I have some tips to pass along to anyone who now and then needs to purchase something by phone or online and ship to a different address than the credit card’s billing address.

While trying to replace a crashed PowerBook earlier this week, I spent at least three hours just trying to get the various components shipped to alternate addresses.

My PowerBook smashed to the floor on Monday morning, wrentching the LCD screen off its hinges. The rest of the day was spent trying to order a replacement machine, plus memory and accessories. The problem I ran into is in winter, no one can get up my mountain driveway (including me), so I use a variety of addresses down in the village or at neighbors’ houses.

The first incident came with the MacMall Powerbook order. I was borrowing my father’s Discover card for the purchase and knowing there could be a problem, I instructed him to phone Discover and give them the shipping address I would be using. I placed my order, and within ten minutes, he received a call from Discover telling him they thought his card was being fraudulently used. He reamed them out for the screwup, then called me, then I had to call MacMall four times after that to ensure they would process the order and get my new machine out that day.

Next I ordered memory from Other World Computing and used my bank debit Visa card. Well, they too have to manually verify sales which use a different shipping address but with Debit cards, there’s no provision to set up authorize shipping addresses. This last point I just learned that day — I’d presumed that since it carries a Visa logo, they can do the same things credit card companies do. But not so. Here again, I wanted the shipment to go out that day, so I have to keep calling back to try and reach someone and work through the situation. In the end, I switched the payment to an American Express card knowing the shipping address was pres-set on that account, and the representative on the phone with me (Dennis, thanks!) saw that I was a frequent customer and just approved the alternate ship address on the phone.

So always make sure when you’re using a shipping address different from your billing address to call your card provider and add that address to the account. Not all merchants bother with the manual verifications, but certainly most all medium to large merchants are doing it these days. Finally, watch out for using debit cards if you’re shipping to another address, if the merchant calls to verify, it’s not going to work.

Comment RSS - Trackback URI