Carin Siegfried, the Baker & Taylor rep for New England and upstate New York, writes:
In the last month or so, I know of three stores hit by those perennial
scam artists who call using the TDD operator or e-mail, asking for
large quantities of expensive books, using a stolen credit card that
initially goes through but later is charged back. These scam artists
have gotten smarter, no longer ordering hundreds of bibles but instead
ordering 20-30 copies each of three or four different textbook titles.
They refuse to give out their phone numbers, and their name does not
match the name on the card (which of course one can't determine over
the phone or Internet without a call to the credit card company).
Fortunately the three stores caught the scam before shipping out the
books, but one had paid for next-day delivery from our West Coast
warehouse on some very heavy books and was out a small fortune on
freight costs. Two of the booksellers are fairly new store owners, so
they hadn't read articles on this topic.
Perhaps you could alert Shelf Awareness readers to this problem and
remind people to be on the lookout and know that if it sounds too good
to be true, you should be wary.
[Editors' Note: Done!]