I ordered some winter tyres from mytyres.co.uk last week, paying by credit card. They are now saying that, because I am a new customer and the order is over £400 they won't accept a credit card payment and I have to pay by a bank transfer. They have verified that the credit card authorization was okay. To add insult to injury they can't actually tell me when the tyres will be in stock.

Does this sound like a scam? I can't understand what the credit card risk is to them. If they have a decent audit trail on delivery (ie. use a courier that won't deliver without a signature) then they will always have evidence to rebut a chargeback. If I pay by bank transfer there is obviously a risk to me if they disappear between taking my money and supplying the tyres.

Does anyone know of other UK suppliers of Nokian tyres?

 

Completely bizarre. I cancelled the order and received an email confirmation that makes it sound like they decided to cancel the order. "We are sorry to inform you that the order RD xxxxxxx listed in your order dated 14.10.2010 will be cancelled, for other reasons". Good way to lose business and make sure customers don't come back.

Has anyone else used them? Have I just been unlucky?

 

I had a similar issue with them, I supplied them with my home phone number as they asked.They tried to call the whole of Saturday, whilst I was 200 miles away in Wales and cancelled my order as they couldn't verify the phone number!

They had my mobile number FFS. Why would they need to verify my home phone number - just send me the damn tyres out! I think I was paying via CC also

 

I recently got tyres from them and had no problems.

Wasn't over £400 and I did a bank transfer though.

 

not specific to this company BUT to be fair there is ALWAYS a charge-back risk on any mail order transaction processed by credit/debit card..........the risk is always the merchants regardless of what emasures/checks have been made as the bank simply withdraw the funds!!

alyn

 

I ordered from another supplier, again paying by card, and this one has come back and asked me for a recent utility bill. All my utilities are online billing only so I've sent them a PDF, but no idea whether they will accept it. What on earth is going on?!

 

bought many times of them with no problem at all

 

Too many companies getting scammed by the same thing that's happening to the SN traders - The Charge-Back Scam, and whilst ever the banks aren't will to take active measures to prevent it then it's not surprising that online traders are taking steps to protect themselves.

 

I'm getting seriously fed up now. Having sent a utility bill to verify identity and address they've now come back and said the tyres are no longer available and they have to refund my money.

Does anyone in the UK stock Nokian tyres?

 

Yeah - this is right.
What I don't understand is that the banks charge the merchants a higher commission on telephone sales, which I assumed was to cover the risk of these type of scams - however it appears the merchants take the loss and the credit card companies take on no extra risk - what gives?
I guess Caveat Venditor is the new transaction health warning.
More of a cash man myself.

 

Credit card processing systems score you on a whole load of stuff like:

Having a landline telephone number
Registered on electoral role
Previous transactions on the card

etc etc

They will also pay about 2% (£8) to the merchant on your £400 order, so they could be penny pinching. If they sell 100 sets of tyres a day, that's £800 a day, £16K per month extra profit if everyone pays by bank transfer!

Anders