The 90-second review: history → geography → contact → order shape. A returning customer with clean history clears instantly. A first-timer needs the geography check (IP vs shipping vs billing), a contact sanity check (real email? reachable phone?), and an order-shape check (rush shipping + high value + duplicates = the fraud trifecta). Beyond ~20 flagged orders/day, the process needs automation or it becomes the bottleneck.
The 90-second process
In sequence — stop at the first decisive answer:
- History (10s): returning customer, past orders clean? → fulfill. Strongest single signal; don't waste review time on trusted repeaters (automate the skip with a Flow rule).
- Geography (20s): IP location vs shipping vs billing. One mismatch = normal (gifts, travel, work). IP far from both addresses + proxy flags = escalate.
- Contact (20s): email pattern (name-like vs `xk29fj@`), phone plausibility. Disposable-domain email on a first order is a strong negative.
- Order shape (30s): value vs your AOV, rush shipping, duplicate attempts, quantity oddities (five identical phone cases = reshipper pattern).
- Decision (10s): fulfill / verify by email-SMS / cancel. Log the reason as an order note — it's process memory and future evidence.
When review stops scaling
Math: 20 flagged orders/day × 90s ≈ 30 min — fine. Ten times that (a good BFCM day) = 5 hours — not fine, and rushed reviews converge on rubber-stamping.
The fix is a better pre-filter, not more reviewers: a chargeback-outcome-trained score dramatically shrinks the queue that deserves human eyes. Aurai Prevent (free with Aurai for Shopify) scores on dispute-outcome data and reserves your attention for the genuinely ambiguous — which is the only place human review adds value anyway.
Frequently asked questions
How long should order review take?
About 90 seconds per flagged order with a fixed checklist. Longer means you're re-deriving process per order; shorter means rubber-stamping.
Should I review every order?
No — review flagged orders only, and auto-clear returning customers with clean history. Reviewing everything doesn't scale and adds friction where none is needed.
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