It stinks that you got stung but thanks for sharing - you're helping us other small businesses understand the risk and adopt best practices. How long after the order came in did the chargeback contact come in? Asking because I'm curious if it would make sense to hold large orders for a day or two just to reduce the risk. I get that larger order equals better customer and no business owner wants to delay service. Who do you process credit cards through? PayPal/Square/etc. Asking because I'm curious if some solutions are less vulnerable than others. When I stood up my most recent Kickstarter they had a few extra steps compared to last time that was all about chargebacks - clearly they've had issues and are putting in place solid pathways to pass them through to the campaign owners.

Also appreciate info like that from chuckwurt - with all fraud somebody crooked somewhere is doing it; it's a whole lot harder to avoid if we can't even understand what drives the theft mechanism.

For what its worth, if there was a poll on this thread my answer to your subject question is "Yes". They may not have gone into the transaction with that intent (ref. the discussion about lost card and "blanking out a time window") but if they are taking advantage of that to keep the product and are telling the bank they didn't get product, that is dishonest. They'd be on my 'cancel future orders from...' list.

-Rob
-check out my Kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2111218102/skee-ball-display-pcbs-redesigned?ref=e36051
-visit http://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC pinball resets or for my Williams system 3-7 sound board potentiometer solutions