Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2005-11-06 09:18:00 - Graham Ellis
A week ago, we quietly started taking on line bookings - for example, you'll find a BOOK IT link from the MySQL course description page.
What a shame that one of the very first bookings came from a country in Africa, with credit card details for a USA address and in the name of a person who wasn't on the course and had a very non-african sounding name. The booking was followed up by an email asking for us to issue a letter of invitation to the course as a matter of some urgency, and the email addresses being used are generic ones that anyone can sign up for, for free, rather than linked back to the booker's company. All in all, a very suspicious booking. I can't be certain (and when you report these things to your credit card company, they don't enlighten you of the detail), but I rather suspect a stolen card or identity, and an attempt to obtain paperwork from us to help with a UK visa application. As a matter of course, our systems 'profile' transactions and anything that is unusual is investigated.
In order to protect ourselves, our customers, and third parties who might not have authorised charges such as these, we restrict credit card bookings for courses; if you're using the online form, we insist that:
a) The name on the credit card must match one of the people coming on the course
b) The full street address that the card is registered to much be given and that will be used as the address to which we send the course confirmation
c) The address must be within the same legal juristiction in which Well House Consultants operates.
These rules are a bit of a nuisance, but they're good news for the majority of our customers as they afford them extra protection. Users of the system will also note that we're using a registered secure server (and https rather than http) through which they enter their personal details.
If you're looking to book a course at our Melksham training centre on your credit card, but you're based in a different part of the world ... we can still help. Simply make a provisional booking through the online system to reserve your place, and call in to give us your details. We can often complete the security checks on the phone during your call, and if not we can usually get back to you very soon and look forward to welcoming you.