How far do you go to verify the account when you get a signup online and the order system kicks back an undeliverable message on the email and the phone number they gave is not valid?

Do you look them up in a directory? Check whois? Send a snailmail? or just forget it because it is a sign of fraud.

This is all before the credit card is charged BTW.. I don't run the card untill the account is verified and processed.



:confused:

just forget it because it is a sign of fraud.

Wait a minute. If the email bounced back, the phone is not valid the you don't go anywhere - just stop there. I know as business owner you feel like you may have lost one order but c'mon there was nothing there to begin with. Is it possible that customer was just fooling around and made up the email and phone number? That's what I think it was.

Yes, if both are wrong just stop there.

I don't agree..... What if the person doesn't feel comfortable giving out their phone number? Or maybe they don't have their own phone number for some reason....? What if they simply mistyped their email address? Or maybe there was a server problem with their email....


I mean, obviously if you cannot contact them in any way at all, then don't bother with it... However, if you can contact the card holder, or the person that placed to order, it never hurts to contact them. Even if it were fraud, and the person you contact never intended to order, you have just done some good advertising for yourself. They will hear of you, maybe they are interested in your services? If not, they will hear your name, and recognize that you are a good company, because you stopped a case of fraud from hapening.


Am I making much sense? I am getting really tired, and sometimes I just start to ramble on when I am tired... :)

I think I made some valid points there :)

What do you all think?

We generally set up the account and leave it running for a few days (maybe a week). More often than not we'll get an e-mail in a day or so asking where their setup info is. As this is often a working address we fill them in on the fact their contact details were wrong, and send the info. Often they've already changed their nameservers over so it's a quick upload for them, and they're back online again.

Greg Moore

I did not follow up with this account and they called me today asking when their account was going to be active. LOL

It turns out that they typed the phone number wrong and their email account was already shutdown from the old host..

Go figure! :D

See! :D

It's human nature to enquire after something, having paid for it. If someone doesn't hear from their host after signup, they'll usually be pretty quick to get into contact with you when they don't hear back.

Greg Moore

I get about 2 orders with false email addresses and odd domain names such as sdfaafsd.com every day. I usually just ignore such orders, unless payment has already been made, in which case I wait for a few weeks for someone to contact me, and after that, just refund the charge to their credit card.