I wasn't sure where exactly to post this, but this forum gets the most readers, and is where the thread about it was.  Anyway, a friend of mine and I have both apparently had our credit card info stolen, as mysterious charges have been showing up on our accounts in the last few days.  They all seem to be from the same sources, and the only common link between his account and mine seems to be our orders for the Mario Galaxy OST from NCSX.  If you ordered from them, you might want to check things out.  If they ARE the source of the leaked information, then I apologize for recommending them and am extremely disappointed in the failure of what has always been one of the most trusted import stores.  Ugh.

That's interesting. I had some fraud on my card, but this was back in December.

I did however preorder Mario Galaxy with that card back when it was announced (I forget when that was) but since switched it to the new one to confirm the order.

When did you preorder and did the amounts just start showing up recently?

I preordered whenever they first opened preorders up, whenever that was (December, I guess).  The charges began to show up in just the past few days, but they didn't actually charge me until a couple days before that.

Wow, that is truly frightening. I just checked my statements and fortunately I seem to be okay so far, but I'm definitely going to keep a close watch on them for a while.  Thanks for the warning.  If I may ask, what were the fraudulent charges for?

Unfortunately I think this is going to be the end of my relationship with NCSX.  I was a little incensed at the last-minute "oh hay we're gonna have to jack your order price up", but I understand that that was not necessarily their fault.  But this? Even if NCSX employees are not the culprits here, at the very least it shows that they're not taking proper measures to secure their site, and that's more than enough to convince me I should be taking my business elsewhere.

Again, I appreciate the heads-up, and I hope you and your friend (and anyone else who finds themselves victimized here) are able to get things straightened out with your credit card company.

I can't imagine them being at fault. I said it before, NCSX has always been one of the 'good guys', and has survived where many other import stores have failed (remember Tronix? The Rage? Video Game Depot? Even the famously bad Buyrite and Gavecave? None of them are around any more...)

-Joshua

LOL @ The Rage. I had repeated good service there (and they were fast, too!).

I have my own Buy Rite scam story about ordering for overnight shipping and then OOPS! the game isn't in stock, comes a week late (does anyone remember the pre-recorded "Dude" over their 1-900 number?). GameCave was full of rude, arsefaces except for this one guy who was named Brian.

GameCave was historically a ripoff site oh and remember their advertising games that never came out? Just check out an old GameFan! They had a fading collapse -- they were apart of Express.com for a short while (last year or so of biz).

Yeah, I've heard plenty of bad things about buyrite too, AFTER I did business with them, but the ironic thing is that I never had any trouble with them whatsoever.

And Tronix used to be pretty good too.

why isnt tronix good anymore? must be five years since my last order, but i just want to know.

Holy shit! I pre-ordered Mario Galaxy from them but then cancelled that and later ordered Under Defeat LE Dreamcast from them a few weeks ago - so I had two occasions where I gave them my debit card info. I got a phone call from Staples yesterday saying that someone spent about $250 on items on staples.com and requested them to be shipped to Tennessee. Since I'm from MA it looked fishy and they called to confirm the charges, which were false. I had to freeze my account and get rid of my debit card, and now BOA is sending me a new card. I should also add that I have used my debit card a LOT over the past several years and have NEVER had a problem like this.

Long and short of it is that you can add my experience with NCSX to yours, man. Looks like someone there is up to no good.

Bummer, sorry this happened to you guys.

It can be a hassle, and yeah it does make a person seem 'violated' in a way.

I use Tronix to get US stuff all the time and they are great. I'm guessing they used to do JP stuff but have since stopped.

Wow, that's awful. I'm glad that I already vowed off of NCSX a year or two ago. I got burned by the aforementioned tendency of theirs to jack prices up at the last minute and then pass the blame off onto the suppliers. I personally can't accept that because, even if the suppliers are changing the prices, NCSX still continues to knowingly and willingly deal with scummy, shifty suppliers. If they deal with such unreliable and dishonest people, then it's no surprise that a leak in information would arise too. Back then, I decided to avoid NCSX unless "necessary" (in that the item is only available there or significantly cheaper there, and the latter pretty much never happens because I personally have to pay sales tax with them), but now I think I'll avoid them no matter what. Pretty sad when a company in Hong Kong is more reliable than one in the good ol' USA.

Have any of you contacted NCSX about this?

No, not yet. I called my bank and they said to contact the local authorities, so I'm going to get in touch with the Brooklyn PD this weekend and report it. NCSX has a 718 area code, which is that general area. Pardon my francais, but that's just f---ing low, and shady business. If someone associated or affiliated with NCSX did this I would love to see those fuckers get shut down.

If you look at their contact us page, their P.O. Box zip code puts them in Queens.  Initially, you need to contact the police in Queens, not Brooklyn.

