Are you losing the sale at the last second?
By Steve Humphrey   ©2004 All Rights Reserved

I really hate to admit this...but I found out recently that I was losing a significant number of sales at the very last second! I figured out the problem and I wondered if it had happened to any of you.

After getting emails from a customer in Canada, I found that I had a problem. No matter what I did to my form code and the script that handles the form, he kept getting rejected! The address info was correct, the card was his (not stolen) and there was nothing wrong with his credit. The problem was the Address Verification System (AVS). Only credit cards issued by US banks work with AVS. If gateway software is set to reject transactions when there's an AVS error, you won't be able to accept any cards issued by non- US banks. I discovered after talking with customer service at ecx.com (my merchant account provider) that if *any* of the address mismatch conditions were selected as a reason to reject the transaction, *all* non-US credit cards get rejected. Why? None of them even respond to the AVS system. It can't ever get a match, so AVS always fails. So, I turned those settings "off". If you have a real merchant account and the secure gateway software is from Authorize.NET...log into the account and check your AVS settings - NOW. Decide if you want to sell to customers outside the US and set the AVS as needed. Otherwise, you could be losing sales *after* your prospect has made the decision to buy from you! All your marketing efforts, all your copy writing and advertising will have been wasted. Don't make this mistake! Final Note: Your merchant receipt should show the results of the AVS check. When AVS failure is indicated, it's best to contact the customer personally and verify the order. Do it as soon as you get the receipt. If the charge is bogus, visit your merchant account control panel and void it at once. This will prevent it from being posted to a stolen card (or number) and avoid a chargeback. Once the card owner finds out about the bogus charge and asks for a chargeback, it's too late to void the transaction! You'll get debited for the full amount of the transaction, plus chargeback fees of $25 or more.

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STEVE HUMPHREY is an 8-year Internet veteran and Certified Guerilla Marketer who is regarded as a specialist in CGI, Perl, and SQL programming. His new e-book "Learn to use CGI in Two Hours" is available across the Internet and from his site: http://www.merrymonk.com mailto:info@merrymonk.com

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