Kalahari ---- What has happened??

W

wobbie

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I have purchased quite a few things from Kalahari in the past. So, on 24th February, I ordered a Samsung phone from them. Payment deduction came off. On the 25th, it was sent off. I was advised it would arrive on the 26th (Thursday), Great, as it was supposed to be a birthday present for Friday, 27th.

Anyhow, Nothing arrived, no phonecall from them. I called them on Saturday morning (2x) & eventually was told that it was recalled from DHL as my account profile was blacklisted! This confused me, as it was a brand new profile & used for the first time. It REALLY p'd me off that there was no phone-call, nothing!

The guy I spoke to (on Saturday) said he would escalate this query to the blacklist department & will urgently get back to me. I called at 12:00 to-day,to find out what's happening, & a supervisor, Ricardo, said that an escalation could take 24-48 hours. (sigh!)

They just came back to say that it was an error on their side that the blacklisting took place & that they will let me know when the delivery would take place....

More later!!!
 
Well, they just phoned & said that delivery is scheduled for today, & as a token of goodwill, they will credit my profile with R100.00!
I can get R75 vouchers for free from www.vouchercloud.co.za

Poor show, Kalahari!!!
 
wobbie said:
they will credit my profile with R100.00!
I can get R75 vouchers for free from www.vouchercloud.co.za

Poor show, Kalahari!!!
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I am sure you can combine the 2 now to get R175 off R350. Or just use the R100 on anything cheaper because it doesn't have a minimum spent like the R75 one has, obviously you'll have to pay/deduct for courier though.
 
I worked on a fraud detection system before and one of the rules for flagging a customer as fraudulent was, if it's a first time purchase on a new account and the value of the item exceeds R1000, flag the purchase as fraudulent. Someone then manually has to approve or reject the purchase. This usually has a turnaround of approximately 24 hours. During the entire process, the customer does not get contacted. Companies figure that it's such a small percentage of purchases that get flagged that it's not worth their while to contact the client about it. They'd rather deal with the complaint (which I'm sure Kalahari has lotsa practice doing) and resolve these on a case by case basis.
 
So wait, you've purchased with them before and then decided to create a brand new profile to make a very expensive purchase?

I would of flagged that as fishy too, especially if u used the same address as the one you made purchases on before.

My thoughts would if been, this moron stole someone's details and is trying to score a new phone. Flag his rear.
 
KaMoS said:
I worked on a fraud detection system before and one of the rules for flagging a customer as fraudulent was, if it's a first time purchase on a new account and the value of the item exceeds R1000, flag the purchase as fraudulent. Someone then manually has to approve or reject the purchase. This usually has a turnaround of approximately 24 hours. During the entire process, the customer does not get contacted. Companies figure that it's such a small percentage of purchases that get flagged that it's not worth their while to contact the client about it. They'd rather deal with the complaint (which I'm sure Kalahari has lotsa practice doing) and resolve these on a case by case basis.
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This is what more than likely happened. New account and a high purchase is normally a red flag with eCommerce sites. I think Kalahari was just being careful, however, they could have handled the situation better. What's interesting though, is you created a new account when you (presumably) had an existing account. Why?
 
Tander said:
This is what more than likely happened. New account and a high purchase is normally a red flag with eCommerce sites. I think Kalahari was just being careful, however, they could have handled the situation better. What's interesting though, is you created a new account when you (presumably) had an existing account. Why?
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Well what the flip? What if you genuinely want something expensive?

What if I register a new account on Wootware? Practically nothing on that site costs less than R1000 - should they blacklist all new customers then?

R1000 is really not all that much money, either. R10000 would be more reasonable, although I still don't like the practice.

How about this - when someone new places a large order, phone them to verify their details. If you can't reach them, or something doesn't add up, then blacklist them.
 
Ancalagon said:
Well what the flip? What if you genuinely want something expensive?

What if I register a new account on Wootware? Practically nothing on that site costs less than R1000 - should they blacklist all new customers then?

R1000 is really not all that much money, either. R10000 would be more reasonable, although I still don't like the practice.

How about this - when someone new places a large order, phone them to verify their details. If you can't reach them, or something doesn't add up, then blacklist them.
Click to expand...

On most cases those checks will be done to make sure the account is legit. Like I said, Kalahari could have handled this a lot better. One call to the client to confirm details would have avoided all the hassle.
 
Ancalagon said:
Well what the flip? What if you genuinely want something expensive?

What if I register a new account on Wootware? Practically nothing on that site costs less than R1000 - should they blacklist all new customers then?

R1000 is really not all that much money, either. R10000 would be more reasonable, although I still don't like the practice.

How about this - when someone new places a large order, phone them to verify their details. If you can't reach them, or something doesn't add up, then blacklist them.
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No its not, but think about what he said, he said he shopped with them before, but for this particular purchase he chose to create a new account instead, but considering he purchased before and presumably got delivery it's reasonable too assume that he used most of the same details, any basic analysis would of flagged 2 accounts with almost identical details as fishy, add to that the brand spanking new account makes a very large purchase.

Not to say they could not of handled this better, but his whole explanation of what happened smells like week old fish.

As for Woodward, they use EFT or 3rd party payments for credit cards which will do verification and all than on their side, Kalahari does it all internally, so they have their own internal systems for flagging potential fraud.

Considering how he made this purchase it's hard to sympathise with him, Kalahari was protecting their busy from someone who was acting dodgy.
 
CranialBlaze said:
Considering how he made this purchase it's hard to sympathise with him, Kalahari was protecting their busy from someone who was acting dodgy.
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I don't agree. Maybe he forgot his password? Or forgot that he had an account? Or maybe he didn't realize that you can have more than one address per account?

He wasn't acting dodgy, he was making a flipping purchase!

