The Death Of The Telephone Order

R.I.P. Telephone Order. Affectionately known as MOTO ( Mail Order / Telephone Order ). Commissioned on 1 July 1976 and decommissioned peacefully on 1 September 2026. Proffered 50 years of untiring, quotidian Customer service. Beloved ordering facility of Eastleigh Frames and  predilected ordering tool of many loyal, faithful and devoted Customers.  Cherished by the Management and adored by its long-serving Staff. MOTO devoted its lifespan to Customers and never generated a single complaint or grievance.  Blessed with facility and versatility, MOTO dedicated all its time to others from all fields of human endeavour. Served as a mentor to generations of young picture framers. Left behind a legacy of nostalgia for  the way things were, easy, simple and uncomplicated. No mass for the repose of its electronic soul is to be offered. Both private and public messages of condolences will be appreciated. Respecting MOTO's last wishes, funeral rites are not envisaged. Neither burial nor cremation shall be required."

Sorry Customers, but here it is, the eulogy for Telephone Orders. It's no longer possible to ring them through, or to place them with us. Management recently discontinued this practice after several,  repeated and expensive Chargeback frauds costing Eastleigh Frames  hundreds of dollars.

Chargeback Fraud Explained

For those of you who might not know what this type of fraud is, let us  elucidate.

In our circumstances, Chargeback frauds were perpetrated when real Cardholders made valid online purchases, received the goods, later falsely claimed to their Bank that the charges were unauthorized, got their money back and then kept the goods.

The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back was a $548 online purchase from a Customer in Truganina, Victoria.  The Customer placed a normal online order with us but we couldn't process it because  payments kept getting declined.

We contacted her advising of this and she told us to keep on trying, but the Credit Card never worked.

Several days later a male rang, correctly quoted the name, address and Orders' details, identified himself as the Customer's husband and asked how their order was going.  We advised that the order could not be processed because the payment kept getting rejected.

"Ah, he said,  my wife's Card is no good, here. use mine "  so we processed the payment with the new Card details the husband provided, we processed the order and shipped it. Later, we received the Courier''s Proof of Delivery photo and lastly, we closed the Customer's order as completed.

Several days later we receive a Chargeback Dispute notification email from our Bank. The Customer claimed no to have authorized the purchase and wanted a full refund.

We then duly provided the Bank with all the email correspondence, screenshots, Proof of Delivery and other documentation. Surely somebody, somewhere, make a mistake we thought.

Alas, it was all for nothing. The Bank ignored all the proof and evidence. They believed the Customer, instead of us, took the money from our account and gave it to the Customer as a full refund.

To sum it up, Eastleigh Frames lost the money,  lost all the picture frames, lost all the shipping fees, and, to add insult to injury, the Bank slapped a  Chargeback penalty fee.

Management began reviewing the fine print in the email correspondence the Bank had sent us.  A new term, "Chargeback fraud",  was being mentioned a few times. And then the penny dropped. We got scammed, good and proper.

Well, we thought, maybe after 20-odd years of online selling this wasn't so bad, but we could not risk it happening again and soon after we notified all active Customers. The Sales and Administration could no longer accept or process Customers' payments placed by telephone.

As for the fraudulent order by the Truganina Customer,  we didn't let matters rest there. A  legal mind amongst us suggested that  the Customer may have obtained our property be deception,  a definite, reportable crime.

We then duly submitted an online  CyberCrime Report to Australian Cyber Security Centre.

After a week or so, we received a Victoria Police Victim Crime Report. It instructed us to submit all the email correspondence, screenshots, Proof of Delivery and other documentation to an investigating officer at our local Police Station.

Our Manager later attended the  Police Station, made and signed a formal statement. Just as we had thought, obtaining property by deception is indeed a crime, an indictable offence actually.

It's governed by Section 81 of the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic). In Victoria,  punishable by  10 years imprisonment (Level 5 imprisonment).

The investigating  police officer opined that an offence had indeed been committed, that charges would be laid requiring Court appearances seeking penalties and money restitution .

Last we heard,  the police were expected to visit and interview the Customer's at her home in relation the offence.

 The Cessation Of Telephone Orders Explained.

While this episode was the catalyst for the cessation of telephone order acceptance several other factors were considered.

Human-to-human telephone order have been dwindling for years, especially in  the retail, hospitality and restaurant industries, being supplanted by the smart phone applications and online desktop booking websites, just to mentions a couple.

And besides from the technology itself, other other factors have contributed to the dramatic decrease of phone orders.

One would be that Staff are frequently swamped with walk-in Customers and third-party delivery orders to tale calls.

Another one is that accepting and transcribing verbal phone orders is time-consuming and prone to errors due to noise, distractions and linguistic differences.

Yet one more  is that many Customers themselves, now prefer to complete retail purchases directly themselves via their smartphone apps or sites,  rather than calling the  sales office or a representative.

Also,  and as epitomized in this post, there are the very real, fraud and security challenges. Telephone orders are actually un-authenticable as these bypass modern online payment security layers like 3D Secure and others.

In other words,  Customers can and sometimes do, use Credit Cards which are not theirs.  Therefore real Cardholders can and often do, quite legitimately, dispute transactions, get refunds and keep the goods for free at the expense of merchants.

A last and quite important factor, concerns the labour costs expended in taking, accepting, and processing telephone order transactions.

Doing so manually via dedicated Staff or third parties such as call centre agents for manual order entries has become expensive and inefficient compared to the much cheaper, automated digital  portals, platforms and means .

The Do's And Dont's Of Telephone Orders.

 

	List of Do's		List of Don'ts
✓	Do ask for Photo ID if in doubt when processing a Credit or Charge Card payment.  Merchants are perfectly entitled to do so.  If the would-be Customer refuses to do so, simply do not process payment,  or decline the sale.	❌	Don't accept or process telephone order payments unless you personally know the Customer well. Verbal assurances such as, "It's Ok, it's my mother/father/wife/husband's Card are worthless as the caller remain unidentifiable and may not be the actual or named Cardholder.
✓	Do request an EFT order payment to your BSB if or when unsure of a Credit Card's provenance or ownership. In more than 20 years of online transactions we have never had a single EFT transactional dispute or loss.	❌	Don't process orders with third-party shipping or delivery addresses.  The real Cardholder may later claim not to have received the goods and dispute the transaction. It could also happen that  the receiver might claim not to have received the goods, thus triggering a Chargeback dispute.
✓	Do require Customers to place new, fresh or updated orders whenever there are doubts about products, specifications, names, addresses, payment methods or Credit Card details. This Customers service technique has prevented more than one misunderstanding, error, argument or dispute.	❌	Don't process payments unless both the Customer's name and the Cardholder's name match.  Should Customer Georgia Bloggs proffer payment with George Bloggs' Credit Card, it should be declined for obvious reasons. The two are not the one or same person.

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