We've been fortunate to have few instances of "friendly fraud" where a buyer claims to not have received our shipment, UPS has proof of delivery and won't honor a claim, the buyer initiates a chargeback with the payment card issuer, and so we lose the full order amount plus a chargeback fee.

This week we had a case where a customer signed a Shipper Release with UPS, claims never to have received our shipment, and now UPS states that the buyer has waived any ability for us to initiate a claim.

Since we don't intend to reimburse the buyer, it seems certain that he will initiate a chargeback with his payment card issuer. Regardless of written proof we provide, payment card issuers have always sided with the buyer and we've never successfully defended against a chargeback.

Having said that, we'd prefer to take the chargeback and fees rather than just refund the buyer's money, since presumably if this happens repeatedly the payment card issuer will eventually take action.

Other than requiring a signature for every shipment - which would be a real inconvenience to our 99.9% of honest buyers - has anyone found a reasonable way to deal with this?

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"friendly fraud"

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I'm not sure there is such a thing, hardly friendly in any way, shape or form.

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has anyone found a reasonable way to deal with this?

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Not that I know of. If anyone can come up with a 100% way of stamping out this then they will become wealthy.

Truth is the payment card operators, eBay & Amazon are quite free & easy at giving people their money back & are encouraging fraud. For example, with our Royal Mail Click & Drop service where we can as good as prove that the item has been delivered, eBay, Amazon & the card issuers are just not interested.

PayPal, which I detest with a passion & haven't used used for well over ten years, are all too easy at throwing customers their cash back.

Steve
Bolton, Lancashire, UK

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When it's a card, we usually lose, but contrary to what Steve says, we win the Paypal disputes almost every time.
Fortunately we get very few of these, but Paypal payments, if it shows delivered, that's all they need to see, and they rule in our favor every time.
David

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and now UPS states that the buyer has waived any ability for us to initiate a claim

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How can the buyer waive your rights? Surely they can only waive their own rights?

Vince

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According to UPS, once the buyer signs a Shipper Release he exempts all shipments from non-delivery claims after the driver shows the package as delivered.

I have had to fight with UPS (back when we used them) and Fedex over stuff like this.
In some cases, customer can make decisions that will cost the shipping.
You should insist that you do not want customers having that ability.

One of the most often scenarios was a customer changing the delivery address and then we would incur a fee. We were able to put a stop to that.

David

If the customer has waived their rights then, they should assume the resulting responsibility. It's really wrong if they are able to waive their rights but pass the responsibility on to you.

Vince

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Just to play Devil's advocate for a minute . Why the automatic assumption that it's fraud? What if the package was stolen off the doorstep, what if the UPS driver delivered it to the wrong location, what if the UPS driver decided to take it home himself? Who should pay in those scenarios?

Peter


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What if the package was stolen off the doorstep, what if the UPS driver delivered it to the wrong location, what if the UPS driver decided to take it home himself? Who should pay in those scenarios?

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This is one of the biggest challenges of selling online.

A few years ago, we actually had a woman call and say she got a notification from her ring doorbell, and just as fast as the order was dropped off, some idiot walked up and grabbed the box. She saw it herself.
It was a $200.00+ order.
We told her to call the police. She did... The police told her to call us and we would just replace it..
After much back and forth, we reluctantly replaced the order after she threatened a chargeback. I was not happy.

In the end, I guess things like this are just a cost of doing business.

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Why the automatic assumption that it's fraud?
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If the buyer signs a Shipper Release with UPS and then files a chargeback after the driver delivers the item, it's fraud.

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In the end, I guess things like this are just a cost of doing business.
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A family member who works at a brick-and-mortar retailer keeps reminding me about the outrageous "shrinkage" losses they experience from shoplifting and employee theft. I suppose we should be grateful to sell online, where these issues are relatively rare.

BTW, our "friendly fraud" chargebacks usually seem to occur with our ~20% buyers who are small business owners or managers. We rarely seem to have these issues with our ~80% of customers who buy for personal use.