Posted by: scentandviolet March 7th, 2025

There seem to be this misconception online that credit card fraud affects large banks only and it is “victimless crime”. Truth is credit card fraud is coming directly out of pocket of a small business.

How it works? Thief uses stolen credit card to place an online order on flower shop’s website for delivery. Florist receives an order, delivers it. About a month later, florist receives a chargeback.

Florist provides all the proof to the issuing credit card company: here is all the info you asked us to collect and verify: name of the cardholder, credit card number, expiration date, cvv, billing address, telephone number.

Credit card processing company and credit card issuing bank come back to us asking for the proof of delivery. We send them proof of delivery, with photo.

They come back to us with “aha – you did not deliver to the person who placed the order”. We go back to them explaining this is how flower deliveries work. Their response: tough luck! Pretty much, no matter what they ask us to provide, they keep moving the goal post.

Let us assume that someone just placed an order for Small Lily of The Incas for $60 to be delivered to 7892 Knight Rd in Houston, TX. With Delivery and Tax that total is $86.60. that does not sound like a major purchase, right? Well lets break it down:

$6.60 goes to State of Texas; $20 goes to delivery service; $5 goes to Vase Wholesaler; $10 goes to Greenery Wholesaler; $15 goes to Flower Wholesaler; $15 goes to Labor; $10 goes to occupancy cost (rent, utilities); $5 is for profit, cashflow and emergencies.

We still have to pay all of these and we lost $86.60

So our cost is currently $71.60 (we already paid) and we are short of money for rent and electricity. Forget profit, cash flow and or any emergencies.

Month later, credit card processing company issues $500 penalty fee. Why? Because they can, and we already know that big banks and credit card processing companies are major A-holes.

We are now out of $571.60 and really, really short on rent.

The problem is, we are seeing an increase in these frauds. Where we used to have one or two per year, we are seeing 1-2 per month. For a small business, these are the amounts we cannot afford. These are crippling amounts.

Credit Card companies and issuing banks will never take responsibility or accept the risk for this type of fraud. They will always, always penalize small business.

Occasionally, I get tempted to call or visit the recipient of the stolen goods and let them know that the pretty flowers they received were stolen but cannot help to think they're victims in this as much as we are.

I guess my message to all the credit card fraudsters who used stolen credit cards to buy flowers from us and who will attempt to do that in the future: I sincerely hope that you will perpetually stub your little toes and elbows to the point of pain but never an injury, and every time you do you will know that payback is a b**ch.

As far as what I wish for big banks and credit card companies, I hope you will be made to pay back $100,000,000,000 to small businesses. Also, your CEOs have toes and elbows...