Is it that hard to just pick up a phone and make sure he is who he says he is? Phone the bank, if you have to?

Yes lets push this all onto the consumer - if it was me, I would have cancelled the order, gone public everywhere, and then used another provider.

Treat me like a criminal only if you have evidence of wrong doing. Creating a new account is not evidence of wrong doing.

And if you treat me like a criminal, and you have no justification, I will never do business with you again.
 
CranialBlaze said:
most of the same details...
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This would make sense to me. From Kalahari's PoV, they have an existing, confirmed customer with credit card number X. Now someone registers a new account, also with credit card number X. That should raise flags, even if the delivery address is the same. If the OP used a different delivery address than on his records (e.g. work vs home) it would look even worse.
 
Ancalagon said:
I don't agree. Maybe he forgot his password? Or forgot that he had an account? Or maybe he didn't realize that you can have more than one address per account?

He wasn't acting dodgy, he was making a flipping purchase!

Is it that hard to just pick up a phone and make sure he is who he says he is? Phone the bank, if you have to?

Yes lets push this all onto the consumer - if it was me, I would have cancelled the order, gone public everywhere, and then used another provider.

Treat me like a criminal only if you have evidence of wrong doing. Creating a new account is not evidence of wrong doing.

And if you treat me like a criminal, and you have no justification, I will never do business with you again.
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Let's see, reset password, 30 seconds.
Forgot he had an account, cool, forgot his email address too?
Did not realize multiple addresses, mmm, log in and look, 60 seconds.

Worst case would of taken him 5 minutes to of not had this problem, yet he went the dodgy route by creating a new account instead.
 
CranialBlaze said:
Let's see, reset password, 30 seconds.
Forgot he had an account, cool, forgot his email address too?
Did not realize multiple addresses, mmm, log in and look, 60 seconds.

Worst case would of taken him 5 minutes to of not had this problem, yet he went the dodgy route by creating a new account instead.
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But why is it dodgy? I can have multiple accounts if I choose - who is to say I can't?

Not everyone is as tech savvy as us. My brother created a second skype account, for instance. Didn't realize he could use the same one across multiple devices. He is 33.

Having multiple accounts is not a crime.

Maybe you run a business at home, and the only difference between the two is payment methods. Is that a crime?
 
Ancalagon said:
But why is it dodgy? I can have multiple accounts if I choose - who is to say I can't?

Not everyone is as tech savvy as us. My brother created a second skype account, for instance. Didn't realize he could use the same one across multiple devices. He is 33.

Having multiple accounts is not a crime.

Maybe you run a business at home, and the only difference between the two is payment methods. Is that a crime?
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He is getting a delivery, a new account would only have a few different details. What if someone created and account on Kalahari and bought a phone using your card.

While it is plausible that the accounts were completely different, its more likely that many details were the same, name, surname, delivery address, but with a different email and credit card, or how about same name, same card with different email and delivery.

Either if those 2 scenarios would send up red flags.

Skype is in no way the same thing, your credit card is not a requirement, and they won't let you link the card to 2 accounts anyway.
 
CranialBlaze said:
He is getting a delivery, a new account would only have a few different details. What if someone created and account on Kalahari and bought a phone using your card.

While it is plausible that the accounts were completely different, its more likely that many details were the same, name, surname, delivery address, but with a different email and credit card, or how about same name, same card with different email and delivery.

Either if those 2 scenarios would send up red flags.

Skype is in no way the same thing, your credit card is not a requirement, and they won't let you link the card to 2 accounts anyway.
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So phone them and ask them! Really not that difficult.

They didn't email or phone this oke, they just dropped him, and he had to phone them to find out what was going on with his order.

If you don't trust, then verify. If you don't trust and you don't verify, you are a bad business.
 
Blacklisting could mean many things. Example the same credit card credentials used with a different account or the billing address doesn't match with what the bank have on their system..

I once did a purchase on PnP online on a secondary card they didn't want to authorise the transaction cause the billing address didn't match nor the account holder.

I did bring it up with Kalahari that OTP(onetime password) Is the Best method to use.. that way the transaction has been authorised by the account holder. EXAMPLE sometimes when I do online transactions on Takealot will be diverted to the banks OTP page - sometimes I skip this process due to my regular buying on takealot.

There are many fraudsters out there. I have seen Woolworths delivery list. Suspected fraud etc.. What I find really annoying if they want to combat this type of practice the driver should ask for proof of identity.
 
Well, the phone we ordered was R 2000.00, so not really a large amount at all, by our standards.
As to the reason why a second profile...
We get R75 vouchers from www.vouchercloud.co.za & we found that you can only use 1x voucher per month, per profile.
So, we just set up another profile to use the voucher.

We also have a third profile set up, where we ordered a R600 book with a voucher without a problem, so the large amount scenario seems to make a bit of sense.
But it would have been nice to Kalahari to contact us, instead of umpteen phone calls plus a call to a supervisor, but I surpose I should be greatful for the R100 discount they offered on our next purchase.

BTW, we received our 3x solar lanterns @ R89.00, compared to R189.00 for the Consol one yesterday. No delay, also with a voucher.
 
Termination of Sales, Cancellation of Orders & Blacklisting:

By Kalahari: Kalahari reserves the right, for purposes of preventing suspected fraud and/or where it suspects that you have created multiple User profiles to take advantage of a promotion or Coupon intended by Kalahari to be used once-off by you, to blacklist you on its database to refuse to accept or process payment on any order, and/or to cancel any sale concluded between you and Kalahari, in whole or in part, on notice to you.

http://help.kalahari.com/general-terms-and-conditions/


So yeah....zero sympathy I am afraid. You are lucky they didn't blacklist you permanently.
 
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