As 2008 comes to a close, I’d like to take the opportunity to wish all of you a happy and more prosperous 2009. Merchants following this blog will soon be taking a look at their bottom line for the year and in most cases it won’t be as nice as 2007. I’d venture to say that there are some that are looking at closing their virtual doors. In the small town where I live and do business, we’re seeing a couple of brick and mortar stores closing too. The economy hasn’t been kind to the small merchants. The big box stores killed us this season with their 50%-70% price reductions, but those big guys are hurting too. All that price slashing cut their bottom line. The game for them was to get rid of Holiday overstock, not make a lot of profit.
It has been a busy year here at Merchant911. We’ve identified a few more vendors to recommend in the Merchant Resource Center. It’s important to remember that I personally worked with high level people within these vendors’ structure before they got listed. And if you’re debating whether to become a Merchant911 member (why not – it’s free) remember that Merchant911 members have direct access to me and I have direct access to the executive suite at these vendors. The few times that we have been made aware of problems between a member and a listed vendor, we call them to the attention of our contacts and to the best of our knowledge, the issues have been resolved. One brought multiple unresolved problems and that vendor isn’t listed any more.
We started the year by moving to a new hosting service. I’d like to say it was painless but it wasn’t. There were some major issues that took over a week and a paid programmer to get resolved but we pulled it off. It wasn’t something that I looked forward to doing but I had a real problem with a hosting service that would unplug their servers and load them onto a truck to move them across several states without ever telling their customers that they were going to do it. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it took them four or five days to get them back on line. That’s just not an acceptable way to run a hosting company. We’re now going through a reseller who’s hosting at a top notch NOC. If you’re looking to change hosting providers, I’d certainly recommend Pet Net Designs. Not only will you be doing business with a friend of mine who’s cell phone is programmed into mine, you’ll be helping to support an outstanding Wildlife Rehabilitator, Red Creek Wildlife Center. If nothing else, take a look at their website and see the great things that Peggy and Morrie are doing!
On October 9th I approved member number 3800. We’re growing at a rate of close to 500 a year. We started back in January of 2001 and finished the year with 300. I never imagined we’d grow to more than a few hundred.
Early in 2008 some reprogramming was done and the IP Geolocation database is now updated weekly. With that database and the others, members have access to over a quarter million searchable records, all of which can be used for manual fraud screening.
Behind the scenes, some other member benefits are taking shape. Soon members will have access to a system that will enable them to display an image that, when clicked, will give real-time verification of their membership status to identify themselves as a merchant that takes extra steps to protect themselves and their customers against credit card fraud. The programming for this is complete but we’re still working on an image to display. Part of this whole process will involve setting up a sister website aimed at credit card fraud prevention from the cardholder perspective and that’s in the design phase now. Since everything about Merchant911 is done in my spare time, it’s slow going but it’s all making progress.
Along with the real-time verification image, you can expect to see a new logo. The one we’ve had since we opened our doors doesn’t do well in smaller versions on the web.
See what I mean!
My next post will be a review of the top 10 data breaches of 2008. All of these involved credit or debit card information or enough information for full-blown identity theft. You can bet that on-line merchants will be hit with some of the fruits of those breaches.
Similar Posts:
- Fraud trend updates
- Top ten things to watch in 2011
- Are you ready for an increase in credit card fraud?
- Albert Gonzales may be in Jail but it ain’t over for a long time.
- Credit card fraud trends
