Jad's Thoughts

This post isn’t about boycotting danish products but it’s about boycotting skype and gizmo Call-in call-out naturally not because we want to boycott them but because we are blacklisted.

I’ve been trying to get Skype and/or gizmo account for ages now but no luck until now the reason is simply they are not accepting credit cards from Middle east because there has been a large number of transactions flagged as fraud from middle east and at the same time my credit being declined by Skype and Gizmo it’s been accepted by amazon, Yahoo!, Bluerazor and actually it’s has never been declined but by Skype and Gizmo.

So today I decided to retry with both Gizmo and Skype.

Gizmo

Alert! Your Card has been declined…
We’re sorry, but your order has been cancelled. There are multiple reasons why this may have happenned:

• * Some of your credit card information may not have matched what your bank has on file
• * You might have used the same credit card on multiple Gizmo Project and/or SIPphone accounts
• * We might have detected a high fraud pattern from your banking institution

So, how can I make a purchase?
We understand that you may still be interested in completing a purchase with us. Here are some suggestions regarding how you might do that:

• * If you have not used your credit card on another Gizmo Project, or SIPphone account, then you might want to try again. (Please double check to make sure that all your information is entered correctly)
• * You might want to try a credit card issued from a different financial institution.
• * You could open and verify an account with Paypal, and then use Paypal as your payment method.
• * Similarly, you could open an account with Moneybookers, and then use that as your payment method.

Skype

Your order is being processed

Thank you for shopping with Skype! We have started to process your order number 18598456 containing:

* $10,00 Skype Credit balance of $10

Important! Your order is currently being processed. Direct credit card orders are typically processed within 15 minutes.

WOW! it’s being processed! ok, I checked my credit card transaction and apparently they charged me the $10
BUT and big BUT

Order No. 18598456
Purchased by Skype Name jadmadi, using VISA-SSL
on February 07, 2006 at 07:41 o?clock (GMT +02).

Status: cancelled
Items in order Amount
Skype Credit balance of $10 $10,00
Sub total $10,00
15% V.A.T. $0,00
Grand total $10,00

For the first time ever in my life I see order to be cancelled by a company not by the customer and NO the card isn’t being declined for two reasons:
1-) They have already charged me and their name appears on my E-credit statement
2-) In the past I tried to purchase and the order status was “refused”

so there is no way to tell me that maybe you credit card has been declined.

4863377 April 02, 2005 Skype Credit ?10 ?10.00 refused

Hello Jad Madi,

We’re sending you this email to let you know we received your order, and your payment to Skype is Pending.

Hello Jad Madi,

We’re terribly sorry, but we’re writing to tell you that your recent order with Skype has been cancelled.

When we have to cancel a transaction, it can be for various reasons — among those are attempts to use your creditcard for more than one Skype name, failed CVC check or when a high fraud pattern has been detected from your banking institution. To learn more about CVC checks and how to properly fill out the Skype creditcard purchase form, please see here: support.skype.com…

We’d like to stress that we employ very strict anti-fraud meassures to protect you and ourselves, and unfortunately a perfectly legitimate purchase can be cancelled. If this is what happened, we apoligize again. A case like this is very unfortunate for you as well as for Skype, and we would like to tell you that we have assigned significant resources to continually improve our anti-fraud measures.

== What happens now? ==

Even when a transaction is refused, the text “Skype.com” can still show up on statements from your financial institution. This does not mean Skype is withdrawing any money from your account, but this is simply how Internet credit card payments work. Each time you attempt to buy a service from us, we attempt to reserve the amount on your account. When the transaction, for any reason, is refused, the reservation still shows up on your statement, but Skype cannot use it. Most banks are unfortunately very slow at removing such reservations, sometimes taking up to two weeks, and we apologize for the confusion.

Well, I’ve just sent Skype an email asking them what’s going on.

Let’s wait and see.

Here we go I just got respond from Skype

Unfortunately we do not support direct credit card or Paypal orders from the country where you are currently located due to the high amount of fraudulent transactions that we have been experiencing from this location.

The only payment method we currently have available for you is Moneybookers.com…. Moneybookers accepts bank transfer as well as direct credit card transactions but will often require that you take extra verification steps in order to protect themselves against fraud.

We apologize for the inconvenience that this may cause, we hope to be able to provide more purchase methods in the future.

Regards,

Now apparently there is no chance to purchase Gizmo or Skype account with further hassle with MoneyBookers…

[tags] credit, cards, fraud, alert, skype, gizmo, paypal, moneybookers, declined, yahoo, small, business, bluerazor, domains, amazon, books, boycott [/tags]