June 9, 2021
Return fraud is a particularly damaging type of fraud that many online merchants struggle to manage. This article will explain what return fraud is, and how your business can fight back against it.
With the growth of eCommerce, there has also been a growth of eCommerce-related fraud. A form of eCommerce fraud that's quickly becoming a challenge for merchants to manage is return fraud.
Fortunately, return fraud can be prevented with the proper strategy and solutions in place. Keep reading to learn more about refund fraud and how to prevent it from affecting your business growth.
What is eCommerce Return Fraud?
eCommerce return fraud involves being refunded for purchased goods, without having to return the items. Fraudsters are taking advantage of businesses with customer-friendly return policies by defrauding the return process and keeping goods after they've been refunded for the purchase.
Bad actors exploit gaps in fulfillment and logistics processes to get goods for free or profit from the transaction. These bad actors can either be individual customers taking advantage of opportunities to keep refunded products, or organized fraud rings that plan large-scale schemes to defraud companies.
Types of Return Fraud
Return fraud is just as harmful of a problem as chargebacks are for a business's bottom line. There are four main types of return fraud - did not arrive (DNA), empty box (EB) or partially empty box (PEB), fake tracking ID (FTID), and refund as a service fraud.
Did Not Arrive Fraud
With this type of return fraud, bad actors claim that their item did not arrive or was stolen from their porch. They are usually given a refund and get to keep the item. Oftentimes there's no definite way to verify that the goods were stolen, so the merchant has to assume liability and refund the customer regardless.
There are several clever ways that merchants avoid this type of fraud from occurring:
- Send a delivery confirmation email. Promptly notifying customers that their order has been delivered is a best practice for any eCommerce merchant. Delivery confirmation emails will not only help to deter porch theft, but they can act as proof that the order was delivered in the event that the customer claims they didn't receive it.
- Require a customer signature upon delivery. Although this introduces friction into the purchasing experience, it can be an effective approach to combatting return fraud. Many merchants use this tactic if the value of an order passes a certain threshold, or if they're selling products that are prone to fraud (for example, luxury goods).
Fake Tracking ID Fraud
Fake tracking ID (FTID) takes place when a bad actor requests a refund for an item and receives a return shipping label from the business. Then, the bad actor attaches the shipping label to an envelope, often junk mail, instead of returning the item. They will claim they returned the item and the tracking ID will show something was mailed, but they did not actually mail the item.
The best way to prevent this type of fraud is to require a return shipping receipt that the customer must include inside the box. Without the receipt, the return cannot be processed and a refund will not be distributed to the customer.
Refund as a Service
Believe it or not, there are organized fraud organizations that sell refunds as a service. They will use social engineering to manipulate customer service reps into providing a refund on behalf of their customers. They will then keep a portion of the refund for themselves.
The best way to prevent this type of fraud is to have clear guardrails in your return policy that prevent fraudsters from taking advantage of your business. It's a best practice to temporarily modify your return policy to include a holiday return cutoff date. This way, legitimate customers will be more inclined to return an item before the cutoff date, and it will hinder any plans that fraudsters had to fraudulently use the products before they request a refund from the merchant. As a business owner, you can educate your customer service and logistics team members you work with about return fraud and how to identify suspicious activity.
Empty Box Fraud
With empty box (EB) fraud, bad actors will claim that an item was packaged improperly or stolen during shipment. With partially empty box (PEB) fraud, bad actors purchase a small item with a high value and a large item with a low value. They will then claim the high-value item was not included in the box.
This type of return fraud is particularly difficult to prevent, and it's even more difficult to determine whether the customer is being honest or not. It's possible that an item could've been stolen during the shipping process, but without proof of this, you'll likely be stuck with refunding the customer and accepting the loss.
Preventing Return Fraud with Machine Learning
As previously mentioned, there are a variety of different ways you can prevent return fraud from impacting your business. To start, you might consider investing in a fraud prevention solution that rejects orders from customers prone to fraudulent activity. Vesta's end-to-end transaction guarantee platform will stop fraudulent purchases from being approved, and will also cover the cost of fraudulent orders that are mistakenly approved.
Vesta is the world’s first and only transaction guarantee platform using machine learning trained on 25 years of global data across the world’s largest mobile networks and digital merchants. If there's one solution that can help stop return fraud from hurting your business, it's Vesta's.
Fighting Back Against Return Fraud
While return fraud is a serious concern for every eCommerce business, it can be effectively prevented with the right combination of tactics.
With our fraud solutions, we use AI and machine learning capabilities to prevent return fraud and approve more legitimate transactions for your business. If you're interested in learning more about our solution, request a demo and someone from our team will walk you through how Vesta's platform works.