Google Checkout Cancelling Orders Citing High Risk

Google Checkout Cancelling Orders Citing High Risk
By: Ina Steiner
Sun Apr 15 2012

Online merchants are reporting that Google Checkout is cancelling a high number of orders due to high risk assessments since the beginning of March. Sellers say they are receiving the following message:

"For your protection, Google cancelled this order. The transaction was considered fraudulent."

In response to a merchant who said he lost 30% of his orders because Google Checkout considered them fraudulent (which was up from an average of 2%), another merchant replied, "I have had the same problem - but it is more like 90% of my orders have been classed as High Risk since the beginning of March. Something has changed. It seems like all foreign orders (which is the bulk of our business) are now considered "fraudulent", and yet we have not had a problem in the past. If you have any idea of who we can report this too, I would be very obliged, as this is really halting our business, and we have to process our orders in a much more time consuming way."

Two sellers reported 40 - 50% of their orders had been cancelled in March. On March 14, one seller wrote, "Since they have implemented their new "security services" I have been experiencing a whopping 40% of my transactions being cancelled as "high risk" and "fraudulent". I know for a fact that they are not. If they don't fix their methodology of determining risk I will be forced to take my business elsewhere. What good is a checkout system that just cancels everything??? As much as I dislike PayPal, at least the transactions go through..."

In early April, a seller wrote, "I have had over 1100 Google Checkout transactions since October. Up until about a month ago there were maybe 2 transactions that were "high risk" and cancelled. Within the past month it seems like 20% of the transactions are high risk. I have had people e-mail me after the fact saying that they are trying to purchase and it keeps throwing the purchase out. These purchases are coming from tons of different locations all over the US. Did something change in the risk assessment system to cause this to happen. I am losing a lot of (what I feel like are legitimate sales due to this. Please help!"

Last week, a merchant who had been using Google Checkout as their exclusive payment method for international orders and as an option for domestic payments since 2006 and rarely had an order cancelled by Google, said that within the last week, "we have had three orders, 1 US, 1 Puerto Rico (US), and 1 Canadian Cancelled by Google due to being High Risk. Even though all three are return customers for us. How do we get this resolved?"

Sellers writing on the boards expressed frustration that Google has been unresponsive to inquiries about the cancelled orders.

We became aware of this issue this evening and have sent an inquiry to Google for comment.

Just FYI....

Yikes, Mary, glad I don't use Google. Hope this doesn't hassle anyone on eBid.

Thanks for the heads up. :)

Best wishes for many sales to all,

Good, useful information, thank you