the very simple (but slightly hidden) feature in Fluent Forms that's prevented scammers from abusing stolen credit cards on my site since enabling it.
Transaction frauds (where the money is stolen without any consent or knowledge of the card holder) are legally refundable irrespective of any website policies and it is best not to dispute such charges. Whether the fraudster logged in or downloaded anything becomes immaterial.
However, if the true owner had made the transaction and later denied it, that's totally different.
Even for real estate, if PERSON-OWNER is the owner, PERSON-FRAUD forges PERSON-OWNER's signature and sells the house to PERSON-BUYER for $10 Million, when the real owner PERSON-OWNER goes to the court, they will get back the house from PERSON-BUYER and PERSON-BUYER loses the $10 million until the next step.
Next Step: Now PERSON-BUYER can have a separate fraud case against PERSON-FRAUD to recover the $10 million but that's separate and until he does so, he does not get back the $10 million (assuming that PERSON-FRAUD does not voluntarily return the money).
(This is just for general information and does not constitute legal advice. I am a law student and not a lawyer yet because I am yet to take the Bar exam.)
Soumik Chaudhuri I don't disagree with your premise, but I wasn't aware that the person who disputed the charge was a victim, not the person who signed up for my community. It wasn't until later that I realized the person who signed up was a thief and not the cardholder.
There are plenty of cardholders who try to dispute legitimate charges. That's the sort of issue my wife dealt with while working for a different membership, and why she never lost a case.
Great info on why your should collect the pysical address with online payments. Thanks William Beem
Volker Knöringer Thanks. I didn't want to collect that information, and now I have to protect it. Not collecting it put me at risk for stolen credit card fraud.
Thank you for sharing this.☺️
Thanks for posting this. I’m gonna make the changes that you recommend.
I’m still not completely sure why the scammer pays to get into your site. I think you mentioned that they just want to see if the card works and to see if there’s anything valuable in the membership. Is that about right?
@erin_1750260862 We should do what he suggests.
Bradley Charbonneau That's a good question. Maybe he thought he was going to go in, download a bunch of stuff, and not have to pay for it. Then again, maybe they do it just to prove they can, or to test it for another purchase elsewhere. My community has a low $10 fee. Could be a good way to test things out and then go for bigger stakes elsewhere.
I'm speculating.
Great learning, thanks for sharing.