WorldPay are taking the ...

[SpikeFMT]

Hi All
Having a problem with my card merchant provider worldpay over a disputed payment and was looking for some advice. We recently did a call out to a stranded motorist near us and as is normal we take payment over the phone prior to attending and on this occasion nothing was out of the ordinary
Card number, expiry date, 3 digit security code, address and postcode for this card all matched and the job was done. However a month later the cardholder disputed the payment saying that it was not autherised by him, he had not lost his card and signed a form declaring that he was not resposible for the payment. I keep all records of these jobs and gave worldpay all details including car registration and phone numbers but they refused to clear the money to our company. I was led to believe that I pay an extra charge to worldpay for a customer not present sale and could understand if my checks had not be fully matched when doing the transaction. I did call the police and enquired as to whether they could assit as if it was fraud then I had the car registration ect but they said there was nothing they could do and just refered me back to worldpay. The amount was not huge, £110 but this is not the point, what protection do I have in the future if I cannot rely on matching all card details prior to doing the work.

 

[Dimo]

What is the reason given for withholding the payment to you? They need to justify their action, and as you conducted the transaction flawlessly (?) I would demand a reason. Are they saying you are in breach of the agreement in some way?

WorldPay Ts & Cs state:-

5.2
In respect of any sums specified in clause 5.3 below, we may
at our option (which we may exercise in our sole and absolute
discretion):
(A)
deduct or withhold such sums from, or set-off such sums
against, any amount we are otherwise obliged to pay you;
and/or
(B)
send you an invoice for any or all such sums, which invoice
shall be payable in accordance with its terms;
5.3
The sums referred to in clause 5.2 are:
(A)
any Refunds;
(B)
any Chargebacks;
(C)
any Assessments;
(D)
any Chargeback Costs;
(E)
any Claims;
(F)
any Anticipated Liabilities;
(G)
any Fees; and
(H)
any other charges or amounts due from you to us under
this Agreement or otherwise.
5.4
In addition to our rights under clauses 5.2 and 5.3, we may defer
any amount we are obliged to pay you:
(A)
if, following any deductions pursuant to clause 5.2, such
amount is less than the minimum Remittance threshold
that we reasonably determine in our sole and absolute
discretion (of which we will notify you from time to time),
until the total Remittance payable reaches that threshold;
(B)
where we reasonably believe that a Transaction (including
activity which would otherwise have constituted
a Transaction) may be fraudulent or involves other
criminal activity, until the satisfactory completion of
our investigation and/or that of any Other Financial
Institution, Regulatory Authority, Card Scheme or
Alternative Payment Provider or any other third party; or
(C)
without limit in amount or time, if we become aware or
reasonably believe that you are in breach of or likely to be
in breach of your obligations under this Agreement.
5.5
We may suspend the processing of all or any Transactions,
Refunds, Representments or Retro-Charges where we
reasonably believe that a Transaction, Refund, Representment
or Retro-Charge (including activity which would otherwise
have constituted a Transaction, Refund, Representment or
Retro-Charge) may be fraudulent or involves any criminal
activity, until the satisfactory completion of our investigation
and/or that of any, Other Financial Institution, Regulatory
Authority, Card Scheme or Alternative Payment Provider, or
any other third party.
5.6
In the event that we exercise our rights under this clause 5 we
shall notify you of any such action and the reasons for it, unless
we are prohibited from doing so under the Applicable Law.
Subject to reasonable security measures and Applicable Law,
we will notify you before any suspension of processing under
clause 5.5 if we are able to do so, or otherwise immediately
after such suspension.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

I think a phone credit card transaction can be easy enough being disputed if the guy knows, how to play the system. He already caused you a hefty charge back fee and is covered most likely under consumer law if he used a personal credit card. Get yourself a favor and buy a mobile card reader such as sumup and get the transaction pin verified. It will be much harder to dispute it and their rates are cheaper than wordplay.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Can you check with worldpay what charge back code was used. That should give you an idea what the guy is up to and how you can defend it better. Keep in mind wordplay gets 1000's of charge back request and a call centre guy has to pre screen them with very little time per case. Expect that somebody looked at your case no more than 2 minutes, If you provided the wrong information to them in regards to the actual charge back code they will just side with the other side.

