Ensuring Accurate Customer Info Often Overlooked?

[toicontien]

Of all sources, my college newspaper wrote an article about e-commerce -- and it highlights a common problem many people might overlook: Making sure customers enter accurate information. (E-businesses need accurate information: Central Michigan Life (http://www.cm-life.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/12/13/41bd1b763901b)) People are always talking about online security, but something as mundane as verifying customer information is often overlooked.

My question is, of those out there running or developing e-commerce sites, what are you doing to make sure customers don't fill out bogus orders? What do you do to verify orders and customer information, if anything at all?

[Chrisy]

Dude, i help out with my friends online shop interface or in lamemens terms shop window (DON'T KNOW WAYI CALL IT THAT I JUST DO,IT'S NOT FUNNY ) As i understand it he sends out an e-mail to all of his people that want to buy from him with a form they fill that out and send it back. If he thinks that the info they have imputed is wrong he does not send it out. Also if he does send it and it does not get to the perdon for a number of reasons he has a way of getting it send back. If the buyer has already sent the money and it does not get to the person. He sends the money back.

In the end somthing does come up like the dude he sold the stuff to is like a killer he can say that he got them to imput all their info and it 's not his fult that they inputed it wrong.

Hope that makes sence if not i don't care becasue it took me a long time typing it (the most of 5 mins) :D

[russell]

The article overstates, or even mis-states the issue. When you make a purchase at en e-commerce web site, you enter your credit card information. The product isn't shipped until after the payment information is verified, which is almost always at the time the order is placed. You are also responsible for supplying the right ship to address. I can't think of any site that doesn't ask yo to review the information before it is finally submitted and stored in their database. Now, sure, on occasion a user enters the proper credit card information, but accidentally inputs a bad address, and most reputable companies will re-ship once the product is returned. FedEx, UPS and the US Postal service offer tracking, so the package doesn't just disappear.

Now, there are some things that the web site should do. Perform client-side form validation for all input fields, to ensure nothing is missing, and everything is properly formatted. Perform server-side validation to do the same things, plus compare check that the city, state and zip code match up. Process the credit card online before the order is ultimately placed in the database. You can also require a valid email address and automatically send an email to it, requiring the user to click a link in the email to confirm -- though this isn't needed for e-commerce, as the credit card should suffice.

Most businesses that make their living over the internet handle these issues just fine. Now one place where further verification is important is those businesses that collect information from consumers for the purpose of selling the consumer information. Here it is important to blacklist certain words or phrases in name fields (no obsceneties for example) and to have humans verify some percentage of the information via telephone.

Stolen credit cards are an issue, but this is usually guranteed by the credit card issuer, and the cc validation service will catch it if the card has been reported stolen, or the wrong address is provided.