Grrrrrr, I’m in a bad mood.

Prezzybox, like loads of other websites, gets a large number of people trying to place fraudulent orders on the site.

These people really make me sick and angry and if I wasn’t a peace loving hippy, I’d advocate beating them with a particularly big and sharp stick. With spikes on. Lots.

Basically it goes something like this….They tend to order gadget type products, the delivery address is different to the card holders address, the email address is something none-descript (yahoo, hotmail), and they tend to use a mobile phone number. It’s pretty easy to spot a fraudster.

The way we combat this (sorry scumbags) is that initially we use CV2/AVS checks, which basically ensure that the card number matches the senders address. If an order manages to get through this system, we write to the card holder address with a reference number and will not process the order until the card holder phones up and quotes the reference number to a member of our team. It therefore works pretty well.

However, this doesn’t stop chancers trying their luck. As you can guess, this has happened today. Normally we just delete the order (I’ll tell you why shortly) but this time - as the scumbag had tried to place 3 orders using 3 different identities for the same item - I thought “no, I’ll do the honourable and report it to the Police.

So why don’t we report every fraud and just delete the order? I’ll tell ya…

Basically, We are based in Warwickshire. The Fraudster, in this instance, lives in London and the card holder, lives in Aberdeen. So, I’ve reported the crime to our local police station and they tell me “the crime has been committed in London, as this is where the fraudster lives so you need to get a crime number from the London Met”. I then phone up the London Police station and they say “no, you need to report, it to your local police station as you are based in Warwickshire to get a crime number”.

Grrrr - it’s at this point that I’m starting to get a tad miffed.

Historically in a different case, I’ve even been told that I needed to phone up the Aberdeen Police Station because the victim (the card holder) is in Aberdeen. Aaaaaaarrrrgggggghhhhh

So, it’s no wonder that sooooo many fraudsters are turning to Internet fraud and identity theft. Basically, it’s chuffin easy, and the Police either aren’t bothered or don’t have the infrastructure in place to deal with it. Either way, the crims seem to be getting away with it scott free.

Fear not though bretherin. The Bearded Warrior pledges to fight on in a ‘Shaw Taylor-esq’ - one man battle against Internet Fraud. I’m off to find the details of my local MP and see if he fancies a chin wag…

I’ll keep you posted.

Ten ten. Over and out. Keep em peeled.

Valentines, the day of luurrvveee is nearly upon us and it’s a great time for gift retailers like ourselves as sales really pick up. In fact in our experience, it’s only Christmas which eclipses Valentines Day in terms of sales.

Consequently our buying dept are under strict instructions to find Valentines Day goodies that are sure to delight our customerbase and sell well for all of our lovely affiliates, and to be honest they’ve come up trumps. So, here’s some of my favourite newbies which I’m pretty sure will fly out in the next couple of weeks…

Carve your own Card - £7.95

With us all being environmentalists now, it’s no longer PC to find a big old Oak Tree in which to carve your affections for your loved one. However, the next best thing is to carve your own Card. Simple, yet brilliant!!

 USB Mix Tape - £19.95

Remember the days before digital music and MP3 players? Good old fashioned blank cassettes were all the rage and the romantics amongst us put together a mix tape for our loved ones… Well now this retro throw back allows you to store 60 minutes of your favourite tunes digitally on this USB mix tape. Just like the good old days you can add your own title, message and playlist. Sweet.

Personalised Romance Calendar - £14.95

The Personalised Calendar is one of our biggest selling products,  so it makes perfect sense to produce a romantic version of the same thing. Simply enter the name of the two love birds and we’ll do the rest, writing the names of the couple in a starlight November night or on the side of a big old Oak tree in April. Don’t worry - we can start the calendar from any month you require, making the ideal gift.

Hello folks,

Happy New Year to you all. I hope this year is a cracker for you!!

I’m going to make a concious effort this year to be a better blogger (famous last words). Part of the reason for my blogging demise towards the end of last year was that little event plonked towards the end of December - namely Christmas. So, I thought it would be nice to share some of our ramblings and give you a little insight into the typical day at Prezzybox.com during December and how much fun (!!!) it is…

5.45am - get up.