 

[SpikeFMT]

Thanks for the replies Worldpay wrote to me saying
Thank you for all the information and copy receipts blah blah blah but as the cardholder has signed an affidavit stating that he did not authorise this payment your appeal has been rejected and a charge back has been taken.
With regards to having a card reader we do have mobile card payment machines but for call outs we always take payment in advance in case of any issues when the job is done,which could be pretty late in the evening or early morning and this also gives us some protection against any hoax call outs or drive offs before we get there. This particular person initially wanted to pay by cash but we refuse this on late call outs as we do not want to expose our fitters to possible robbery if people know they definatly has money on them
We have now changed our system in that we either want to see the card that was used when we arrive and/or we will take the cost of the call out in advance over the phone, this helps prevent the issues mentioned earlier and then the balance with the card in the machine when we get there but you are always aware that you may have bad connection signal.
I am in the process of changing away from worldly now and my new card merchant has guaranteed that they would not have given this chargeback with all card and address details been matched They also told me that this is rife amongst hotels and guest houses with some hotels losing £1000+ a month

 

[Nochexman]

Does not sound as if WP have been much help to you - for example, they could have explained your options to you. Remember also that there is nothing to stop you taking this up in the small claims court, and you have the opportunity to claim for the costs associated with the chargeback and for the inconvenience to you.

 

[TotalWebSolutions]

Unfortunately there seems to have been several cases of this documented recently on the forum. Granted CNP does offer less protection a fully authenticated ecommerce or Pay by Link transaction but still it seemed you did everything you could to check. With regards moving to a new provider who 'guarantees' they would not have passed this on - let's hope this is the case should something similar happen again.

 

[AlanJ1]

Unfortunately there seems to have been several cases of this documented recently on the forum. Granted CNP does offer less protection a fully authenticated ecommerce or Pay by Link transaction but still it seemed you did everything you could to check. With regards moving to a new provider who 'guarantees' they would not have passed this on - let's hope this is the case should something similar happen again.

I think hope is the key word here, I personally can't see any provider guaranteeing this and hope the opening poster got this in writing and not just a sales guy on the phone trying to make a sale.

 

[SpikeFMT]

Thanks again for the replies
WP never explained any options to me and to be honest I really thought that all the evidence and details I gave them would be sufficient from my side, With regards to small claims can I assume this would be against WP? but for a small amount as this, of which a third is the actual cost of the tyre with the balance being the profit on the job and the call out charge for the fitter would it be worth taking the risk if it goes against us. The new provider could not understand why WP did not fight this for me and as far as there guarantee goes it was only if all the criteria of the CNP sale is complied with which they said mine with WP was
I deal with a local rep for the new card merchants who visits every month and I will take this guarantee in the good faith as it was given until.....

 

[Nochexman]

...With regards to small claims can I assume this would be against WP?

No, the claim would be against your non-paying customer. Make sure that you include all the costs you incurred.

 

[AlanJ1]

Thanks again for the replies
WP never explained any options to me and to be honest I really thought that all the evidence and details I gave them would be sufficient from my side, With regards to small claims can I assume this would be against WP? but for a small amount as this, of which a third is the actual cost of the tyre with the balance being the profit on the job and the call out charge for the fitter would it be worth taking the risk if it goes against us. The new provider could not understand why WP did not fight this for me and as far as there guarantee goes it was only if all the criteria of the CNP sale is complied with which they said mine with WP was
I deal with a local rep for the new card merchants who visits every month and I will take this guarantee in the good faith as it was given until.....

No this isn't against WP, your contract is with the customer and not WP. WP are just doing what they are told to do by the card provider as they filed a non authorized claim.
You may be lucky but your local rep visits you every month while looking t sign you up. I really hope this continues for you as you move forward once you have signed up with him. As a sales person, his "focus" may go elsewhere. Good luck though, I do hope it works out for you.

We use WP ourselves are our merchant bank (although we use Sage as our Gateway as the fraud facilities are much better).

 

[Ally Maxwell]

I dumped WP years ago for just this reason. Ecommerce sale, CVV match, customer signature from cardholder address for delivery etc etc and then a charge back a month later with customer claiming that they never ordered or received anything. Worldpay flatly refused to properly consider any of the data I presented.

 

[Gingerbreadmen]

Your gripe is with the customer its him that has done the dirty. He's just used worldpay policies to play you.

Write to him (recorded) letter before action explain that you have been informed by your card processor that the transaction is in dispute as a result the attached invoice is now overdue. Your business terms is payment within 14 days of this letter. If payment isn't received you will look to recover monies owed immediately possibly leading to the amount owed increasing.

Given the type of business you don't want him telling his mates how to get free tyre's off you. You need to send a strong message out that you are not going to let them have your eyes out. It may well cost you £140 (£70 to take him to small claims court and £70 for the bailiffs if he refuses to pay) However that will be added to the debt he owes you plus interest for the amount owed. But I imagine its still cheaper than giving someone else a free call out and new tyre!

