Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

This is a different kind of blurb. Received an E-mail from a reader that I’d like to throw up to the group for advice. Any takers?

Here’s what your fellow reader/fellow retailer wrote: “A customer places a order for a Laptop through our eStore. The order was rejected due to the store not being able to verify his billing address. The customer was upset and continued to contact us over a months time. As it turns out, he is from Costa Rica, in the US working. The rub here comes from the way the credit card companies operate (or don?t operate) in South America. The CC?s are not allowed to be banks in these countries, but work somewhat like a check card here in the US. BUT the cards are processed in the same manor as in the US, when they are used here.”

“So to return to the story, when he pressed the order button, the eStore ran an authorization using the card number and the billing/shipping address he enter. When the address could not be verified the order was rejected, but the authorization can not electronically be retracted. Since the issuing bank is out of Costa Rica, the authorization is treated as a sale, since they do not do authorizations in CR, only sales, and the money was removed from the customers account. Where it goes, no one really knows.”

“The customer has sent us his online bank statement showing the transaction for the authorized amount, correspondences he has had with his bank and given us contacts in Costa Rica, but we STILL have not resolved the issue. The customer tells us ?they (the bank) do not believe you?. The strange thing is that the bank does not KNOW that we did not process a sale, but simply an authorization.”

What would you do?