NewEgg.com Allowing Orders to Go Through With Incorrect CC Info

Just thought I'd share this story as Black Friday and the holiday shopping season approaches. Upon logging into my credit card account yesterday, I discovered 2 charges I did not recognize at all that occurred in the last 2 weeks. Both were at Newegg.com and both were for the same amount.

So, I called my CC company, who put me in a 3-way call with Newegg support, where it was discovered that these orders were placed using my CC number, but a different name on the card and a different billing address. The Newegg rep was very confused by this because normally, the system rejects the order if the information doesn't match. In these cases though (2 orders placed 4 days apart), the order went through entirely (he told me they were even already shipped) and MY card was billed.

He then starts directing me to contact my local police department and file a police report. I wanted to point out to him how blatantly stupid he was since it was clearly a huge goof on Newegg's part, and it's even a reasonable assumption that there wasn't even any malice here. I'm pretty sure in most fraud cases, people don't use different names (what could have even been the person's real name) and billing addresses...since those transactions are rejected 99.9% of the time. It's possible the person put in their number wrong and it just happened to match mine.

I almost wanted to laugh because there's no way in hell Newegg is getting their money from my CC company on this one. The phone call was recorded and the CC rep heard all of it. After the Newegg rep hung up, my CC rep said "OK...wow, so you're obviously not liable for those charges", lol.

I'm a huge fan of Newegg and have shopped with them for a long time, but if there's a flaw in their system, that's a pretty bad one to have. Just wanted to give everyone a heads up to keep an eye on your CC statements in case more crap like this seeps through. I would consider it a freak occurrence other than the fact that the orders were 4 days apart.

I used to work for a company that would process customer payments through Heartland. All we had to do was look up the customers account and copy the number over and any other information we put in was optional. Possible typo on their processing clerks end (if they do it manually).

QiG said:

I used to work for a company that would process customer payments through Heartland. All we had to do was look up the customers account and copy the number over and any other information we put in was optional. Possible typo on their processing clerks end (if they do it manually).

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That's interesting...and kind of scary, lol. Just crazy the range in security you'll get depending on where you shop. I've had some places that won't process the order until I call to verify that I actually placed the order. But at least matching up name on the card and billing address seems pretty simple...not to mention the security code on the back. Just seems very sloppy of Newegg here. But hey, maybe it'll motivate them to employ a better system when they eat this $240, haha.

Yeah that's a bit weird. New Egg is a fantastic company, but fantastic companies can fail at times, and they clearly failed this time. I haven't ordered from New egg in a couple years though, so should I still check and see if any charges have been placed on my card?

It looks like an open and shut chargeback case. Newegg has historically been very good about credit card security, but it sounds like a major lapse in procedures.

Sounds like a big screw-up on their end, will definitely have to keep an eye out in case anything weird comes up on my account from them.  Sadly these things do happen (I work for a company that deals with large volumes of CC info everyday as well and sometimes the system glitches or the person processing it hasnt had their morning tea yet, lol)

ludus said:

Yeah that's a bit weird. New Egg is a fantastic company, but fantastic companies can fail at times, and they clearly failed this time. I haven't ordered from New egg in a couple years though, so should I still check and see if any charges have been placed on my card?

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Well, I don't know if I would say anybody is "at risk". I don't think it was an information breach or anything like Sony had when they got hacked. It really could have been somebody trying to honestly put in their card, and somehow coming up with mine (not sure how likely that is though).

I guess the thought is just if Newegg doesn't fix whatever allowed this, it COULD happen to anyone at any time (basically, anyone who wants to just go through guessing 16 digit numbers could eventually get lucky..and without any other info needed, the order would go through). The guy said the system is supposed to reject the orders when info doesn't match, but obviously, that didn't happen here. Like I said, the fact that it happened twice is the only thing that makes me question their system.

Spokker said:

It looks like an open and shut chargeback case. Newegg has historically been very good about credit card security, but it sounds like a major lapse in procedures.

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Oh yeah, I'm not displeased with the outcome (other than wasting 45 minutes on the phone). The Newegg rep didn't really seem like he had it together though. He put me on hold at least 6 times (I half expected the CC rep to snicker or make some kind of comment, haha). I get that this was probably a very rare case. But it took him awhile to fully understand what was happening. At first, he was looking on my account and telling me that he didn't see any orders placed in the past 30 days.

That was the first thing I checked though because I thought my account being compromised was more likely...but then I discovered that I didn't even have this card stored on my account. The fact that it was used at Newegg just seemed to be a coincidence (though really, who hasn't heard of Newegg?) The connection was also shit as I could barely hear him, despite being able to hear the CC rep clear as day. Like I said, I've always had good experiences with Newegg as well. But this was extremely poor form for them.

One more reason to enable the monitoring tools if your credit card allows it, where you're sent an email and/or a text message when a transaction is done against your card without it being present, which would be any online transaction.

I had credit card fraud happen to one of my cards a few years ago when Monoprice.com was hacked and I card on file with them.  Since that point, both of the cards I use for online purchases are set to email and text when a transaction happens when my card isn't present.  Caught two different acts of fraud between the two cards and helped stop it before it started.

It may end up being some extra emails or texts in the middle of the night, though it may save you some issues with your credit card being defrauded.

shrike4242 said:

One more reason to enable the monitoring tools if your credit card allows it, where you're sent an email and/or a text message when a transaction is done against your card without it being present, which would be any online transaction.

I had credit card fraud happen to one of my cards a few years ago when Monoprice.com was hacked and I card on file with them. Since that point, both of the cards I use for online purchases are set to email and text when a transaction happens when my card isn't present. Caught two different acts of fraud between the two cards and helped stop it before it started.

It may end up being some extra emails or texts in the middle of the night, though it may save you some issues with your credit card being defrauded.

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That's a good point too. I could do emails, but definitely not texts. My daughter has provided enough late night wake ups the past two years as it is, haha.

n8rockerasu said:

That's a good point too. I could do emails, but definitely not texts. My daughter has provided enough late night wake ups the past two years as it is, haha.

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I don't have texts or emails on audible notification, so it doesn't matter to me if they're emails or texts, though having that notification is a good thing to get some real-time notifications.