Ah, okay. Will do. Thank you!

Well it sounds like you've taken the right steps but, if it were me, I'd be contacting NCSX too. Unless they are planning on shutting up shop and moving to Brazil or somewhere, they have been in business far too long and are far too traceable for it to be worth their while to start criminal credit card fraud.

It seems more likely that, if NCSX definitely turns out to be the link, that they have a serious system problem and something has gone badly wrong. While I would say that's not much better, without them being informed they won't know to do anything about it and more and more people are going to go through the same thing until the authorities and credit card companies get on it which, having dealt with credit card companies, could be a while.

Well, this is either a renegade employee or their e-commerce site/payment system has been compromised.  Since NCSX has been around for a long time, it seems stupid for them to turn evil.

Is this happening just to people with recent orders, because I haven't used NCSX in a while now, but maybe my CC info is still stored on their servers. Definitely should let them know first because there are probably hundreds of people buying stuff from them every day.

Well, I think somebody said the charges were made in TN.  You can ask if the charges were electronic or manually swiped.  If somebody in TN manually swiped the card, then it's not likely to be an employee.

I've had this stuff happen in the past, although I have no idea how my information got out.  Somebody bought a PS3 using my credit card!  $650!

It's been a few years since I ordered from NCSX, but I checked anyways.  Thankfully there were no fraudulent charges, so hopefully you're safe too.

The friend of mine who also had this happen called NCSX on Friday.  According to the rep he talked to, the orders placed go directly to the processing company and NCSX employees don't get to see the information at all.  They sent a follow-up email stating that they are going to do a security audit for all three of their shopping sites.  I'll let you all know what we hear next.

I see a fradulent charge on my card too, so thanks for the heads up.  I'm not going to pre-judge NCSX yet, but I will call my credit card company and have this charge killed and my number rebooted.

Thankfully anything I ordered from NCX was at least a card ago. I wonder if stuff like that helps catch fuckers like this?

-Joshua

I've had some really bad experiences with NCSX. Charging for orders I did not make, nothing arriving, even threatening to charhe my CC card!!!!

stay far away from them!!

Edit: Seems like I judged them a bit early. Let's see how things turn out.

Hello everyone, I work at NCSX and we were directed to this thread by a customer. I wanted to address some of the concerns brought up:

1) Credit card issues
Please note that credit card information on our shop at www.ncsxshop.com is passed directly to www.linkpoint.com which is our credit card processor. We received a call from a customer to notify us of a fraudulent transaction a few weeks ago and we asked our server administrators to perform a security audit to make sure there wasn't any hacking happening and they didn't find anything untoward.

We have however changed all of our server passwords as a precautionary measure.

We also have a new shop at www.shopncsx.com which is administered and secured by Network Solutions and we asked them to perform a security check as well to make sure everything was okay.

Our old shop at http://mgrsti3030s.seamlesstech.biz/ is being phased out in favor of www.shopncsx.com because it's easier to perform sales campaigns, coupon codes, and free shipping offers on the new shop but please note that credit card information is automatically deleted by the store software after 24 hours for security purposes.

Regarding employee access to credit card information, please note that only the founder of NCS and one accountant who's been with the company since 1992 has password protected access to credit card information if we need to access the Linkpoint server.

We apologize for the credit card issues that some of our customers encountered but it's unfair to crucify us without knowing the entire story of what's going on.

2) Multiple shops
Our primary site is at www.ncsxshop.com. When it was developed, the database format was not compatible with our older shop. So, we decided to keep the two shops up for the time being.

3) Last minute price changes
We understand that it isn't fair when it happens but we're based in the USA and we have less control over what happens overseas than if we were located in Japan or even Hong Kong. We have considered starting a branch in Tokyo but in the end, the costs of maintaining an office and staffers in Japan wasn't financially sound. The last minute price changes don't happen often and may occur 2-3 times a year on limited distribution items beyond our control. If a supplier warns us in advance that there is a very good chance of a shortage for a product, we will not stock it since it's not enjoyable to contact customers and alert them of unavailable stock or higher prices.

4) Regarding the following message from DreamerNL which is captioned below:
"I've had some really bad experiences with NCSX. Charging for orders I did not make, nothing arriving, even threatening to charhe my CC card!!!!
stay far away from them!!"

What is your name and what are the dates of the transactions that we charged you for orders that you didn't make? We'd really like to know since the only time an order is processed is when a customer submits an order on our shop or calls an order in.

5) In Closing...
We process hundreds of orders daily and we understand the need for security. Again, we apologize for the problems that some of our customers encountered but it's unfair to accuse our company of being behind the credit card issue as some posters here have intimated. We've been in business for nearly two decades and we've seen a lot of our competition come and go. We used to supply a lot of shops in the USA including Diehard Game Fan stores when the import market was much bigger than it is now but nearly all of those shops have either closed down or changed their business entirely.

