I have had two emails (different people) from one of my affilate websites (not the one in my sig) in the last couple of weeks of people complaining I have charged their credit cards. The emails are not very well written and the one email doesn't even mention what credit card or a dollar amount, it just basically said you stole from me. I don't charge credit cards. I just point the user to a site that sells a product they are looking for (not very expensive, under $100). It is pretty obvious when you click on the link you are going to a different site. Do other affiliates get these type of emails? Could someone be charging there cards and make it look like it came from my site? Just curious on what's the best way to deal with this? Thanks
Just delete the emails and ignore and forget them. If they were legitimate, they would have given you a ton of information. Probably scammers trying to get something for nothing. Happens once in a huge great while to me, and concerning a site that sells nothing!
LOL written like someone who has never sold anything online before LOL. Wait..catch my breath here.... I sell stuff online on 3 commerce sites. I get people asking me where their order is and this is the sum total of the email: subject: where? body: where is my order? And yes, they are a real customer too. You should make a standard template email to explain that you do not sell products, but just refer visitors to sites that do. Don't not answer the email. You want to keep people feeling safe about ordering online - just don't delete their email and forget about em.
It's a scam. The charge wouldn't have your website name and chargebacks are done by the merchant bank. They wouldn't contact you. They are probably trying to harvest some information or are hoping you will issue them a refund. I get thousand dollar orders on a weekly basis for a site I have that talks about an expensive product but doesn't even sell it - nor have affiliate links. They figure is they send out a hundred thousand of these emails they will snag a few idiots. Just forget about it and flag the emails as spam.
That's another myopic view. I also get calls from people who don't remember what site they ordered from - and do not even realize they can contact their CC company to get the phone number of whoever charged them. Not replying - and at least trying to educate them - just continues the trend of people not trusting online shopping.
Most merchant accounts require that a phone number is printed on the statement for mail order companies. If they don't have their statement, how do they know they were charged? We used to do over $10 million a year in CC business with an average ticket of about $100. There were occasional problems, but its a very, very small percentage.
No matter what you think is blatenly obvious, it never is to some people.... They actually don't know that they are leaving yor site because they really don't know much about how the internet works... There are still people out there that actually don't know how they got to a website, let alone how they get off of it... This happens to me all the time and I try to explain this to people as much as I can... It does get annoying after a while, but they don't know any better....
Thanks for the replies. My first thought it was a scam and did not reply. I think what I will do is if I get two emails from the same source I'll reply politely explaining how it works and who they should contact (their credit card company).
It is a VERY small percent, but even if its 0.5% (which is my estimate) it adds up to a ton of people. Here are a rundown of some of the calls I can remember offhand 1-They thought they ordered something. Turns out (After about 10 minutes) they decided not to. They also thought their card was charged, but was not (DUH) 2-They were charged by a different company. It just happens we rank #1 for that company name - so assume it was bought from us. those are usually the most angry calls 3-they bought XX item at (insert big box store here) - and do not realize they'd have to contact that store for warranty issues. They call us and want a replacement item. these are usually the second angriest calls. 4-they ordered something from TV. They don't get it after 6 months and if we rank high for it, they call us and think they ordered from us. they do not think about calling their CC and seeing who billed them. They just see the deducted amount and call the first number they see. There are others. The short is - simply not answering an email may be the quickest way to get rid of them, but it is does not inspire confidence in shopping online.