Re: Bav Auto <WOB>

[Jerry Chyo <jerryc@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10:28 PM 12/30/98 -0500, Dan wrote:
>What's up with Bav Auto?  They lost over $200 of my business today by
>declaring that they must have my home phone number.  When I told the
>salesman that I don't give out my home phone (I already get enough sales
>calls) he said he had to have it to process my order.  I told him no, all
>he needed was my credit card and address.  No, says he; Bav Auto needs it
>to verify my credit.  Well, I told him if he really needed it that I
>could find my parts elsewhere. 

Dan,

Bav Auto isn't my favorite (sometimes it seems like they're some little
auto parts store that ships) but in their defense, some credit card
merchants are kind of sticklers and make it really hard to process
chargebacks with out a lot of, in our minds, needless info.  It's not
unusual to require home address and phone to protect from bad guys ripping
you off.  Happens all the time with computer parts mail order.

I've never had them call me at home, or to my knowledge, sell my name and
number.  They're only doing it to protect their ass, and your's in case the
card was stolen.

Times are changing guys.  No one trusts anyone anymore.  It blows, but I
think things are only going to get more complicated than not.

On another note, Duane mentioned that it was illegal to charge your card
and not ship at that time.  He's mostly right.  Though this is a state by
state decision, many states have a time limit between the time you charge
and the time you must ship.  This is a logistic concession.  You may have
the part in a another part of the country, or the time between taking the
order and processing may be a few days, so you can charge and ship within a
given period (in CA I thinks it's something like 72 hours.  I've seen other
state that gave you up to 10 business days.  Go figure).  For the most part
it's an ethical call.  If you abuse this and get too many complaints to
your merchant then you run the risk of getting your account pulled, or
getting a higher rate charged on your charge receipts.

Happy New Year to all.  Don't let the bad guys get you down...kick 'em in
the ass.

Jerry Chyo
'88 M5
'72 tii

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