We understand that new customers might not know about our history in the business but we're hoping that people won't jump to conclusions and judge our entire company without first contacting us. Thanks for your attention. I'll be glad to answer any questions.

My question to you is this: can you explain how several people from different locations all had fraudulent charges on their credit cards shortly after putting their credit card info on an order at NCSX? It's too large of a coincidence for us to get simultaneously ripped off within the same short time period after ordering from the same place. I have never had any issues with fraudulence on my debit card, and seeing as how a few other people had the same issue after buying the Mario Galaxy OST it leaves little doubt in my mind that somehow these charges came from information passed on because of those transactions.

That's great that the server passwords were changed, but that doesn't make me feel any less uneasy or comfortable buying from NCSX again. As I pointed out before, it's too large of a coincidence for these charges to be just that. If there was no hacking found, that means there's a chance that someone from within either NCSX or Linkpoint had access to this information and could have potentially used it. I'm not sure if there are records kept on the NCSX or Linkpoint servers, or what have you, but despite the products that NCSX offers I am not comfortable shopping there from here on in.

Zane, I can't really know what happened one way or another but, right now, credit card fraud is rampant. Many of us here would buy from similar online stores, ncsx being just one of them. It makes sense to look for a connection but it is entirely conceivable that it is actually a coincidence.

But if you look for a connection in places where people all buy from the same batch of stores, it could give you an incorrect match.

But, like I say, I can't know one way or another.

Hello, thanks for your message. As mentioned in our original message, there's only two senior people within NCS who has access to credit card information if it needs to be accessed on Linkpoint. This is a strict policy guideline we follow since employee turnover can be a security concern if not managed properly.

Linkpoint is a fairly large processing company which is a subsidiary of First Data Corporation. We're fairly certain that no one at Linkpoint would compromise customer data. You're asking us to explain how the data may have been compromised but I can't give you an answer that's 100% accurate. If Linkpoint stores transaction data on magnetic tapes within a certain timeframe for immediate backup or transfer to a storage facility, can the data on that tape be appropriated and/or intercepted by a third party or an intermediary?

It's possible but we don't know for sure. There are other possibilities but we just felt it was unfair that we were being judged prematurely about a very serious problem. We're consumers too and we're wary of using our credit card information online but we've taken steps to ensure that our sites are secure and safe for our customers.

Just to clarify again, no credit card information is being stored on our servers. The billing data is sent directly to the credit card processing company. That is why a customer has to type in his/her credit card information each time an order is submitted. It may be less convenient for the customer during checkout but it's also a security feature. The only information stored online is the customer's shipping information, email address, and telephone.

Thanks for giving us a chance to give our side.

I'm just going to go out on a whim and say that NCSX is probably not at fault here.

It may look like it wasn't a coincidence but I'm pretty close to sure that these kinds of problems are always with users.  If NCSX's credit card information really was compromised, there would be more than ... 2 ... people who had compromised account information.

2 is not a trend.

There are at least three of us that had charges within the same time period. I'm sure you would feel differently if it was your information and your financial safety that was at sake and you had to freeze your account because you were afraid that your money has been compromised. Otherwise, it must be easy to skim over our original posts and just assume it was me and Joe that had the issue.

Show me proof that NCSX is at fault here other than a random coincidence that 3 of you had an issue.  NCSX probably handles hundreds of transactions a day, even 3 of those does not strike me as a coincidence or a trend.  NCSX has gone out of their way to post information about how they handle transactions -- which is far more secure than can probably be said for ANY of the overseas sites we use on a daily basis with the exception of paypal, ebay and amazon.co.jp.  If two people in the entire company have access to payment information then the likelihood of your information being compromised by those two individuals is not impossible but it's highly unlikely.  The information isn't even stored at their site, and if someone at Linkwhatever compromised an entire tape full of credit card information, there would be more than 3 rogue transactions.

Assuming I had a need to order something from NCSX, I wouldn't hesitate with the information they provided in this post.

Dude, three people out of this community had issues. That's a very, very small percentage of the total number of people that order from NCSX. There's no way to tell what else could have happened, but how can you be so certain that there were no fradulent charges to people outside of STC? If every other person that ordered from NCSX in the past few months had no issues, then, yeah - I could (and would) see your point. But there's absolutely no way to find that out, and given the small community here compared to NCSX's total customer base I find it very hard to understand your unwillingness to contemplate the chance that this happened because of those transactions. But, like I said, this didn't affect you personally and I'll bet that if you had your shit stolen you would have a different attitude about it.

As it stands, by all means - order away.

And there's also a fourth person, if you want to include Qui-Gon's friend!  Sounds like more than a coincidence to me.