Plimus phone verification?

[Phil Steinmeyer]

I set up with Plimus, and when I went to do my first 'test buy' (using a live credit card, not their free test thing), about 2 minutes after I placed the order, I got a call on the phone # I had supplied with a robotic voice asking me to confirm that I had just bought such and such from Plimus. I find this highly unusual and off-putting - I almost hung up on the robot before I realized what it was, and I can think of all kinds of scenarios where this would go bad and the customer would not confirm. I sent an e-mail to Plimus about it, and this was their response:

*** The first few orders of every new vendor are flagged for manual review which is why you received the phone call, after that only orders that have high likelyhood of being fraudulent will be stopped for manual review by our fraud detection system. During the review process the order is checked by our reps to make sure it is legit in order to prevent fraud, in some cases a phone call may be required and either a person or the automated system will make the call while a live person monitors the results to prevent possible errors and to ensure the order is processed ASAP, the customer is notified of the possible delay via email and the order is usually processed within few minutes.
Please understand the manual review process is performed to protect us, you and the card holder from costly fraud and unless your products attract excessive amount of fraud very few of the orders will encounter the possible delay.
***

I think what they really mean (but didn't say) is that they want to verify that I'm not a scammer, setting up a quickie site to run a bunch of bogus credit card transactions through and quickly cash out. Fair enough. But how many transactions/how much time will it take before robo-verify goes away? Does anybody using Plimus have insight into this?

[yanuart]

I used to protest against it and got the same reply but then since I've allready setup everything there's nothing more I can do. I don't know how long they did the phone verification to my customers but I guess it won't be more than just a couple of times.
It's a good thing that my first 2 customers is actually my friends :D

[Frozen In Ice]

I understand how you would feel. However, speaking from experience, I would gladly tolerate the first few orders (as they told you) to be manually verified and then only orders afterword that are deemed suspicious be manually verified (again as they told you). In my opinion (which may not be the same as others), it's your processing fee working for you. I think it's an excellent idea and I wish more ecommerce processors would not only follow suit, but exercise more diligent measures for fraud. I remember placing and order (it wasn't for software) and receiving a call from the company asking me if I placed the order. I was actually happy they called to verify.

As for experience, I have experienced one ecommerce company who processed a fraudulent order and believe me, anyone with ounce of common sense would have known the information provided was false, but they allowed the order to go through. It potentially cost me quite a few bucks. Needless to say, I now use someone else as the main ecommerce processor (BMT) as their fraud measures are much more effecient and strict.

As I said, it's only my opinion, which may or may not be agreed upon by others.

[Mark Fassett]

When I first set up with Plimus, I think it was around 4 or 5 orders that were checked. I actually got an email from a guy thanking me for calling him back. He was happy about it.

[Jack Norton]

You should thank them for this verification, unless you prefer to have nice refunds (or worse chargebacks) for fraudolent orders... ;)

[Phil Steinmeyer]

I'm ok with it, as long as it's truly a short process - 4 or 5 orders is fine. 20 or 50 orders would be excessive. Sounds like it's the former, though.