(Editor’s note: The following letter was originally sent by the World Floor Covering Association to its members and affiliates, many of who in turn sent it to their members and affiliates. Because of its nature and the fact it directly affects our readers, Floor Covering News felt it important enough to publish in order to make the entire industry aware of it.)

There has been a scam preying on floor covering dealers the last month or so that you [and your staff] may want to be alert to.

It works something like this:

1) A customer contacts you, most likely by e-mail, requesting availability of a particular SKU from Dal-Tile for a church in Alaska (or you name it).

2) Dealer quotes prices, which is agreed to by the caller who then orders a relatively substantial quantity,such as 40 cartons each of two different sizes. The caller pays 50% down with two credit cards, advising he will pay the balance in person and pick up the order.

3) The dealer orders the product and it is shipped to the store. The customer then contacts the store and says the shipper is telling him it will not accept credit cards. At this point, the customer offers to pay off the balance he owes the dealer for the product with his credit cards but requests the dealer wire $2,000 to the shipper. The customer asks the dealer to add the $2,000 for the shipper to his credit card.

4) While this sounds fishy, the salesperson assumes this would be OK since the customer’s credit cards were approved for the $6,000 to $7,000 product order. So, the store charges an additional $2,000 on the credit card, takes the cash from its register and wires the money to the address given by the customer.

5) It turns out, the credit card numbers were stolen and the “customer” never picks up the order. So, in addition to being out the $2,000 cash that was wired to a fictitious trucking company, the store does not make a sale, it has to ask the rep to take the product back and it may be faced with a restocking fee.

Thanks goes out to WFCA member Jim Garner of Sergenian’s Floor Covering in Madison, Wis., for bringing this scam to our attention. They went after him, but he smelled a rat.

Dealers from Texas to North Carolina to Wisconsin have received this call. You may be next.