free email accounts and orders

[buildingblocks]

Is there a way to prevent certain free email accounts from placing orders?
IE: I've been asked if it's possible to prevent customers who supply gmail email addresses from placing orders.

[schoolboy]

A couple of years ago I learned of someone who wrote some code that barred anyone from signing up as a customer, if their email address contained "hotmail", "gmail" an a few others of that ilk.

The difficulty really, is that a lot of LEGITIMATE customers use these sorts of email accounts, so you could be shooting yourself in the foot if you make blanket prohibitions of this nature.

For the most part, there is no "automatic" adjudication system that can filter out the crooks. Such audits and checks have to be made manually. If you suspect a shopper is not "trustworthy" then revert to telephone calls and credit checks to confirm or deny your suspicions.

I had a client who got a BIG order from a fellow in Ghana. She sells women's skin-care products, so just what a male Ghanean was doing buying up hundreds of pounds of that stuff was enough to raise suspicions. While he was in Ghana, he wanted his "connection" in London to come and collect the goods. We replied to him saying that he could indeed pay by card, but that there would be a 60-day "clearance" period before the goods were released to his "connection" who would also have to bring her passport, resident's permit and three recent bank statements for verification to the shop before the goods could be released.

Guess what... ? he agreed to these terms, and the payment was perfectly legitimate. His sister-in-law collected the goods just under two months after the order (and payment) was processed.

[buildingblocks]

thanks schoolboy

It's not something I want for myself. It's something someone else was inquiring about.