Jennifer and I dropped the option to pay with Express American on both sites yesterday.  Why?  Because although we had been warned by merchants everywhere that AMEX is only there for their cardholders, we just couldn’t really believe it until experiencing it ourselves.

Not that they care.  We feel like we spend a lot of money with them, but they just don’t care about the amount of money we process through them.  And if we lose some business due to not accepting the card, well, that’s what we have to deal with. 

I don’t have the patience or the interest in rehashing the whole situation.  Basically someone stole an AMEX cardholder’s card number, and ordered a bunch of merchandise on two separate orders from us.  We shipped it to a different address than the billing address. This is very common - many people buy gifts on our site and have them shipped directly to the recipient.  In the 120 pages of fine print AMEX sends to merchants to read when setting up an account, they apparently told us that they only will protect us if we ship to the billing address.  We can’t do that.  Who would pay for items to be shipping to themselves, just so they could turn around and ship it back out again? 

AMEX doesn’t care about our business model or that our store sells primarily items that are gifted to someone else.  They just saw that a cardmember’s number had been stolen, it came from us, and even though we provided information and backup out the wazoo to support our case, they dinged us for the full amount.  So now we are out the merchandise and the money. 

What made me the most upset?  I know you’re dying to hear.  What made me the most upset was that when I asked what they were going to do to go after the person who stole the cardnumber, they said they can’t or won’t do anything. It’s our responsibility, in Richmond VA, to go after some freak in Allen, Texas.  When I tried to report to Yahoo that one of their email addresses was being used to buy merchandise fraudently, a robot responded to my email with something about subpeonas.  Is ANYONE listening???  Does anyone care?

People want to know why identity theft and stolen cards are so rampant. Here’s the answer:  because none of the big companies with the money and resources to do something about it care.  Who is eating the cost of fraud and con artists? The small merchants who pay hefty monthly service charges for the pleasure of accepting credit cards, and fees on every transaction.  We make them rich.  In turn, when it’s time for them to step up and fight for us - they do nothing.  And what can you do as a merchant, really?  We can afford not to accept AMEX.  But we’d be out of business if we tried to get away from Visa or Mastercard.

Jennifer and I are going to go after the person or persons who did this.  We aren’t going to spend a ton of time or money on it, since we don’t have it, and on a happy note, we’ve buffed up our site’s security measures now and we are entirely paranoid, which is a good thing.  Tracy’s going to hook us up with a friend of hers from the Richmond Police Department.  As she so eloquently put it, “We’re going to nail that bitch.”  I love you, Tracy.

I just felt compelled to say that there is some kind of racket going on here. It’s so complicated and so messed up that I don’t have the time, energy or brain power to figure out just HOW screwed up this all is. I just know it’s not right.  All these credit card companies who talk about fighting identity theft want us to fight it by paying insurance for monthly fees for protection.  No one is going after the real issue.  At the end of the day, the credit card companies end up with more money.  And I’m pissed about it.