Occasionally an item is lost by a courier. Now and again a parcel gets damaged en route (as is the rather amusing case which ended up with Royal Mail drawing a chicken carrying a Nando’s voucher as an apology). The rest of the time it’s a mystery why parcels don’t arrive or how someone paid for a purchase and then denies all knowledge.
Well it’s not really a mystery, most of the unauthorised payments and missing parcels are down to fraud. That’s what a new Online and Mail Order Loss Prevention Forum aim to tackle. Apparently one in eight of us fall foul of the UK’s £30billon cybercrime problem with average losses at £875 per incident. Of course it’s not all that bad, the average loss is massively boosted by those falling for the big money scams. However still 1.7 million consumers encountered online shopping fraud in the last year.
It is an annoying problem when you’ve an item delivered and signed for in the recipients name and they claim non-receipt or when an untracked item simply “disappears” into the ether. It’s just as damaging when a payment is reversed and it turns out to have been a stolen credit card or other unauthorised payment.
Now the new Online and Mail Order Loss Prevention Forum will be chaired by Alison Parkinson of Next, aiming to share best practices against retail cybercrime. eBay and PayPal’s Director of Global Asset Protection, John Mearls has been elected vice chair. Forum members will include eBay, the Metropolitan Police; Next, Shop Direct, John Lewis, Peacocks, Office Depot, JD Sport, Tesco and JD Williams.
Speaking of the new forum eBay’s John Mearls said it’s a “fantastic opportunity for us to work with some of the UK’s biggest brands to collaboratively share information on illegal and fraudulent practices that impact all of our businesses”
Thanks to Tamebay Reader Paul for the link to the Nando’s Chicken apology!