6.00am - Get to work (I live very close to work hence, the speed. Don’t worry, I won’t smell - I’ll have showered the night before).

6.05am - Start processing orders from the previous night. Historically we’d have processed all orders manually which was a very ssslllloooowwww process. In fact in the very old days, we used a PDQ machine (like the ones you get in shops) which used to take chuffin ages. Now, thanks to our super techies a lot of orders are auto-processed and ones that aren’t take seconds to process. We can therefore process 1000’s of orders a day.

7.30am - 8.30am - Staff start rolling in. Everybody is pretty much customer services focussed in December so its computers on, and then busily beavering away answering emails, quiries, doing refunds till we hear the dreaded ring of the phone starts at 9 bells…

 9.00am - Phones go on… Literally within a nano-second all of our lines light up with customers phoning up with such gems as “When is my order going to arrive”, “You’ve sent me a pole dancing kit instead of a pet plant”, “If I order now will it arrive before Christmas”. You get the idea…

 We also manufacture our own Personalised Calendars and Father Christmas Letters so we have to start the big old print machine running and print off the plethora of Calendars that have come in from the night before.

 9.00am-1pm - It’s just a matter of keeping on top of everything. This sounds easy, but it’s not, I assure you. Basically our orders increase by a factor of 15, which basically means we are 15 times busier in every single way - from customer emails, to stock orders coming into the warehouse, to phone calls, everything is multiplied by a factor of 15. This is compounded by the fact that 99.9% of your customers want their order for the same day. Yep - you’ve guessed it, the 25th. Consequently the nearer to Christmas it gets the more people start to panic that they are not going to get their goodies. So it’s our job to reassure them that everythings fine and not to worry as they’re order will be with them before Santa comes…

1pm - Time for lunch (ordinarily a take away pub lunch - we’re based in a farm house and thus don’t have such luxury as Maccy D’s), and also to have a meeting with our head of security - OK,  time to take Polly - the office retreiver and canine who sends out all of our emails - out for a walk and a 10 minute break from the computer.

1pm - 6pm. More of the same really… It really is mayhem. True, it’s not as bad as when we used to pack all of the orders ourselves - that was Pandemonium, but is still really hectic and pretty stressful. The constant ringing of the phone gives you a headache, whilst customer services staff members shouting across the office to see “when stock is going to arrive”, through to “don’t worry, I’ve sorted out that customer” adds to the tension. This combined with the buyers trying desperately trying to buy a few hundred more of this and that always add’s to the mix.

4pm - Royal Mail arrive at 4 (on the dot every day!!) to collect our sack-fulls of Calendars. It always puts a smile on my face to see a product that we’ve manufactured from scratch being sent out to a customer. 

 6pm-Close. At 6pm we turn the phones on to answer machine. Phew! In an ideal World we’d leave them on, but we always like to use this time to try and tie up a lot of loose ends.

8pm - Teatime (and beer time). Time to relax and then invariably time to fall asleep on the settee during Ramsey’s kitchen nightmares…

All of the above combined with various other traumas such as our servers going down, through to a number of our orders being sent out twice, all makes for a pretty stressful few weeks. And then as soon as its begun, it stops. 3 Weeks of madness and then it’s back to normality. It’s a real shock to the system.

And then it’s back to work in January… and the first meeting of the year… Christmas 2008 planning. Eeek!

Hello folks,

Just a quicke. We’ve been approached by our PSP - Payment Service Provider - who basically are the facility which allows us to take the money for our customers orders. They’ve set up a deal with Paypal, which in short means we can integrate Paypal into our checkout.

I can’t think of too many disadvantages and the advantage is that we can open ourselves up to customers who don’t necessarily have bank/credit cards or those who prefer to pay through Paypal.

As long as this tracks for our marketing partners and affiliates, and as long as the costs are not too prohibitive, then it sounds like a decent idea. However, I could be wrong…

What do you think? Your comments would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

Zak.