Vendor Overwhelm! One Merchant's Experience Researching 3rd-Party Fraud Providers w/ Andrew Austin @ CarMax

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For online fraud-fighters who have been in this industry for more than a decade, we've seen a lot of big changes in the 3rd-party vendor landscape. New technology innovations and additional needs of the buyers, along with a great deal of venture capital funding, have ushered in a lot of new vendor companies, and a lot of competition. In some cases, this competition is important, and in theory, should keep solution providers investing in R&D and continuous innovations to keep up with new fraud tactics & schemes.

But what if a new person joined the industry with a lot of experience & knowledge of fraud technology, but who had never been on the e-commerce merchant side? What would their experience & impressions of this sometimes overwhelming & overly competitive space be? How can they even identify who has the best technology if they all say similar things and claim to all work with the same companies?

This has been the recent experience of Andrew Austin, Sr. Manager of Fraud Technology at CarMax. After his great conversation with Karisse on Tuesday about his background & an overview on some of the challenging aspects of the auto industry from a fraud perspective, Andrew returned to discuss his experiences with third-party fraud technology solutions and some of the good, bad & the ugly experiences he has had with salespeople for various solutions in the fraud & identity space. Karisse & Andrew also talk about the biggest challenges in the vendor selection process today, while emphasizing the importance of genuine customer relationships and tailoring solutions to each's merchant's needs.

They also delve into the process of assessing opportunities, questioning assumptions, and cutting through buzz-word-filled presentations to get to the heart of how problems will be solved (w/o much, or any impact on legitimate users), when evaluating potential fraud prevention solutions. Overall, they stress the need for organic conversations with knowledgeable representatives and avoiding one-size-fits-all solutions in favor of solutions tailored to the specific merchant's needs.

This episode is a great one for everyone in sales to listen to, but also merchants as Andrew provides some great tips and a few relatable "horror stories".

To connect directly with Andrew (Solicitations will not be responded to):

https://www.linkedin.com/in/awaustin/

Fraudology is hosted by Karisse Hendrick, a fraud fighter with decades of experience advising hundreds of the biggest ecommerce companies in the world on fraud, chargebacks, and other forms of abuse impacting a company's bottom line.

Connect with her on LinkedIn

She brings her experience, expertise, and extensive network of experts to this podcast weekly, on Tuesdays.