(Urgent) Is this anything to be concerned about?

[Matt Lake]

Hi Guys,

I've actually just made my first sale on an NB2 store. That is good news although I think it's kind of a fluke as my rankings have been in the absolute pits recently and this has just come out of nowhere.

At first I thought it might be a scam of some sort as I've received a couple of messages in the past where the IP has been located in Nigeria and the like.

Never the less, the IP from this order (he also contacted me via email) states that it's from Kentucky which is also the delivery address.

It seems legit: the IP is from where the order is to be sent, the phone number is from that region and the money is actually in my Paypal account.

My ONLY concern is that the delivery address is different from the verified Paypal address. The delivery address is still in Kentucky (as is the address in Paypal) and the guy wants me to address it to another person with the same surname so I'm guessing it could be a gift for a brother or something.

As this is my first order and it's for a $1400 item, I just wanted to run it by you guys here.

Does it all seem perfectly fine?

In an ideal world the delivery address for the order would be the same as the verified address in Paypal but I'm guessing it's quite common to have a different delivery address (it's not as though it's to another country or even another state.)

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Matt

[jmackg54]

So billing address checks out, delivery is to another with the same last name? I would send it, but look for a delivery signature of some sort. Otherwise, I think you are okay.

John

[paboeder]

simplest thing to do is to just call them.
Tell them you need to verify the order and shipping information.

If you want, you can use reverse phone lookup to check the phone against the name and address. You can also use the white pages lookup to check the names against the addresses given to make sure there is nothing fishy.

If it is a scam, they won't answer the phone, or there will be something fishy about the names and addresses.

[BiG Papa Z]

I agree with paboeder.
I sell products in the 600-1200 range and have some fishy orders that turned out to be fine. One call will put all your worries behind you. Just explain to the customer that when the billing and shipping addresses don't match that you must call to verify the details before shipping.

Plus you say that your rankings are in the pits, but do you check what keywords your order came from, it might have been the exact product page that you have.(most of my sales come from the products keywords, not main site keywords). Either way congrats on the sale, if all turns out well that should be a pretty good order for you.
Cheers,
Z

[littleking]

DEFINATELY call them.

I was scammed out of $500 because a purchase was made using a stolen credit card.

PayPal does not automatically cover your losses if the billing and shipping addresses are different.

Call them.

[Matt Lake]

Thanks for the replies guys. I confirmed with the buyer and everything seems okay so I went ahead and processed it. Hopefully it turns out okay.

That will be a $250 profit which is pretty sweet. One problem I have at the moment though is that since I upgraded to Paypal PRO, I've got a 30% reserve held on my account. This is to last for 3 months I believe, although it has been in place for longer than that now so I'll have to check with them.

Anyway, by the time Paypal have held 30% of the order total and I've paid the wholesale cost and shipping cost, although I do make a profit, with the reserve in place I actually have to pay the supplier using some of my own money... about $150 or so. So in other words, with the current reserve in place, every time I make a sale I'm actually leaking money! I can handle it with a low sales volume but if I was selling a significant number of items I'd soon go broke! That is of course until the reserve is lifted.

I'm sure I'll be able to sort something out with Paypal if things do get tight. They've actually been pretty responsive and helpful during the Paypal Pro process.

On another note, with regards to my rankings, they really are in the pits. As sods law would have it, I had literally just deleted Google analytics and webmaster tools after receiving the unnatural link email, so don't have my keyword data to look at. I did replace GA with GetClicky and as far as I can tell, the traffic I'm getting (about 1 or 2 visits a day if I'm lucky) is coming in from my main keyword still. Considering I'm in about position 400 in the serps, this is a little odd.

Anyway, thanks for your help,

Matt

[Framed4u]

I have never heard they would hold 30% of the order. I thought it was about about 5% for 30 days. I find 30% to be very steep and i am a little surprised with that. i was angry when 2checkout was holding 5% on me. I just did the same with my webmaster and analytics and i am using getclicky.

cheers Toby

[Michael Lashey]

They usually hold the 30% if your credit is a little bunged up. I had the same thing happen to me - so I got a family friend to put up their credit info and I pay them 50 bucks a month for the service. It's worth it.

[Matt Lake]

I figured 30% was just standard practice but obviously not. My credit isn't bunged up but may be the fact that I'm only young (21) would make me higher risk. And the fact that I'm selling higher priced items of $1000+.

As I say, I'd like to think they'll be understanding and use some common sense after a while if I tell them that I'm leaking money on every sale I make.

[imicrothinking]

Hey Matt,

I guess the best thing you can do is to implement some of the anti-Penguin strategies Steve talked about in the webinar in May...and wait. There's never knowing what Google does with their algorithms even if we can generally guess the principles. I mean, if it's of any consolation, I once had a website up with my best keyword in rank 90 or so, and I got three sales in my first month and they all checked out to be valid sales. Of course, you can also look to other traffic strategies and diversify a little - that'll really help promote your site among communities, instead of focusing on Google.

Good luck with recovering from Penguin!

Cheers,
Baggio.