Off the Cuff: Are YOU Being Scammed?

Decorators beware! Scam artists are becoming increasingly devious — and their intent is nothing less than bilking you out of your hard-earned money.
Oct 8, 2007

By Mark L. Venit, MBA

If you sell T-shirts, YOU are next in line to be scammed if you haven't already been. Scammers seeking quotes on blank shirts have unfortunately scored from coast to coast.
 
In June, a caller from Tacoma, Wash., took RBS Activewear, a client of mine in Argyle, Wis., for $4,500. While this transaction took place over the phone when the owners were away at a trade show, Tina Ritschard, RBS co-owner, says the company would have approved the shipment in any case since the customer service rep correctly processed the credit card and the credit card service provider approved it.

After the goods were shipped to and received in the United Kingdom, the card issuer informed the company that someone using stolen information made the purchase. The issuer reversed the charges back to RBS, who are simply out of luck. To add insult to injury, RBS's liability carrier denied the company's claim due to a specific exemption in their policy against fraudulent transactions.

The word I use to characterize such lessons is "tuition." But acquiring this education proved quite expensive.

Chances are that your own insurance policy doesn't cover fraud either. Fraud is generally not covered except when it's committed by an employee of a firm that specifically purchases self-indemnification coverage against employee infidelity.

You might consider implementing the policy scrupulously observed at RBS now, which requires customers using credit cards to provide the three-digit security code (or four-digit for American Express).

But Duane Watlington, president of Active Imprints in Monmouth Junction, N.J., and a long-term client, told me about his being taken for several hundred dollars last month, despite the fact that his online order form already required the security code. The card in this case came from a buyer in Cleveland who wanted his order shipped to Michigan.

Active Imprints got approval from the merchant bank and faithfully executed the customer's instructions — only to find out a few days later that the card was stolen and he's out his cost. Watlington's card processor is considering reimbursing him, but the hoped-for answer hasn't yet come. Watlington and other clients have forwarded me a few dozen different e-mails from would-be scammers requesting quotes and other seemingly normal information.

How often do YOU get requests for blanks? How often do YOU get orders for blanks from a customer in one place asking you to ship to a destination that's hundreds or thousands of miles away?

Here are a few common elements that should help you spot a scam in the making:

1.    The requests are all for T-shirts and no other type of garments (so far). T-shirts are undoubtedly easier to fence, and printers who buy shirts at half-price from strangers ought to know they're enabling a scammer to hurt another company. Once you've spoken to a telephone scammer, the scammer prefers to use e-mails for subsequent communications and ordering.
2.    When you google the scammer's address, it might come up confirming the address given or perhaps as "not found."
3.    When solicitations are made to you via e-mail, the English is often Canadian (or British) in style, using words such as "colours" instead of "colors." If you receive or initiate a follow-up call, the area code is usually one found in Canada. Some e-mail requests appear to come from Africa or Africans, using language styles that sound remarkably like those e-mail scams you get from former "Nigerian" generals, former "Nigerian" diplomats and other overseas businessmen who want to share their good fortune with you, provided you send them real money first in order to get your promised bigger return on investment.

If requests for blank T-shirts are phoned or e-mailed in to you from folks who've never bought from you before, who give you business addresses far away and who want the goods shipped to a different far away destination, it's a no-brainer that you're being set up for the kill. If it walks and talks and looks like a duck, it's a duck. And be sure to explain the rash of scams to everyone in your company who handles sales or order entry and your about-to-be-upgraded sales policies.

Additional information in Impressions' November edition will reveal some of the scams currently in play and give you sound policy advice on defending yourself against scammers. Until that story appears, consider this an electronic Paul Revere-type warning about the enemy who's trying to steal your money.

Mark L. Venit, MBA, is president of Apparel Graphics Institute Ltd., Ocean Pines , Md., which provides management and marketing consulting and proprietary research to apparel graphics companies throughout the Americas and Europe. He is also the chairman of ShopWorks Software LLC, a provider of industry-specific business software. Venit teaches pricing, strategic marketing, salesmanship and other business management topics at the Imprinted Sportswear Shows. You can reach him at markvenit@cs.com.

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