I tried to order a couple of t-shirts from Thinkgeek, but after placing my order and getting a confirmation number, I got an email from their customer service department:
What the heck is this about? I have to fax them a credit card statement? That’s the craziest thing I ever heard. I type in my shipping address to buy things online all the time with this credit card, and I’ve never ever had a problem before.
Should I be worried that something fishy’s going on?
I’ve ordered from ThinkGeek dozens of times before and never had a problem.
More like something phishy.
I’ve also been asked to do that lately when purchasing watches online and the shipping and billing addresses were different (I have it shipped to my work). It’s basic fraud protection. They also wanted a front and back photocopy of the credit card I was using.
Here’s the text
I have gotten similar requests from legitimate businesses in the past. In almost every case, it was because I either mistyped my address, or because I had recently moved, and had forgotten to update my credit card information. Is it possible that either of those could explain the mismatched address?
Typically, address verification systems look at the zip code of the billing address to verify. It could be possible that you’ve transposed digits.
Yes, but not with Thinkgeek. I’ve ordered stuff from them many times, including just a few weeks ago. Never had any problems with them.
Also, they have never objected to me shipping my packages to an address that is different from my billing address.
I don’t know what’s going on, but why not just contact their customer service by phone? They may have made a mistake, or you may have. With a phone call you could find out.
A wild guess suggests that you might have entered billing information that doesn’t match the information stored with your account. If you try to do that online, you usually get an immediate error message.
I re-read the message, supposing that I had missed something, and saw this:
Unfortunately, our authorization company could not match your billing address in the address verification check. This sometimes happens with international billing addresses, or if the file address of your credit card’s issuing bank does not exactly match what you entered.
They’re not complaining about your shipping address, they’re complaining about your billing address. You entered something in your billing address that doesn’t match what the bank has on file. The only odd thing about this is that ThinkGeek’s online ordering system didn’t catch it immediately.
Nevertheless, I wouldn’t fax personal information unless you know exactly who it’s going to and can check that he or she received it. Even so, it’s a lot more risky than even sending it by e-mail. Again I say, call them.
I’ve purchased from them (and I got the tip to try them here from a Doper, in the off-beat shopping sites thread) and had no problems, and my USB Christmas tree is ultra-cool. They shipped to Canada problem-free.
But I also bought a laptop here in Canada, and they couldn’t/wouldn’t process the order online until we had updated my credit card billing address. Yep, we’d moved, but the credit card company for some reason still had the old address on file. (Dunno why, since my bills are coming to the right place.) Once we’d straightened that out, my online order for the laptop was fine.
Ok, but then why have I never had any sort of issues with this before? I buy online a lot, and I always enter the same info. I verified the billing address (even went back just now to the “your orders” page, and it’s exactly right. By exactly right, I mean matches up perfectly with my address as written on my credit card company.
I’d definately give them a call, but some places do require stuff like that. My brother bought a (unnecessarily expensive) laptop from Alienware a while back, and even for sales just to Canada they required a heap of extra documentation like drivers licence and such.
They also made him pay > 100$ to ship the thing back for repairs when the screen developed a huge red splotch after only 3 weeks, but anyways…
Raging mutant squirrels? 
I just don’t know. The message indicates that something is munged on their end, having to do with your billing address. Call them and find out.