Hi, since around late February I've noticed an increase in 'unauthorized' and 'modified' orders. This has happened over several websites, with about 1 in 4 orders not being authorised. Seems to be with both payment providers we are using (PayPal and WorldPay). All sites are on latest ECT version (7.4.7)

Had anyone else noticed this, or have any suggestions please?

Thanks
Ellen

Hi Ellen
This could be for a lot of reasons really. But possibly because times are a bit more uncertain now. Or maybe shipping costs. Have you had a look at the built in "Abandoned Cart" feature though?

Vince

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Hi Vince, thanks I'll look at the abandoned cart feature - is that where you send an email to see if they want to continue the purchase? One customer seemed to report it as a website issue, it's a bit garbled but I will paste here anyway:

"filled in order and submitted it. Then it went to a Google page which asked to proceed. Did this but it took me back to the website. Tried both card and then paypal and the same thing happened each time"

The above does seem to suggest an issue at checkout. Will continue to monitor this.

Ellen

Hi Ellen
And try test orders through the payment systems to see if anything is amiss.

Vince

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Ellen, from time to time our cart also has spikes in 'unauthorized' orders. Possible explanations have been:

1. Occasionally Google bots flood the cart with dozens of unauthorized orders to verify Merchant feed pricing. These are easy to identify because they have a consistent bogus customer name like 'Johh Smith'.

2. For years we've also had unexplained, short-term spikes in 'unauthorized' orders with no explanation; sometimes the Private Order Status boxes show mostly declined payment card attempts, sometimes not. I recall that at times these unauthorized attempts were, say, 10-20% of total transactions.

Unable to explain those spikes, we've taken no action and eventually things seems to return to normal.

Problem orders (for example, customers who enter a bogus address, invalid phone number, or other bad information in the cart) also seem to follow an ebb and flow where we'll get an onslaught for a week or two, then few issues for a longer period. Unauthorized order attempts seems to follow a similar pattern.

Thanks for your comments Vince and Paul.

The 'unauthorized' orders seem a fair split between PayPal and Worldpay, so I don't feel it is related to the payment processor - both have successful orders going through as well. Interesting that you have seem similar spikes Paul.

UPS & FedEx fuel surcharges have gone through the roof. I think that's also part of it.
Especially if you sell items that Amazon sells that people can get with their Amazon Prime account with free or reduced shipping.

Michael

It's agreed that our UPS Negotiated rate seemed to suddenly get insanely expensive, and sales have suffered as a result.

If you use PayPal, you might look into the new (free) PayPal / Shipstation integration that gives a surprisingly good discount (~40%) off the UPS Daily Rate, using a new UPS Shipper Number assigned to you by ShipStation.

We've had difficulty getting real-time rates that reflect those new discounts, and are working to find a solution as discussed in another thread (https://www.ecommercetemplates.com/support/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=114619).