There is someone on here that helps with small claims, however I just done it on the gov.uk website and it worked quite well. The guy I took to court ended up paying £10 per week but it was the principle of the matter and he ended up paying nearly £200 more than what he owed. I got it all in the end.

Good Luck

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Your gripe is with the customer its him that has done the dirty. He's just used worldpay policies to play you.

Write to him (recorded) letter before action explain that you have been informed by your card processor that the transaction is in dispute as a result the attached invoice is now overdue. Your business terms is payment within 14 days of this letter. If payment isn't received you will look to recover monies owed immediately possibly leading to the amount owed increasing.

Given the type of business you don't want him telling his mates how to get free tyre's off you. You need to send a strong message out that you are not going to let them have your eyes out. It may well cost you £140 (£70 to take him to small claims court and £70 for the bailiffs if he refuses to pay) However that will be added to the debt he owes you plus interest for the amount owed. But I imagine its still cheaper than giving someone else a free call out and new tyre!

There is someone on here that helps with small claims, however I just done it on the gov.uk website and it worked quite well. The guy I took to court ended up paying £10 per week but it was the principle of the matter and he ended up paying nearly £200 more than what he owed. I got it all in the end.

Good Luck

I like that idea, screw WorldPay and go after that guy and charge for damages and overdue invoice fees as well. Hit him with everything in the book and hours you spend on that case. It should teach him a lesson and small claims is not that expensive either and worth it.

 

[SpikeFMT]

Thank you for that, however we do not have the persons actual address as we entered it into the card machine as prompted and it all matched so all we have is the card merchant receipt which only shows card details number and expiry and WP won't give us any info because of data protection

My main issue however is that why do WP charge you more for a CNP transaction if you get no extra protection with it, I thought that is what it was for? its not like we didn't do all the right things with the card sale I could understand it if we had failed to get an all data matched responce from WP

 

[Gingerbreadmen]

Surely you had the Reg of the vehicle you repaired? You can get the details from the DVLA

https://www.gov.uk/request-information-from-dvla

One of the legitimate reasons you can request the details is as follows:

• tracing people responsible for driving off without paying for goods and services

Any associated cost for the information add it to the final bill.

I get what you are saying about WP. My take on it is they are implementing their policy which is in black and white in a very grey world. In B2C relationships they will always favor the consumer / customer.

 

[Root 66 Woodshop]

Perhaps, the only change you need to make for the future is by supplying an invoice with a name and address of the customer on it.

This will be your proof that they did indeed use your services.

 

[Matthew Lockland]

There is always a possibility of a genuine mistake. People sometimes forget what they paid for. The payment reference on the bank statement is not always descriptive enough. Also, close relatives may use the card and fail to inform the card owner about it. We have had an old lady once who has forgotten that she purchased from us. She simply could not recall our company name when looking at her bank statement. The case has been decided in our favour after we presented the copies of all communications. It was an online sale though, not the telephone.

As suggested above you need to find a way to contact the customer. And if he still refuses to pay, take him to court. May be try police again, it is their obligation to investigate any crime. Do not complain about WP to them (because they will refer to the contractual agreement between you and WP), complain about the customer. The police encourage reporting even unsuccessful fraud as it may help them to prevent future attempts to defraud others.

 

[SpikeFMT]

Thanks for the helpful advice guys I will give it a go

 

[Nochexman]

Thanks for the helpful advice guys I will give it a go

Would be interested in knowing how you have got on since your last post?

 

[SpikeFMT]

Hi Nochexman
No luck really WP said the case was closed as far as they were concerned,however as we have now left WP perhaps they can't be bothered. In the end we will just take it as a learning curve and as mentioned we have changed the way we now take CNP payments for all transactions and that is working well. So far!!!

 

[DotenHosting]

Thank you for that, however we do not have the persons actual address as we entered it into the card machine as prompted and it all matched so all we have is the card merchant receipt which only shows card details number and expiry and WP won't give us any info because of data protection

My main issue however is that why do WP charge you more for a CNP transaction if you get no extra protection with it, I thought that is what it was for? its not like we didn't do all the right things with the card sale I could understand it if we had failed to get an all data matched responce from WP

It may be worth getting job sheets created for your fitters to fill out at the road side in the future, this way addresses, VRM and a signature of the customer can be recorded in future. This would most definitely reduce the risk and charge the call out fee at the office and any additional fees at the roadside maybe?

You can also list the terms and conditions of payment on the job sheet and ask the customer to sign again if they agree, ultimaty making them crystal clear.